Deploying a (Dockerized) application onto

EC2 Container Service (ECS)

Wyn Van Devanter

@wynv

EC2 Container Service (ECS)

• Manages clusters of EC2 instances for running containers

• Takes care of installing, operating and scaling a cluster management infrastructure

EC2 Container Service (ECS)

• Container management with API

• Centralized service to get cluster state

• Schedules the placement of containers across your cluster based on resources needs, isolation policies, and availability requirements

• Can integrate your own scheduler

• Integrated with other EC2 and AWS services and features

Key terms

• Cluster – logical grouping of EC2 instances, each with ECS container agent installed

• Container Instance - EC2 instance with container agent that runs containers in ECS

• Task Definition (like docker-compose.yml) – blueprint for the app to run in ECS; describes containers to run for app, and where environment variables can go

• Task – running instance of a task definition

• Service – keeps 1+ tasks running

• Elastic Container Registry (ECR)

ECS Clusters

• Run containers across instances in availability zones in a region

• Cluster contains EC2 instances (called container instances). ECS-optimized AMIs are available.

• Instances contain the ECS container agent • Sends information about the instance's current running tasks and resource

utilization to Amazon ECS

• Starts and stops tasks whenever it receives a request from Amazon ECS

Running apps on ECS

• Define task definitions to specify what container images to run across your clusters

• Container images are pulled from container registries (i.e. ECR)

• Services can be used with a task definition to keep a desired number of app instances running

Task definitions

• To prepare your application to run on Amazon ECS, you create a task definition.

• JSON file that describes one or more containers run to form your application; blueprint • Similar to the Docker Compose file and can be generated from one

• Specify various parameters for your application, such as: • which image(s) to use

• which ports should be opened

• what data volumes should be used

• where the container(s) should be placed

Tasks

• An instantiation of a task definition on a container instance within your cluster

• The Amazon ECS task scheduler is responsible for placing tasks on container instances

• Restarted as needed

Services

• You can define a service that runs and maintains a specified number of tasks simultaneously

• Manages running your application

• Allows scaling more instances (containers) of your app as needed

ECS setup

• Setting up IAM accounts for ECS management and deployment

• Setting up ECS for application deployment

• Setting up CI for automatic build and deployment

Setting up IAM accounts for ECS managementand deployment• IAM account for ECS management (i.e. creating cluster, load balancer)

• IAM account for ECS deployment (i.e. updating services and task definitions)

• Groups

Setting up ECS for application deployment

• Create cluster

• Create EC2 Container Registry (ECR) for app

• Set up load balancer for app

Setting up ECS for application deployment

• Create a task definition for the app first environment (i.e. dev/staging or production)

• Create a service to run the task definition

• Repeat for each environment, setting their environment variables

Setting up CI for automatic build and deployment

• Set environment variables for app in CI (i.e. cluster name, task definition base name, AWS account ID)

• Link to repository with app w/.travis.yml & deployment bash scripts

Deploying

• TravisCI detects check-in

• Builds app via Docker & pushes to ECR

• Deploys using task definition

App infrastructure

• API app in a container (ASP.NET Core)

• PostgreSQL container, data mounted via volume

• EC2 Container Service (ECS) 2-node cluster with ECR, load balancer, AWS Certificates and Route 53

• Travis with bash scripts for CI/CD

Thanks! @wynv

o Docs: Overview & Key Concepts http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/Welcome.html

o Docs: Core Setup Steps, http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/get-set-up-for-amazon-ecs.html

o Reference architecture for ECS w/deployment pipeline (CloudFormation), https://github.com/awslabs/ecs-refarch-continuous-deployment/blob/master/templates/deployment-pipeline.yaml

o ECS IAM Policies, http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/IAM_policies.html

o Sample app ready for ECS with task definition, https://github.com/excellalabs/ecs-deploy-setup