Currently I'm using task-definitions that refer to custom images in dockerhub to deploy my webapp on ECS (Amazon EC2 Container Service). Is there a way to do this without going through dockerhub i.e. build/deploy the dockerfile locally across cluster nodes?
At the moment, I can only think of sending shell commands over ssh or using a tool like ansible.
Perhaps I'm missing something totally obvious here...
This is a little late for an answered question, but I just figured this out myself. The EC2 Container Registry (ECR, Amazon's repository equivalent) is working well for me, maybe didn't exist at the time?
I build the containers locally. Tag them and push them to Amazon's ECR using the AWS CLI (later versions of which include support for ECR), and then refer to them at that location in the task definitions in ECS. Works like a charm.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECR/latest/userguide/what-is-ecr.html
ECS is a service to run containers, not to build them. It has no native support for it, so you're not missing something obvious.
As you suggest, you could distribute a Dockerfile to the container instances and build locally, but that will actually be more difficult since the container instances must have everything needed to build the image, plus you'd have to distribute the image to the other container instances.
You could run a repository yourself and specify a different repository-url for the image parameter in your ECS task definition. You'd still be responsible for building the images and now the added burden of running a repository as well.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but there's not a simpler workflow for this at the moment.
Related
I need to deploy an application in AWS using ECS Fargate. This application has multiple services and a docker-compose file. I see there are two main ways to do this:
Using Docker's Context ECS cli, the official docs I found: Docker doc and AWS doc.
Using Amazon's ECS cli as described here.
I am trying to understand the following but didn't find any comparison on the web:
Which are the advantages/disadvantages of each way?
Can the same result be achieved with both options, or is there something one can do that the other can't?
What should I take in consideration when I choose one?
Thanks,
So I've been trying this this past week, both approaches, and here's what I have found.
ecs-cli and docker support different sets of tags for nontrivial features, even things such as how much CPU and memory your container needs.
For example docker wants the deploy config in a deploy tag under the service. See https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/deploy/#memory
However ECS-CLI wants things in a acs-params.yml. There are almost no examples out there other than trivial ones though, and the ones published don't actually work with the current tooling. What they publish doesn't work.
Docker ECS integration works and handles tons of details for you, including VPC, subnet creation, LBs, security groups, everything. This is an amazing part.
ecs-cli offers tons more options than Docker CLI but you need to do a lot more work yourself, manual security group config, etc.
I was never able to get ecs-cli to really work. It kept choking on cpu config, and what was written in AWS docs did not actually work\
docker compose logs doesn't work
Overall neither CLI seems to be in production shape, but docker one seems to be far ahead of where the ecs-cli is IMO.
I've been trying to find an efficient way to handle continuous deployment with a Docker compose setup and AWS hosting.
So far I've looked into CodeDeploy, S3 buckets, and ECS. My application is relatively small with only 3 docker services, a Django app, NGINX, and PostgreSQL. I was unable to find any reliable information for using CodeDeploy with Docker compose and because of the small scale ECS seems impractical. I've considered an S3 bucket but that seems no better than just deploying my application with something like git or scp.
What is a standard way of handling deploying a docker compose setup on AWS? If possible I would like to use Bitbucket Pipelines or CircleCI to perform the deployment in a manually triggered step after running tests. But I've been unable to find a solution that would easily let me copy over the code (which is in a git repo on a production branch and is how I get the code onto the production server at the moment).
I would like to add some possibilities to #gasc answer
It would be better if you make a cloudformation template for deploying your EC2 resources with all required groups, auto scaling and other stuff.
Then Create the AMI with docker compose installed or any other thing you would be required for your ec2 enviroment.
Then you can use code deploy pipeline, here also aws provides private container registry may be you want to use that
Rest of the steps are same just SCP the compose file into EC2 launch
docker-compose up
command and you are done.
Let me know if you want more help I'm open for discussion
What I will do in your case is:
1 - If needed, update your docker-compose.yml file (or however you called it) to version 3 or higher, to use swarm.
2 - During your pipeline build all images needed, and push them to a registry.
3 - In your pipeline scp your compose file to a manager node.
4 - Deploy your application using swarm (docker stack deploy -c <your-docker-compose-file> your_app_name). This way you can handle rolling updates and scale easily.
