This document provides an overview of advanced task scheduling capabilities with Amazon ECS. It discusses the ECS placement engine which gives developers more control over task placement through constraints and strategies. Constraints allow targeting specific instance types, availability zones or custom attributes. Strategies like spread, binpack, and affinity can distribute tasks across instances. The document demonstrates how to use these features to optimize task placement and provides examples of companies using ECS for production workloads.

1. © 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Julien Simon
Principal Technical Evangelist, AWS
@julsimon
Advanced Task Scheduling
with Amazon ECS

2. Docker on Amazon Web Services
Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS)
• https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/
• Launched in 04/2015
• No additional charge
Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR)
• https://aws.amazon.com/ecr/
• Launched in 12/2015
• Free tier: 500MB / month for a year
• $0.10 / GB / month + outgoing traffic
Both services are available in US, EU and APAC

3. ECS adoption
https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/3-clear-trends-in-ecs-adoption/
November 2016

4. Companies
Selected ECS customers

5. Container Partners
https://aws.amazon.com/containers/partners/

6. ECS Scheduling

7. The problem
Given a certain amount of
computing power and memory,
how can we best manage
an arbitrary number of apps
running in Docker containers?
http://tidalseven.com

8. Amazon ECS: Under the Hood
ALB ALB
AZ 1 AZ 2
user / scheduler
https://github.com/aws/amazon-ecs-agenthttp://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2015/07/under-the-hood-of-the-amazon-ec2-container-service.html

9. Scheduling on ECS: two options so far
1. Let ECS handle scheduling through Services
• Task Definition
• ECS transcription of the Docker Compose file
• Versioning
• cpu_shares, mem_limit
• Number of desired containers
2. Implement a custom scheduler with the ECS API
• Describe cluster state
• Select a specific ECS instance according to custom logic
• Run task on this instance
• Coursera use case: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a45J6xAGUvA

10. ECS Placement Engine

11. Placement Engine: giving developers more
control
ALB ALB
AZ 1 AZ 2
user / scheduler
Placement Engine
Constraints
& Strategies

12. Placement Constraints
Name Example
AMI ID attribute:ecs.ami-id == ami-eca289fb
Availability Zone attribute:ecs.availability-zone == us-east-1a
Instance Type attribute:ecs.instance-type == t2.small
Distinct Instances type=“distinctInstance”
Custom attribute:stack == prod

13. Example: Constraint on Instance Family/Type

14. Example: Constraint on Availability Zone

15. Example: Combining Multiple Constraints

16. Placement Strategies
Binpacking Spread Affinity Distinct Instance

17. Placement Strategy Chaining
Spread tasks across Zones
and Binpack within each Zone

18. Placing Tasks

19. Anatomy of Task Placement
Cluster Constraints
Custom Constraints
Placement Strategies
Apply Filter
Satisfy CPU, memory, and port requirements
Filter for location, instance-type, AMI, or custom
attribute constraints
Identify instances that meet spread or binpack
placement strategy
Select final container instances for placement

20. g2.2xlarge t2.small g2.2xlarge g2.2xlarge
Placement: Targeting Instance Type

21. g2.2xlarge t2.small t2.micro t2.medium
t2.medium t2.small g2.2xlarge
t2.small
t2.small t2.medium
us-east-1aus-east-1d
Placement: Targeting Instance Type & Zone

22. g2.2xlarge t2.small t2.micro t2.medium
t2.medium t2.small g2.2xlarge t2.small
us-east-1aus-east-1d
g2.2xlarge t2.medium
t2.micro t2.small
us-east-1c
Placement: Availability Zone Spread

23. g2.2xlarge t2.small t2.micro t2.medium
t2.medium t2.small g2.2xlarge t2.small
us-east-1aus-east-1d
g2.2xlarge t2.medium
t2.micro t2.small
us-east-1c
Placement: Spread across Zone and Binpack

24. g2.2xlarge t2.small t2.micro t2.medium
t2.medium t2.small g2.2xlarge t2.small
us-east-1aus-east-1d
g2.2xlarge t2.medium
t2.micro t2.small
us-east-1c
Placement: Affinity and Anti-Affinity

25. Running a Service

26. t2.medium t2.small t2.small
us-east-1aus-east-1d
t2.medium t2.micro t2.small
us-east-1c
Placement: Multiple Services on a Cluster

27. t2.medium g2.2xlarge t2.micro t2.small
t2.small t2.small g2.2xlarge t2.small
t2.small t2.small
g2.2xlarge t2.small
Placement: Services – Distinct Instances

28. Event Stream & Blox

29. Amazon ECS: Under the Hood
ALB ALB
AZ 1 AZ 2
user / scheduler
Placement Engine
Event Stream

30. Consuming Real-time Events

31. Handling ECS events with Blox
scheduler cluster state service
https://blox.github.io/

32. Amazon ECS: Under the Hood
ALB ALB
AZ 1 AZ 2
user / scheduler
Scheduler
Cluster State Service
Placement Engine
Event Stream

