Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR) is a service on AWS that allows us to easily store and manage containers. This service is typically related to container it is secure, scalable and reliable, so we don't have to worry about scaling infrastructure for our own storage or containers.
Breaking down this word ECR itself, the word ECR can be divided into three parts each alphabet refers one phrase & by using these three phrases we can get complete knowledge about ECR.
So breaking down this word ECR is :
E = Elastic
C = Container
R = Registry
Let's start with container basically is a package which contains our application code and the software or the dependencies that required to run our application. The letter E stands Elastic so on AWS it is high scalable and available in nature like EC2,ECS,EBS. It can increase the capacity of AWS services to accommodate any number of resources in this case the letter E here we can any number of container images it is just a pay-as-you-go model where AWS doesn't restrict us with images and similarly availability mean AWS will take care of making sure that the service ECR is available all the time. And here CR represent that it is a Container Registry which is similar to DockerHub.
Key Difference between ECR & DockerHub or other Container Register :
DockerHub : There is a chance to use first container registry that we've used was DockerHub. Because DockerHub is free & easy to create and log in it that and we can create a public repository(When we push images to DockerHub, anyone or organization in the world can access or download them.) by default in DockerHub. There is a Private repository also in DockerHub only authorize people can get access to the image.
AWS ECR : Whereas ECR here when we create a repository by default private in AWS nature ofcourse we can create a public repository in ECR as well. Advantage of ECR if you are already on AWS then we can use our IAM users. Here IAM directly integrate with IAM by that it will add lot of advantage and apart from this ECR is very good with AWS services.
Here are the differences between Docker Hub and Amazon ECR
AWS ECR :
Private Registry : Amazon ECR is a private container registry that securely stores Docker container images.
Fully Managed : It is fully managed by AWS, providing scalability, availability and integration with other AWS services.
Security : AWS offers fine-grained access control using IAM policies and VPC endpoints for secure communication.
Pay-as-you-go : Charges based on storage and data transfer, with no upfront costs.
Widely available & scalable : ECR benefits from AWS highly available and scalable infrastructure.
DockerHub :
Public Repository : Docker Hub primarily hosts publicly accessible public container images.
Community Hub : It serves as a centralized platform for developers to share and collaborate on container images.
Free and Paid Plans : Free offers both free and paid plans with personal storage limitations for users.
Availability & Reliability : Docker Hub has a good track record of availability but does not match the scalability and reliability of AWS.
Overall, AWS ECR is a simple and secure way to store Container Images on AWS. It's built for ease of use and integrates smoothly with other AWS services.