What Happened
On October 20, 2026, AWS announced Amazon ECS Gateway. It provisions and manages Application Load Balancers (ALBs) and supporting ingress resources for ECS services. Platform teams define gateway networking standards and associate gateways with clusters; application teams opt in through an ECS service gateway connector. Host-based routing allows up to 25 services to share an ALB, with a unique DNS hostname for each service. ECS adds or removes ALBs as needed. The feature is available in all commercial AWS Regions for ECS services using awsvpc network mode, across all launch types. AWS charges no additional gateway fee, but underlying infrastructure is billed [1].
Also on October 20, AWS added the ability to disassociate a DynamoDB global table replica without deleting its table or data. Disassociation stops replication in both directions, leaving the replica usable as a single-Region table. It supports same-account and multi-account global tables using multi-Region eventual consistency (MREC) in all AWS Regions, through the console, CLI, DynamoDB API, and CloudFormation [2].
Why It Matters to Businesses
ECS Gateway can reduce repetitive load-balancer configuration while giving platform teams a common ingress policy. Sharing an ALB may also reduce infrastructure sprawl, though the savings depend on traffic and ALB usage charges [1]. DynamoDB replica disassociation gives teams a way to separate a Region’s data for an organizational split or migration without making table deletion part of the procedure [2].
Kimbodo Engineering Perspective
Managed ingress reduces provisioning work, not the need to design routing, certificates, access controls, and observability. Shared ALBs also create a capacity and change-management boundary: teams should know which services share one before applying policies or investigating incidents. For DynamoDB, retaining data is not the same as maintaining consistency. Once replication stops, writes to the former replica and remaining global table can diverge [1][2].
How We Would Implement It
- Define an ECS Gateway standard for approved network exposure, DNS ownership, TLS, and logging. Pilot with a small set of awsvpc services, then verify routing and ALB provisioning before broader opt-in [1].
- Track ALB allocation and per-service traffic so the 25-service sharing limit does not become a surprise during deployment or scaling [1].
- For a DynamoDB split, identify the replica and its writers, establish a cutover point, verify application routing and backups, then disassociate through the chosen API or infrastructure workflow. Test the post-split application behavior as two independent datasets [2].
Risks, Costs and Security
ECS Gateway has no separate feature charge, but ALBs and supporting infrastructure still incur costs. Review IAM permissions for gateway configuration and service opt-in, and test whether shared ingress meets each service’s isolation requirements [1]. Restrict who can disassociate DynamoDB replicas, plan for replication to stop in both directions, and account for subsequent data divergence and any infrastructure-definition changes [2].
Where Kimbodo Comes In
Kimbodo builds and operates this in production for businesses — see our AI Application Development practice, or Estimate My AI Application.
