What is the difference between Docker and AWS?

Docker and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both critical to modern software development, but they serve very different functions. Docker is a containerization platform, while AWS is a cloud service provider offering a wide array of infrastructure and software services.

Docker allows developers to package applications and their dependencies into lightweight, portable containers. These containers can run on any system with Docker installed—making development, testing, and deployment more consistent across environments. Key advantages include:

• Isolated environments for microservices

• Simplified CI/CD pipelines

• Faster startup and deployment times

• Efficient use of system resources

On the other hand, AWS offers the infrastructure that applications—including Docker containers—can run on. It provides:

• Compute resources (EC2, Lambda, ECS)

• Networking, storage, and databases (S3, RDS, DynamoDB)

• Developer tools and monitoring (CloudWatch, CodePipeline)

• Scalability, redundancy, and security built into its services

In fact, Docker and AWS often work together: you might use Docker to build your application and AWS (via ECS, EKS, or Fargate) to deploy it in the cloud.

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