Note that if you want to use multiple nodes you need to open a few ports in them
I see you mentioned that ECS might seem impractical for such a small scale - in my opinion not necesarilly. It would require of you to rewrite your docker-compose.yml into task and services definitions, but since there's not a lot of services, that shouldn't take you much time.
I want to confirm my approach to setting up a VPC using cloudformation/scepter and seeding instances with docker container is correct.
Create an aws ec2 instance.
Create a docker image on that instance
Create a cloudformation VPC template (.yaml )
-reference docker image in template?
Create a sceptre project using the template above and run script from ec2 instance
So as I understand if the majority of the work will be in the cloudformation template. Currently I'm stuck on sceptre errors, but I wanted to make sure I was approaching the problem correctly. Does this look like the right approach?
There are a lot of ways of doing what you want:
Run sceptre locally on your development machine
This is easier, but not best practice for important environments as
having a build server, gives a better trail of what was done when (especially in shared environments)
Use CodeBuild to save you having to do steps 1 & 2 yourself (AWS maintain a docker image with python installed)
It also avoids the chicken and egg problem of how you deploy the EC2 instance in the first place.
Configure Jobs on a build server such as Jenkins
CodeDeploy is good for simple setups, but a well configured build server, can have dashboards to track what is deployed where
as sceptre is just a way of generating/managing deploying templates across environments, there are lots of other ways of doing this including what you outlined.
p.s Apologies that the getting started documentation isn't great at the moment, it is something we are focusing on for release 2.0.
I have a basic django/postgres app running locally, based on the Docker Django docs. It uses docker compose to run the containers locally.
I'd like to run this app on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and to deploy it using the command line, not the AWS console.
My Attempt
When I tried this, I ended up with:
this yml config for ecs-cli
these notes on how I deployed from the command line.
Note: I was trying to fire up the Python dev server in a janky way, hoping that would work before I added nginx. The cluster (RDS+server) would come up, but then the instances would die right away.
Issues I Then Failed to Solve
I realized over the course of this:
the setup needs another container for a web server (nginx) to run on AWS (like this blog post, but the tutorial uses the AWS Console, which I wanted to avoid)
ecs-cli uses a different syntax for yml/json config than docker-compose, so you need to have some separate/similar code from your local docker.yml (and I'm not sure if my file above was correct)
Question
So, what ecs-cli commands and config do I use to deploy the app, or am I going about things all wrong?
Feel free to say I'm doing it all wrong. I could also use Elastic Beanstalk - the tutorials on this don't seem to use docker/docker-compose, but seem easier overall (at least well documented).
I'd like to understand why any given approach is a good way to do this.
One alternative you may wish to consider in lieu of ECS, if you just want to get it up in the amazon cloud, is to make use of docker-machine using the amazonec2 driver.
When executing the docker-compose, just ensure the remote Amazon host machine is ACTIVE which can be viewed with a docker-machine ls
One item you will have to revisit with the Amazon Mmgt Console is to open the applicable PORTS such as Port 80 and any other ports exposed in the compose file. Once the security group is in place for the VPC, you should be able to simply refer to the VPC ID on subsequent executions bypassing any need to use the Mgmt console to add the ports. You may wish to bump up the instance size from the default t2.micro to match the t2.medium specified in your NOTES.
If ECS orchestration is needed, then a task definition will need to be created containing the container definitions you require as defined in your docker compose file. My recommendation would be to take advantage of the Mgmt console to construct the definition and then grab the accompanying JSON defintion which is made available and store in your source code repository for future executions on the command line where they can be referenced in registering task definitions, executing tasks and services within a given cluster.
I am working on a project using a microservices architecture.
Each service lives in its own docker container and has a separate git repository in order to ensure loose coupling.
It is my understanding that AWS recently announced support for Multi-Container Docker environments in ElasticBeanstalk. This is great for development because I can launch all services with a single command and test everything locally on my laptop. Just like Docker Compose.
However, it seems I only have the option to also deploy all services at once which I am afraid defies the initial purpose of having a micro services architecture.
I would like to be able to deploy/version each service independently to AWS. What would be the best way to achieve that while keeping infrastructure management to a minimum?
We are currently using Amazon ECS to accomplish exactly what you are talking about trying to achieve. You can define your Docker Container as a Task definition and then Create an ECS Service which will handle number of instances, scaling, etc.
One thing to note is Amazon mentions the word container a lot in the documentation. They may be talking about the EC2 instance used for the cluster for your docker instances/containers.