[atsheehan]

An alternative to Docker is Packer (https://packer.io/). It will create and register an AMI for EC2 so you don't have to run any configuration scripts once it is deployed. It's made by the same company that makes Vagrant and uses a similar setup. If you run Ansible to provision the Vagrant VM, I believe you can use the same script to provision the Packer image.

[bampolampy]

I would not call this an alternative. I think an alternative development workflow involves using packer as well as a number of other top level tools (vagrant for example) and using a number of other languages and DSLs. What you end up with is a VM image, not a container image, so you miss out on some of the container-vm abstractions that make docker and other container technologies so appealing.

[stevelandiss]

Agreed, but a docker image is lighter in weight and takes less time to deploy and consumes less resources on the target server