Let me address both of your questions: 1. The public IP recommendation in the ECS documentation is primarily for simplicity and ease of setup. ECS tasks need to communicate with Prefect Cloud (or your self-hosted Prefect server) and potentially other external services. A public IP provides straightforward outbound internet connectivity without additional networking configuration. 2. Yes, you can absolutely use private IPs instead. However, you'll need to ensure: - Your VPC has a NAT Gateway (or similar solution) configured to allow outbound internet access - Your subnets are properly configured for internal routing - Your security groups and network ACLs allow the necessary outbound traffic If you're working in a security-conscious environment where private IPs are preferred, this is a completely valid approach. Just make sure your ECS tasks can still reach: - The Prefect API endpoint (Cloud or self-hosted) - Any external services your flows need to access - Container registries (if pulling images) To use private IPs, simply set

assignPublicIp='DISABLED'

in your ECS task configuration. Just remember to have the proper NAT Gateway or other outbound routing solution in place first.