---
layout: docs
page_title: Consul on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) Overview
description: >-
  Consul's architecture adapts to Amazon Web Services ECS by running each task with an application container, a client agent, and an Envoy proxy. Learn how Consul service mesh works on ECS and find getting started tutorials for several scenarios.
---

# Consul on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) Overview

You can deploy Consul service mesh applications to [AWS Elastic Container Service](https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/) (ECS) using either our official [Terraform modules](/docs/ecs/terraform/install) or by [manually configuring the task definition](/docs/ecs/manual/install).

## Service Mesh

Using Consul on AWS ECS enables you to add your ECS tasks to the service mesh and
take advantage of features such as zero-trust-security, intentions, observability,
traffic policy, and more. You can also connect service meshes so that services deployed across your infrastructure environments can communicate.

## Architecture

![Consul on ECS Architecture](/img/consul-ecs-arch.png)

Consul on ECS follows an [architecture](/docs/architecture) similar to other platforms, but each ECS task is a
Consul node. An ECS task runs the user application container(s), as well as a Consul client container for control plane
communication and an [Envoy](https://envoyproxy.io/) sidecar proxy container to facilitate data plane communication for
[Consul Connect](/docs/connect).

For a detailed architecture overview, see the [Architecture](/docs/ecs/architecture) page.

## Getting Started

There are several ways to get started with Consul with ECS.

- The [Serverless Consul Service Mesh with ECS and HCP](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/cloud/consul-ecs-hcp?utm_source=docs) learn guide shows how to use Terraform to run Consul service mesh applications on ECS with managed Consul servers running in HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP).
- The [Service Mesh with ECS and Consul on EC2](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/consul-ecs-ec2?utm_source=docs) learn guide shows how to use Terraform to run Consul service mesh applications on ECS with Consul servers running on EC2 instances.
- The [Consul with Dev Server on Fargate](https://registry.terraform.io/modules/hashicorp/consul-ecs/aws/latest/examples/dev-server-fargate) example installation deploys a sample application in ECS using the Fargate launch type.
- The [Consul with Dev Server on EC2](https://registry.terraform.io/modules/hashicorp/consul-ecs/aws/latest/examples/dev-server-ec2) example installation deploys a sample application in ECS using the EC2 launch type.

Refer to the [Requirements](/docs/ecs/requirements) and use one of the following sets of instructions when you're ready to install Consul on an existing ECS cluster and add tasks to the service mesh:

- [Install with Terraform](/docs/ecs/terraform/install)
- [Install Manually](/docs/ecs/manual/install)