Create ECS cluster using Amazon ECS CLI

Description: In the previous topic, I explained how to create containers using ECS in the AWS console. In this topic, I am going to explain how to create ECS clusters using Amazon ECS CLI.

Pre-requisites: 

• IAM user with AdministratorAccess
• Keypair for accessing the container machine
• Install Amazon ECS CLI. We can install by referencing this link
• Install and configure Amazon CLI. We can configure by referencing this link

Configure the Amazon ECS CLI

After installing Amazon ECS CLI and Amazon CLI. Configure Amazon account either by this link or you can configure it manually by using the aws configure command as follow

After user configuration, I am checking the ecs-cli version for verification as follow

Creating cluster configuration

ecs-cli configure --cluster HTTPDCluster --default-launch-type EC2 --config-name HTTPDConfig --region us-east-1

Here, 

HTTPDCluster = Cluster Name 

HTTPDConfig  = ECS configuration Name

us-east-1            = Region Name

Creating profile using your access key and secret key

ecs-cli configure profile --access-key AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID --secret-key AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY --profile-name HTTP-Profile

Create Cluster in ECS: After setting up cluster configuration, Now it's time to create the cluster in ECS using the ecs-cli up command. There are many options to configure different aspects like the number of instances, Security group, open port, key-pair to access ssh of the machine, etc... 

Here, I have defined, VPC subnets and security groups because I have already created them. If you don't define it. It will create it automatically. 

ecs-cli up --keypair docker --capability-iam --size 1  --vpc vpc-64ff7119 --subnets subnet-ba16908b,subnet-658e8c28 --instance-type t2.micro --cluster-config HTTPDConfig --ecs-profile HTTP-Profile  -security-group sg-0e3d5d8b98b008d77 --port 80

You will find a cluster under ECS

Create Docker Compose file: After creating the cluster, I am going to create Docker compose file to create an Apache container from the Docker hub image which we have created in the previous blog.

Here is the docker-compose file with version 3 docker-compose.yml it publishes port 80 and uses a custom docker hub repository.

version: '3'
services:
  web:
    image: harpalgohilon/opensource:httpd
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    logging:
      driver: awslogs
      options: 
        awslogs-group: HTTPD-tutorial
        awslogs-region: us-east-1
        awslogs-stream-prefix: web

In version '3', CPU and memory need to define in a separate configuration file. So created a new file for the same with the name ecs-config.yml as follow:

version: 1
task_definition:
  services:
    web:
      cpu_shares: 100
      mem_limit: 524288000
      

Deploy Container file to the cluster 

ecs-cli compose up --create-log-groups --cluster-config HTTPDConfig --ecs-profile HTTP-Profile

You can find task details with URL

Browse this URL, you will get a custom page that I have used in the docker image