33. t2.small t2.small t2.small
Blox: Daemon Scheduler
t2.small t2.small t2.small
scheduler cluster state service
t2.small t2.small t2.small

34. Demo: Deploying Blox on AWS

35. Creating Clusters
Create an ECS cluster for Blox
CF template: https://github.com/blox/blox/blob/dev/deploy/aws/conf/cloudformation_template.json
à CloudWatch Event Rule + SQS queue
à 3 containers: Daemon Scheduler + Cluster State Service + etcd
à REST API exposing the Daemon Scheduler API
Create another ECS cluster managed by Blox
$ ecs-cli configure --cluster WebCluster
$ ecs-cli up --keypair admin --capability-iam --size 3 --instance-type t2.micro
Invoke the scheduler API
‘demo-cli’ tool: https://github.com/blox/blox/tree/dev/deploy/demo-cli

36. Listing Task Definitions
Grab the ARN for an nginx Task Definition, which the
Daemon Scheduler will manage on ‘WebCluster’.
$ ./list-task-definitions.py --region eu-central-1
== Blox Demo CLI - List Task Definitions ==
{
"taskDefinitionArns": [
"arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/BloxFramework:2",
"arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/nginx:1",
"arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/nginx:2"
]
}

37. Creating an Environment
$ ./blox-create-environment.py --environment WebEnvironment --cluster
WebCluster --task-definition "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-
definition/nginx:2" --stack Blox --apigateway --region eu-central-1
== Blox Demo CLI - Create Blox Environment ==
HTTP Response Code: 200
{
"taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/nginx:2",
"deploymentToken": "17248257-08ec-4438-888f-e0ac28397653",
"health": "healthy",
"name": "WebEnvironment",
"instanceGroup": {
"cluster": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:cluster/WebCluster"
}
}

38. Listing Environments
$ ./blox-list-environments.py --stack Blox --apigateway --region eu-central-1
== Blox Demo CLI - List Blox Environments ==
HTTP Response Code: 200
{
"items": [
{
"taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/nginx:2",
"deploymentToken": "17248257-08ec-4438-888f-e0ac28397653",
"health": "healthy",
"name": "WebEnvironment",
"instanceGroup": {
"cluster": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:cluster/WebCluster"
}
}
]
}

39. Creating a Deployment
$ ./blox-create-deployment.py --environment WebEnvironment
--deployment-token "17248257-08ec-4438-888f-e0ac28397653"
--stack Blox --apigateway --region eu-central-1
== Blox Demo CLI - Create Blox Deployment ==
HTTP Response Code: 200
{
"status": "pending",
"environmentName": "WebEnvironment",
"id": "7a05ea99-27a9-4339-a7a6-f4120065aea3",
"failedInstances": [],
"taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:613904931467:task-definition/nginx:2”
}

40. Listing Deployments
$ ./blox-list-deployments.py --environment WebEnvironment --stack Blox
--apigateway --region eu-central-1
== Blox Demo CLI - List Blox Deployments ==
HTTP Response Code: 200
{
"items": [
{
"status": "completed",
"environmentName": "WebEnvironment",
"id": "7a05ea99-27a9-4339-a7a6-f4120065aea3",
"failedInstances": [],
"taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:eu-central-1:ACCOUNT:task-definition/nginx:2"
}
]
}

41. Scaling a Deployment
$ ecs-cli ps
Name State Ports TaskDefinition
26313cbe-d929-49de-9cc3-873bf5f32a91/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
98442432-fd5c-434d-b93c-0737bd06aaab/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
ce9bf217-4b34-4f31-9c7b-a8c3402f1ffd/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
$ ecs-cli scale --size 4 --capability-iam
$ ecs-cli ps
Name State Ports TaskDefinition
26313cbe-d929-49de-9cc3-873bf5f32a91/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
98442432-fd5c-434d-b93c-0737bd06aaab/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
c404ac9a-0948-4cc8-b5b0-2238ccdf4035/nginx RUNNING nginx:2
ce9bf217-4b34-4f31-9c7b-a8c3402f1ffd/nginx RUNNING nginx:2

42. Additional resources
ECS customers
https://www.mapbox.com/blog/switch-to-ecs/
https://segment.com/blog/rebuilding-our-infrastructure/
Tech articles by Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon.com
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2014/11/amazon-ec2-container-service.html
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2015/04/state-management-and-scheduling-with-ecs.html
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2015/07/under-the-hood-of-the-amazon-ec2-container-service.html
Blog articles & videos
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/amazon-ec2-container-service-at-aws-reinvent-2016-wrap-up/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/continuous-deployment-to-amazon-ecs-using-aws-codepipeline-
aws-codebuild-amazon-ecr-and-aws-cloudformation/

43. Thank you!
Julien Simon
Principal Technical Evangelist, AWS
@julsimon