{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Fortem Blog","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog","description":"Guides, comparisons, and use cases for platform engineers running AWS ECS Fargate at scale.","language":"en-us","lastBuildDate":"Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:43:49 GMT","pubDate":"Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT","generator":"fortem-dev feed","item":[{"title":"AWS ECS Fargate Security: What You Actually Configure (and What You Can't)","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-container-security\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-container-security\/","pubDate":"Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"The two IAM roles, read-only root filesystem, secrets, awsvpc security groups, what Fargate won't let you configure, GuardDuty runtime monitoring, and the security drift that breaks fleets at 10+ environments."},{"title":"AWS ECR: How Container Registry Works for ECS Fargate Teams","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-ecr-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-ecr-guide\/","pubDate":"Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Every ECS Fargate deploy pulls from ECR. How pulls actually work, the execution-role IAM, why private-subnet tasks fail, real pricing, and the lifecycle policy that takes the storage bill from $400 to $15."},{"title":"How Do You Set Up RBAC on ECS Fargate Without Breaking Prod?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-rbac\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-rbac\/","pubDate":"Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"IAM has no concept of an ECS environment. Build per-environment RBAC with ABAC tags \u2014 the working policy, the four ways it silently breaks prod (PassRole, untagged resources, tag-blind actions, ECScape on EC2), and where AWS-native IAM hits its ceiling."},{"title":"How Do You Prepare ECS Fargate for a SOC 2 Audit?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-compliance-soc2\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-compliance-soc2\/","pubDate":"Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"AWS being SOC 2 certified doesn't make you compliant. The exact ECS task-definition settings an auditor flags \u2014 ECS.4, ECS.5, ECS.8, ECS.20 \u2014 the copy-paste fixes, and why Type II is six months of evidence, not a one-day config sprint."},{"title":"How Do You Manage ECS Fargate Across Multiple AWS Accounts?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-multi-account-management\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-multi-account-management\/","pubDate":"Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"You already split prod and non-prod into separate accounts. Now you're paying the operating tax. The five surfaces to solve \u2014 IAM, ECR, networking, deploy, visibility \u2014 what they cost, and the single pane of glass AWS doesn't ship."},{"title":"ECS Fargate Autoscaling: Target Tracking, Step, and Why It Doesn't Scale When You Expect","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-autoscaling\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-autoscaling\/","pubDate":"Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Target tracking, step scaling, the cooldowns that actually matter, and the five reasons ECS Fargate autoscaling doesn't scale when you expect \u2014 straight from the AWS docs."},{"title":"AWS Fargate vs Lambda: When Does Lambda Stop Being Cheaper?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fargate-vs-lambda\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fargate-vs-lambda\/","pubDate":"Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Versus","description":"The cost line between Lambda and Fargate is set by execution duration, not traffic. Breakeven math, the hidden costs that move it, and what the June 2026 MicroVMs launch actually changes."},{"title":"ArgoCD Alternatives in 2026: 5 Real Options (and One Nobody Mentions)","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/argocd-alternative\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/argocd-alternative\/","pubDate":"Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"An honest comparison of ArgoCD alternatives: Flux, Fleet, Harness, Spinnaker, plain CI \u2014 and the option comparison posts skip: not needing GitOps at all."},{"title":"How to Find and Kill Orphaned ECS Environments Before They Drain Your Budget","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-orphaned-environments\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-orphaned-environments\/","pubDate":"Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"A stopped ECS service costs $0 in compute \u2014 but the ALB ($16\/mo) and NAT Gateway ($32\/mo) keep billing. Here's how to audit your fleet and delete environments that are costing you money with zero tasks running."},{"title":"Why Do AWS Staging Environments Cost So Much?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-staging-environment-cost\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-staging-environment-cost\/","pubDate":"Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Non-prod ECS environments run 168 hours a week. Your team works 40. Here's where the money actually goes on Fargate \u2014 idle compute, CloudWatch Logs, shared infra math \u2014 and how to cut it."},{"title":"AWS Cost Anomaly Detection for ECS Teams: What It Catches, What It Misses, and How to Set It Up","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-cost-anomaly-detection-ecs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-cost-anomaly-detection-ecs\/","pubDate":"Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"The default CAD setup monitors all ECS spend as one number. Here's how to wire it to your environment tags, the Terraform to drop in, and where the 24h delay creates real blind spots."},{"title":"Fortem vs Humanitec: ECS Fleet Operations vs General-Purpose IDP","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-humanitec\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-humanitec\/","pubDate":"Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Versus","description":"Humanitec's Container Driver explicitly excludes ECS. If your problem is operating an ECS Fargate fleet, you're comparing the wrong category of tool. Pricing, features, and fit explained."