AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) - Deep Dive

Explain containers as isolated, portable environments that package an application and its dependencies, driven by the Docker daemon, and contrast them with virtualization and hypervisors for faster, lightweight execution.

Explore how application architecture has evolved from monolithic apps to microservices, and how containers enable independent scaling of each component.

Learn how docker containers work, including the docker daemon, docker client, and registries; create, pull, push, build, and run images to manage and run containers.

Launch an EC2 instance in an AWS region, install Docker, start the Docker daemon, and use the Docker client on laptop and EC2 to run containers from Docker Hub.

Launch an EC2 instance running Red Hat Enterprise Linux, install and start Docker daemon and client, set up Docker Hub, and log in to push and pull images.

Learn how a Dockerfile creates an image by bundling Ubuntu, Python, Flask, and code via pip and requirements, then build with docker build, set workdir, expose port 80, and run.

Create a dockerfile for a basic python flask app, build a docker image, and run a container on port 8080.

Learn to master docker image building with docker image build and -t tagging from a Dockerfile, then explore Docker Hub official images and starting containers.

Build and manage docker images with commands to list, inspect, remove, tag, push and pull to docker hub; log in and run containers.

Learn essential docker container commands for managing containers, including listing with docker container ls and docker ps -A. Stop, start, inspect, logs, rename, remove, and access with docker container exec.

Explore Docker networking concepts, including container communication by name, bridge and overlay drivers, and how to create, attach, and inspect networks with Docker network commands.

Learn to run containers with docker container run, using attach or detach modes, pass environment variables, name containers, configure networks and drivers, publish ports, and explore volumes.

Master docker volumes and bind mounts to persist container data, map host directories, and keep database data alive beyond container lifecycles across Linux hosts and Windows/Mac nuances.

Demonstrates building a two-tier web app with Python Flask in Docker containers and AWS ECS, where front-end and back-end pages interact with a MySQL database.

Launch a MySQL database container with docker pull and run, pass host, port and password environment variables, use bind mounts for data, and create a database and employee table.

Host front end in containers with Python, Flask, and py MySQL; manage external dependencies via requirements.txt and render html from templates, running multiple containers on ports 80 and 8080.

Scale multiple containers across hosts using container orchestrators, from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes, and explore managed options like Eks, Azure Kubernetes Service, and GKE.

Explore the ECS architecture and workflow, including clusters, task definitions, services, the scheduler, and ECR integration for deploying containers on EC2 or Fargate.

Explore the ECS hierarchy from cluster to containers, and examine how tasks, task definitions, and services coordinate workloads, plus AWS ECR's private registry with authentication tokens.

Create and manage private ECR repositories, login with AWS CLI, tag and push Docker images, and pull them from ECR to deploy in ECS.

Describe cluster as the top-level grouping for tasks and services and explain two launch types—linux and windows—with optional networking and VPC configurations.

Explore how to create an ECS cluster using EC2 Linux plus networking, including selecting launch types, VPC and subnets, security groups, and CloudFormation driven provisioning.

Define a task definition to run Docker containers in ECS, specifying image, CPU, memory, launch type, network, logging, volumes, and IAM roles; group related containers and run tasks via services.

Explore how to create an AWS ECS task definition, detail its components, and compare networking modes from bridge to VPC, including dynamic port mapping and Fargate vs EC2 choices.

Explore container definition in AWS ECS: map docker run options to ECS task definitions, covering memory limits, port mappings, environment variables, entry point, health checks, volumes, network, and logging.

Explore docker volumes and bind mounts in ecs task definitions, mapping host to container paths. Docker volumes work only with ec2 launch type, while bind mounts support ec2 and fargate.

Create a complete ECS task definition in a VPC, wiring two containers (Add MP and Get MP) to a MySQL database via environment variables and an existing ECR repository.

Explore the ECS bridge networking mode by creating a task definition, configuring container ports, pushing a Docker image to ECR, and running tasks across EC2 instances to study port conflicts.

Explore AWS ECS host networking mode and VPC networking mode, compare them with bridge networking, and learn how port mappings and task definition revisions affect running tasks.

demonstrates how to run multiple containers using AWS VPC network mode on a single EC2 instance, handling ENIs and dynamic port mappings, exposed via an elastic load balancer.

