At some point in your cloud journey, you stop just deploying applications and start thinking about data, persistence, and real-world architecture.
Because most production applications don’t just run they store, query, and visualize data.
That’s exactly what this project is about.
Networking Setup
Use the same VPC as RDS
Select subnets (public or private depending on access strategy)
Enable public IP (if accessing via browser)
Security Group for ECS
Add inbound rule:
Port: 3000
Source: your IP (recommended)
Step 5: Deploy and Run
Start the service
Wait for task status → RUNNING
Step 6: Access Metabase
- Get the public IP of the ECS task
- Open:
http://<public-ip>:3000
You should see the Metabase setup screen!
Common Mistakes to Avoid
ECS and RDS in different VPCs
They won’t communicate.Incorrect RDS endpoint
Connection will fail.Missing security group rule (5432)
Database access will be blocked.Wrong environment variables
Metabase won’t initialize properly.
What This Project Teaches You
This project is a major step forward.
You learn:
How applications connect to databases
How to configure secure communication
How to run stateful applications in the cloud
How real-world systems are structured
This is no longer just infrastructure it’s application architecture.
Real-World Use Cases
This setup is similar to:
Internal analytics dashboards
Business intelligence platforms
SaaS reporting tools
Monitoring and metrics visualization
Deploying Metabase with ECS and RDS is where things start to feel real.
You’re no longer just launching resources you’re building connected systems.
And that’s the difference between:
“Learning cloud” and “Thinking like a cloud engineer”
If you also found this interesting and would love to take the next steps in the application process with AltSchool Africa do use my referral link below;
through the
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