},{"title":"How to Optimize AWS ECS Costs Beyond Reserved Instances","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-cost-optimization-ecs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-cost-optimization-ecs\/","pubDate":"Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Spot and Savings Plans cover the first 30%. Five more levers most ECS teams miss: Graviton (flat 20% off), VPC endpoints, Container Insights scoping, shared ALBs, and free Compute Optimizer."},{"title":"What Is ECS Service Connect and Should You Use It?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-service-connect-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-service-connect-guide\/","pubDate":"Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"ECS Service Connect adds an Envoy proxy to every Fargate task automatically. Free feature, real cost: +0.25 vCPU + 64 MiB per task. When it beats Cloud Map, when it doesn't, and the July 2025 blue\/green fix."},{"title":"Who Restarted Prod? How to Find It in CloudTrail","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-audit-log-compliance\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-audit-log-compliance\/","pubDate":"Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"Every ECS change \u2014 UpdateService, StopTask, RunTask \u2014 lands in CloudTrail with who, when, and from where. Three CLI commands find the culprit in under 2 minutes."},{"title":"How Should You Set Up ECS Logging? (awslogs, FireLens, or Neither)","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-ecs-logging-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-ecs-logging-guide\/","pubDate":"Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"awslogs, FireLens, and the three decisions every ECS Fargate team gets wrong: blocking mode, Never Expire retention ($0.03\/GB\/month), and log group naming at fleet scale."},{"title":"ECS Service Discovery: Cloud Map, Service Connect, or an Internal Load Balancer?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-service-discovery-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-service-discovery-guide\/","pubDate":"Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"A decision framework for ECS Fargate teams \u2014 with the July 2025 blue\/green unblock, real cost math ($0.31\/task\/mo sidecar vs $0.10\/resource Cloud Map), and Terraform snippet."},{"title":"Platform Engineering for ECS Teams: What It Actually Means at 10+ Environments","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/platform-engineering-ecs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/platform-engineering-ecs\/","pubDate":"Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Platform engineering for ECS isn't Backstage or golden paths. It's closing the operations gap that opens at 10+ environments: scheduling, self-service, fleet visibility."},{"title":"ECS Deployment Strategies: When Rolling Updates Break and What to Do Instead","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-blue-green-deployment-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-blue-green-deployment-guide\/","pubDate":"Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Rolling update works for most ECS services. Here are the 3 cases it breaks \u2014 schema migrations, WebSocket connections, canary testing \u2014 and how ECS Native Blue\/Green (July 2025) fixes each."},{"title":"ECS Task Definitions: Every Field, Common Mistakes, Best Practices","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-task-definition-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-task-definition-guide\/","pubDate":"Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"The 8 mistakes that break ECS deployments: wrong IAM role, invalid Fargate CPU\/memory combos, health check restart loops, secrets that don't rotate after rotation."},{"title":"How to Control CloudWatch Logs Costs on ECS?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/cloudwatch-costs-ecs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/cloudwatch-costs-ecs\/","pubDate":"Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"ECS sends all logs to CloudWatch with retention set to Never Expire by default. 4 steps to cut your CloudWatch bill by 60-80% with real CLI commands and Terraform."},{"title":"How to Debug AWS Fargate Containers with ECS Exec?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-exec-guide\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-exec-guide\/","pubDate":"Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"No more SSH into EC2. ECS Exec gives you a shell into Fargate containers. The 5 IAM errors that catch everyone, copy-paste policy, and production audit setup."},{"title":"Do You Need an Internal Developer Platform for AWS ECS?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/internal-developer-platform-ecs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/internal-developer-platform-ecs\/","pubDate":"Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"93% of top-performing teams use an IDP. But ECS teams don't need a full platform \u2014 they need an operational layer. A decision framework to figure out what you actually need."},{"title":"How to Clone an ECS Environment Without Rewriting Terraform?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-environment-clone\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-environment-clone\/","pubDate":"Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"The compliance auditor wants a clone of production. That's 15 services, an ALB, RDS, SSM params \u2014 a 12-step manual process. Here's the template approach, and a parameterized Terraform module."},{"title":"Why Can't You See Per-Environment AWS Costs?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-cost-visibility\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-cost-visibility\/","pubDate":"Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"Cost Explorer shows the total. It doesn't show per-environment costs. Here's why ECS Fargate environments are structurally hard to attribute \u2014 and a 10-line bash script that does it anyway."},{"title":"Fortem vs Cortex: Which Tool Actually Operates Your ECS Fleet?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-cortex\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-cortex\/","pubDate":"Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Versus","description":"Cortex is an Engineering Operations Platform for org-wide visibility. Fortem operates your ECS Fargate fleet specifically. Here's which one you need \u2014 and when to use both."