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Amazon Elastic Container Service
Developer Guide (API Version 2014-11-13)

AWS Documentation » Amazon Elastic Container Service » Developer Guide » Scheduling Amazon ECS Tasks » Amazon ECS Task Placement » Amazon ECS Task Placement Constraints

Amazon ECS Task Placement Constraints

A task placement constraint is a rule that is considered during task placement. For more information, see Amazon ECS Task Placement.

Constraint Types

Amazon ECS supports the following types of task placement constraints:

distinctInstance

Place each task on a different container instance.

memberOf

Place tasks on container instances that satisfy an expression.

For more information about expression syntax, see Cluster Query Language.

Attributes

You can add custom metadata to your container instances, known as attributes. Each attribute has a name and an optional string value. You can use the built-in attributes provided by Amazon ECS or define custom attributes.

Built-in Attributes

Amazon ECS automatically applies the following attributes to your container instances.

ecs.ami-id

The ID of the AMI used to launch the instance. An example value for this attribute is "ami-eca289fb".

ecs.availability-zone

The Availability Zone for the instance. An example value for this attribute is "us-east-1a".

ecs.instance-type

The instance type for the instance. An example value for this attribute is "g2.2xlarge".

ecs.os-type

The operating system for the instance. The possible values for this attribute are "linux" and "windows".

Custom Attributes

You can apply custom attributes to your container instances. For example, you can define an attribute with the name "stack" and a value of "prod".

Adding an Attribute

You can add custom attributes at instance registration time using the container agent or manually, using the AWS Management Console. For more information about using the container agent, see Amazon ECS Container Agent Configuration Parameters.

To add custom attributes using the console

  1. Open the Amazon ECS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ecs/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Clusters and select a cluster.

  3. On the ECS Instances tab, select the check box for the container instance.

  4. Choose Actions, View/Edit Attributes.

  5. For each attribute, do the following:

    1. Choose Add attribute.

    2. Type a name and a value for the attribute.

    3. Choose the checkmark icon to save the attribute.

  6. When you are finished adding attributes, choose Close.

Adding custom attributes using the AWS CLI

The following examples demonstrate how to add custom attributes using the put-attributes command.

Example: Single Attribute

The following example adds the custom attribute "stack=prod" to the specified container instance in the default cluster. 

aws ecs put-attributes --attributes name=stack,value=prod,targetId=arn

Example: Multiple Attributes

The following example adds the custom attributes "stack=prod" and "project=a" to the specified container instance in the default cluster. 

aws ecs put-attributes --attributes name=stack,value=prod,targetId=arn name=project,value=a,targetId=arn

Filtering by Attribute

You can apply a filter for your container instances, allowing you to see custom attributes.

Filter container instances by attribute using the console

  1. Open the Amazon ECS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ecs/.

  2. Choose a cluster that has container instances.

  3. Choose ECS Instances.

  4. Set column visibility preferences by choosing the gear icon ( ) and selecting the attributes to display. This setting persists across all container clusters associated with your account.

  5. Using the Filter by attributes text field, type or select the attributes you would like to filter by. The format must be AttributeName:AttributeValue.

    For Filter by attributes, type or select the attributes by which to filter. After you select the attribute name, you are prompted for the attribute value.

  6. Add additional attributes to the filter as needed. Remove an attribute by choosing the X next to it.

Filter container instances by attribute using the AWS CLI

The following examples demonstrate how to filter container instances by attribute using the list-constainer-instances command. For more information about the filter syntax, see Cluster Query Language.

Example: Built-in Attribute

The following example uses built-in attributes to list the g2.2xlarge instances. 

aws ecs list-container-instances --filter "attribute:ecs.instance-type == g2.2xlarge"

Example: Custom Attribute

The following example lists the instances with the custom attribute "stack=prod". 

aws ecs list-container-instances --filter "attribute:stack == prod"

Example: Exclude an Attribute Value

The following example lists the instances with the custom attribute "stack" unless the attribute value is "prod". 

aws ecs list-container-instances --filter "attribute:stack != prod"

Example: Multiple Attribute Values

The following example uses built-in attributes to list the instances of type t2.small or t2.medium. 

aws ecs list-container-instances --filter "attribute:ecs.instance-type in [t2.small, t2.medium]"

Example: Multiple Attributes

The following example uses built-in attributes to list the T2 instances in Availability Zone us-east-1a. 

aws ecs list-container-instances --filter "attribute:ecs.instance-type =~ t2.* and attribute:ecs.availability-zone == us-east-1a"

Task Groups

You can identify a set of related tasks as a task group. All tasks with the same task group name are considered as a set when performing spread placement. For example, suppose that you are running different applications in one cluster, such as databases and web servers. To ensure that your databases are balanced across Availability Zones, add them to a task group named "databases" and then use this task group as a constraint for task placement.

When you launch a task using the RunTask or StartTask action, you can specify the name of the task group for the task. If you don't specify a task group for the task, the default name is the family name of the task definition (for example, family:my-task-definition).

For tasks launched by the service scheduler, the task group name is the name of the service (for example, service:my-service-name).

Limits

  • A task group name must be 255 characters or less.

  • Each task can be in exactly one group.

  • After launching a task, you cannot modify its task group.

Example Constraints

You can specify task placement constraints with the following actions: CreateService, RegisterTaskDefinition, and RunTask.

The following constraint places tasks on T2 instances.

"placementConstraints": [
    {
        "expression": "attribute:ecs.instance-type =~ t2.*",
        "type": "memberOf"
    }
]

The following constraint places tasks on instances in the databases task group. 

"placementConstraints": [
    {
        "expression": "task:group == databases",
        "type": "memberOf"
    }
]

The following constraint places each task in the group on a different instance. 

"placementConstraints": [
    {
        "type": "distinctInstance"
    }
]