After many years of useful service we have decided to announce the future shutdown of the Amazon ECS 3.0 web service. Since the introduction of Amazon ECS 4.0 in late 2004 the usage of Amazon ECS 3.0 has steadily declined as sites and applications have naturally migrated to the newer version of the E-Commerce Service. In June of 2006 (Version: 2006-06-28) we achieved complete feature and data parity between the two services and are now requesting all existing sites and applications be migrated to ECS 4.0 within the next 14 months.

After March 31, 2008 , we will no longer be accepting Amazon ECS 3.0 requests. The existing maintenance effort saved by shutting down Amazon ECS 3.0 will be re-invested into Amazon ECS 4.0 to allow for the introduction of more features and capabilities.

To assist in the migration of existing Amazon ECS 3.0 users we have posted a migration guide that helps map Amazon ECS 3.0 calls to their Amazon ECS 4.0 equivalents. As the date for deprecation approaches, we will also be sending out reminders to all remaining Amazon ECS 3.0 users to ensure that they are aware of the deadlines and are receiving the information necessary to complete the transition in the time provided.

Thank you for your efforts to build and evangelize great Amazon ECS applications and thanks in advance for your migration work to help us focus on delivering new features that will make your sites and applications even better.

After reviewing the migration document , please use the Amazon ECS forum to ask technical questions and share answers with your fellow developers.

A forum thread has been created here to discuss this plan further.

Frequently asked questions:

Why not just leave Amazon ECS 3.0 running and stop maintaining it?
Our goal in Amazon Web Services is to support and maintain our services to the level necessary to run your production services on top of them. Orphaning Amazon ECS 3.0 to slowly degrade is counter to that principle. We want your sites and applications to have great integration experience and we feel that the best experience going forward will be provided by migrating to Amazon ECS 4.0.

What about feature [X]?
At this time we know of no scenarios (either feature or data related) possible in Amazon ECS 3.0 that cannot be achieved in Amazon ECS 4.0 If you believe there are missing capabilities in Amazon ECS 4.0 required to complete your migration, please raise this on the forum. If this discussion requires sharing sensitive business information, please let us know at aws@amazon.com .

What about ECS 5.0?
Some of you might be concerned about migrating to Amazon ECS 4.0 then being forced to migrate to a future version of the service (e.g., Amazon ECS 5.0). There are no immediate plans for an Amazon ECS 5.0 so migration to Amazon ECS 4.0 is the right choice for the coming future.

How will I migrate?
You can reference our migration guide to assist you in mapping Amazon ECS 3.0 calls to Amazon ECS 4.0. Additionally, you can raise your technical questions in the Amazon ECS forum .

What if I need more time?
At this time we are targeting 14 months for the migration period. We will be measuring progress of the migration as we go along and will be contacting individuals to ensure that they are aware of the impending deprecation of ECS 3.0. While we don’t see any need of a longer migration window at this time, we are open to any discussion of additional time requirements on the forum.