Explore ECS task definition volumes and distinguish bind mounts from Docker volumes. Learn to configure host-to-container mappings, verify with container inspect, and observe bind mounts reflecting host changes.

Explore how a task definition groups container definitions with Docker run options, task size, network mode, and volumes, then run tasks on an ECS cluster of EC2 instances.

Explore a case study of testing an ecs deployment by building docker images, creating a cluster, and running tasks with environment variables, highlighting networking mode challenges and port 8080 access.

Learn how service registry and discovery enable microservices to communicate and scale independently within ECS clusters, using Elastic Load Balancer and Route 53 for automatic service registration and discovery.

Learn how AWS ECS service maintains a desired state by mapping task definitions and controlling task counts. Explore rolling upgrade deployment, blue-green deployment, load balancing, autoscaling, and service discovery.

Explore the working VPC topology for an ECS cluster, with one public subnet and two private subnets, internet gateway, route tables, and security groups guiding EC2 launch and lab setup.

Extend VPC topology with public subnets for load balancers and private subnets behind a NAT gateway. Enable private subnets to reach the internet for ECS agent registration via route tables.

Create classic and application load balancers for an ECS service, using port 80 and IP-based targets with health checks on index.html, while ECS auto-registers targets.

Explore how the ECS service load balancer distributes traffic across tasks with dynamic port mapping, using task definitions and service auto scaling to achieve scalable deployments.

Create a VPC-based ECS cluster with private subnets, deploy a service from a task definition, and attach it to an application load balancer, exploring deployment options and task placement strategies.

Explore how ecs services handle multiple containers per task, configure classic and application load balancers, and why you should use separate task definitions and services for true multi-container load balancing.

Explore cluster auto scaling and service auto scaling in ecs, showing how clusters add instances and services scale containers to meet increasing load.

Show how a CloudFormation stack creates an ECS cluster, launch configuration, and auto scaling group, then enables dynamic scaling with CloudWatch alarms for CPU utilization.

Configure ECS service auto scaling by creating a service from a task definition, linking a classic load balancer, and applying minimum 0 and maximum 4 tasks with cpu-based scaling policies.

Explore practical tips for AWS ECS, covering ECR, clusters, task definitions, container IAM roles, VPC networking, logging, load balancing, and auto-scaling best practices.

Deploy a case study application on AWS ECS using Python and Flask, with HTML interfaces, load balancer endpoints like get EMP and update database, and a MySQL backend.

Create and upload a Docker image to AWS ECR, log in, tag, and push; then configure a VPC with public/private subnets, NAT gateway, routes, and security groups for ECS.

Create an application load balancer with two target groups, port 80 and 8080, set path-based routing and health checks, and update app endpoints to the ALB DNS.

Create an RDS database via a managed service and connect from the app; then configure an EC2-based ECS cluster in a non-default VPC with private subnets and a NAT gateway.

Create two EC2-based ECS task definitions and services, configure DB environment variables and roles, wire VPC networking with an application load balancer, and troubleshoot container connectivity.

Test the deployed AWS ECS application by validating the load balancer DNS, confirming fetch and update database operations, and verifying navigation between employee info and update pages.

demonstrates bridge networking, host, none, and VPC modes in AWS ECS, shows how containers share ENIs or obtain dedicated ENIs, and explains container communication via the Docker zero bridge.

Discover how ECS integrates with CloudWatch to monitor clusters and services, tracking CPU and memory utilization at EC2 and container levels and setting alarms.

Capture container and application logs in CloudWatch for ECS using the logs driver, with the CloudWatch logs agent running alongside the task, and view logs in CloudWatch.

ECS Fargate delivers a serverless ECS cluster where you run tasks without provisioning instances, using the Fargate launch type, VPC networking, and memory and CPU constraints.

Automate code deployment on AWS ECS using CodePipeline, CodeCommit, and CodeBuild, guiding changes from git commits through build, test, and deployment within a managed CI/CD pipeline.

Explore how code commits trigger an end-to-end AWS DevOps pipeline for ECS, integrating CodeCommit, CodeBuild, ECR authentication, CloudWatch logs, and CodePipeline deployment.