},{"title":"How Much Do AWS Dev Environments Really Cost?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-dev-environment-cost\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-dev-environment-cost\/","pubDate":"Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Cost Explorer shows the total. It doesn't show per-environment costs. Here's the real math: compute + fixed overhead (ALB, NAT, CloudWatch \u2248 $90\/env) \u2014 and how to see it."},{"title":"What Does DevOps Automation Miss Beyond CI\/CD?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/devops-automation-beyond-cicd\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/devops-automation-beyond-cicd\/","pubDate":"Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"CI\/CD automates deployment \u2014 not operations. 5 gaps every team discovers at 10+ environments: scheduling, self-service, cost tracking, cloning, orphans. Build vs buy breakdown."},{"title":"ECS Fargate Best Practices: Running a Fleet of 10+ Environments Without the Pain","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-best-practices\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-best-practices\/","pubDate":"Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Seven Fargate best practices for teams at scale: naming conventions, fixed overhead, CloudWatch retention, Fargate Spot, quota isolation, Terraform state, and scheduling. Real numbers from AWS pricing."},{"title":"How to Cut AWS Costs Without Reserved Instances","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/reduce-aws-costs-without-ri\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/reduce-aws-costs-without-ri\/","pubDate":"Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"RIs and Savings Plans change how you pay, not what runs. Here are 5 methods that cut actual consumption \u2014 scheduling, right-sizing, Spot, auto-stop, and killing orphans \u2014 ranked by impact."},{"title":"What Does AWS Fargate Actually Cost Per Environment?","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-fargate-pricing-real-costs\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-fargate-pricing-real-costs\/","pubDate":"Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"AWS says $0.04048\/vCPU-hr. Here's what a real environment costs \u2014 ALB, NAT Gateway, CloudWatch, data transfer \u2014 and the fixed overhead nobody budgets for."},{"title":"Managing ECS Fargate with Terraform: What Works and What Doesn't","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-terraform\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-terraform\/","pubDate":"Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Terraform is the right tool for provisioning ECS Fargate infrastructure. But at 10+ environments, state sprawl and the ops gap catch every team. Three patterns, a tagging strategy, and what the operations layer needs to do."},{"title":"ECS Multi-Environment Strategy: What Breaks at 10 That Worked Fine at 3","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-multi-environment-strategy\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-multi-environment-strategy\/","pubDate":"Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Naming conventions, cluster structure, and the five AWS limits that surface when environments scale from 3 to 10+. Fixed overhead, IAM proliferation, Fargate quota exhaustion \u2014 and what to get right before you hit the wall."},{"title":"ECS Environment Scheduling: The Complete Guide","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-environment-scheduling\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-environment-scheduling\/","pubDate":"Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Stop paying for ECS dev and staging environments when nobody's using them. Every scheduling approach \u2014 AWS-native options, trade-offs, and what actually works at fleet scale."},{"title":"AWS Proton is Deprecated: What ECS Teams Should Do Before October 7","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-proton-deprecated\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/aws-proton-deprecated\/","pubDate":"Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Timely","description":"AWS Proton shuts down October 7, 2026. Your ECS environments keep running \u2014 but the console, APIs, and every pipeline built on Proton stop working. Here's what breaks and how to migrate."},{"title":"It's Friday at 6pm. Your Developer Can't Restart Staging Without You.","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-staging-self-service\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-staging-self-service\/","pubDate":"Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Use Case","description":"Platform engineers become the single point of failure for staging ops when developers have no safe, scoped way to act. Here's how to fix it with ECS environment RBAC."},{"title":"AWS Copilot is Deprecated: Alternatives for ECS Fargate Teams","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-aws-copilot\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-aws-copilot\/","pubDate":"Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Versus","description":"AWS Copilot CLI reaches end-of-support June 12, 2026. Your ECS services keep running \u2014 but here's what breaks, what to do next, and how to migrate."},{"title":"Fortem vs Flightcontrol: ECS Fleet Management vs Single-App PaaS","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-flightcontrol\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/fortem-vs-flightcontrol\/","pubDate":"Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Versus","description":"Flightcontrol is the right tool for 1\u20133 apps on AWS. Here's exactly where it stops making sense \u2014 and where the pricing math breaks at fleet scale."},{"title":"How to Cut AWS ECS Fargate Costs by 60\u201370%","link":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-cost-optimization\/","guid":"https:\/\/fortem.dev\/blog\/ecs-fargate-cost-optimization\/","pubDate":"Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT","category":"Guide","description":"Dev\/staging environments run 168 hrs\/week. Your team works 40. Here's the math on what that costs \u2014 and four methods to fix it, starting with the one most teams ignore."}]}}