An introduction to AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) and how it was utilized to create www.blockbust.io

1. Introduction to
Amazon EC2
Container Service
Chris Cannon
ccannon@50onred.com

2. What is ECS?
⊙ Container service compatible with Docker (similar to
Kubernetes).
⊙ Docker image hosting (similar to Docker Hub).
⊙ Container auto-recovery, load balancing, deployments,
monitoring, and logging.

3. Explore ECS Interface

4. Explore ECS Interface

5. Explore ECS Interface

6. Explore ECS Interface

7. Explore ECS Interface

8. Explore ECS Interface

9. Explore ECS Interface

10. ECS Architecture Overview

11. Product Overview

12. Product Overview

13. Product Architecture Overview
ECS
UI (nginx) Backend
Lambda
Scraper
Web Browser
Internet
ELB ELB

14. Docker Setup: Dockerfile
FROM nginx:1.9.10
COPY public/. /usr/share/nginx/html
RUN rm /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
COPY ./default.conf /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
EXPOSE 8080

15. Docker Setup: Nginx Config
server {
listen 80 default_server;
server_name www.blockbust.io;
access_log off;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html;
location / {
try_files $uri /index.html;
add_header Cache-Control "no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0, no-store";
add_header Pragma "no-cache";
}
location /health {
add_header Content-Type text/plain;
return 200 'OK';
}

16. New Feature Workflow
1. docker build -t avow-ui .
2. docker run -P -d -t avow-ui
3. Test and debug
5. aws ecr get-login --region
us-east-1
6. Docker tag avow-ui:latest
123.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.co
m/avow-ui:latest
7. Docker push
123.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.co
m/avow-ui:latest
Local ECS
4. Create a new task revision
8. Update service task definition
9. Automatic rolling deployment

17. New ECS Cluster Gotcha
⊙ Only applicable if you’re not using the first-run wizard or if you
already have an ELB or ASG in place.
⊙ The ASG of EC2 hosts that run the containers do not know what
ECS cluster they belong to.
⊙ Forced to add this to the ASG user data:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
echo ECS_CLUSTER=avow >> /etc/ecs/ecs.config
*http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/ecs-agent-config.html

18. Limitations of ECS/ELB: Port Mapping
⊙ Currently port mapping is one-to-one from ELB to ECS.
⊙ Ideally ECS would bind each task to a random port and do the
mapping automatically for you (essentially service discovery).

19. Limitations of ECS: Scale Tasks
⊙ Before May 18, 2016 you could automatically scale the number
of nodes in your ECS cluster, but could not scale the number of
tasks on a container.
⊙ Now you can scale based upon CloudWatch metrics in a single-
or multi-availability zone.

20. Hindsight is 20/20
⊙ If you’re hosting static files do so on S3 with CloudFront.
⊙ They are incredibly cheap, scale seamlessly, and your content is
edge cached (although invalidation, proper cache busting, and
rolling back changes are a nuisance).
⊙ If SSL is necessary do not purchase a static IP for S3
($600/month), but rather install an SSL cert (free through AWS
Cert Manager) on your CloudFront distribution.

21. Thank you for
your time and
Attention!