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AWS Compute Service Recommendation

You are a Cloud Solutions Architect tasked with advising a development team on the optimal AWS compute service for a new application. The application's core function is to process uploaded images (e.g., resizing, watermarking, metadata extraction). This processing can be highly variable, ranging from infrequent to bursty, and individual processing tasks might vary in duration from seconds to a few minutes. The team needs to run a piece of code for this image processing.

As a Cloud Solutions Architect, provide a comprehensive explanation and recommendation for the optimal AWS compute service for an image processing application, addressing the following parts:

Part 1: Service Overview (30 points) Briefly describe each of the following AWS compute services (EC2, Lambda, Fargate) in the context of how they would typically be used to host and execute the image processing code for this scenario.

Part 2: Trade-offs Analysis (50 points) Compare and contrast AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, and AWS Fargate across the following critical dimensions for the given image processing workload. Provide specific examples or considerations for each service under each dimension:

Cost: Analyze their pricing models (e.g., per hour, per request/duration, compute capacity units) and discuss how cost efficiency might vary with different processing volumes and patterns (e.g., infrequent vs. bursty traffic).
Scalability: Explain how each service handles varying loads, from zero to peak. Discuss aspects like automatic scaling, cold starts (where applicable), concurrency limits, and the effort required to configure scaling.
Operational Management: Describe the level of operational responsibility the team would have with each service. Cover aspects like OS patching, infrastructure provisioning, container orchestration, monitoring, debugging, and security updates.

Part 3: Recommendation and Justification (20 points) Based on the analysis in Part 2 and the specific use case of processing 'uploaded images' with variable load, recommend one of the three services (EC2, Lambda, or Fargate) as the most suitable option. Provide a clear and concise justification for your recommendation, highlighting why your chosen service is superior for this particular workload compared to the others, considering the identified trade-offs.