Deploy application containers to Amazon Elastic Container Service with AWS App2Container

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a fully managed container orchestration service that helps you to deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications. It provides a secure solution for running container workloads with high availability across multiple Availability Zones within a Region. Amazon ECS offers a variety of hosting options for your container environment. For more information about Amazon ECS, see What is Amazon Elastic Container Service? in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.

AWS App2Container integrates with Amazon ECS, to deploy your application containers to the following Amazon ECS environments:

• Amazon ECS – In the default environment, your containers run on EC2 instances. App2Container supports Windows .NET application containers for this environment. Linux is not currently supported for this environment.

• AWS Fargate – Fargate is a serverless architecture. App2Container supports both Linux and Windows application containers for this environment. To learn more about Fargate, see Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.

Tip

To containerize your applications with a console-based experience and deploy them on Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate, you can use the Replatform applications to Amazon ECS template on the AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator console. For more information, see Replatform applications to Amazon ECS in the AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator User Guide.

Prerequisites

To configure an Amazon ECS integration for your application container with App2Container, your application must meet the following criteria.

Amazon ECS

• For deployment to the Amazon ECS default environment, App2Container supports .NET applications running on Windows. [Linux applications are not currently supported.]

• .NET applications running on Windows must satisfy application framework and system requirements, and meet the criteria for supported applications. For details, see Supported applications, and expand the Supported applications for Windows section.

Fargate

• For deployment to Fargate, App2Container supports the following types of applications:

  • Java applications running on Linux.

  • .NET applications running on Windows Server 2019.

• Java applications running on Linux must satisfy Java application framework requirements, and run on a supported Linux distribution. For details, see Supported applications, and expand the Supported applications for Linux section.

• For .NET application containers, the container operating system must be Windows Server 2019. Prior versions are not supported for deployment to Fargate. The container operating system is derived from the application server or worker machine where containerization runs, so the applicable server operating system must also be Windows Server 2019.

  Additionally, .NET applications running on Windows must satisfy application framework requirements, and meet the criteria for supported applications. For details, see Supported applications, and expand the Supported applications for Windows section.

• gMSA is not supported.

Amazon ECS integration for App2Container workflow

To set up application containers for hosting in Amazon ECS within the App2Container workflow, follow these steps:

Initial steps for App2Container are the same for all applications deploying to Amazon ECS:

1. Install and set up the App2Container environment, as described in the Prerequisites: Set up your servers section.

2. Complete the initialization phase for your App2Container environment with the init command, and the remote configure command, if applicable. To learn more about what is included in all of the App2Container containerization phases, see the Command reference.

3. Complete the analyze phase for each application that you want to containerize.

   • If you are running commands directly on application servers, use the inventory and analyze commands.

   • If you are running a remote workflow on a worker machine, use the remote inventory and remote analyze commands.

4. Integration begins with the containerization step.

   • When you run the containerize command, App2Container generates the deployment.json file, which provides configurable parameters for all supported container management service options that could apply to your application container.

   • Parameters for Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS are always included. Parameters for App Runner are also included if your application container meets the App2Container criteria for hosting in App Runner.

   • Each container management service has its own section in the deployment.json file, and each section has a flag to indicate which container management service is the destination for your application container. Only one section can have its flag set to true – all others must be set to false.

     Amazon ECS is configured by default as the container management service for your application. However, the destination settings differ, depending on system requirements and the type of application you have.

     In the deployment.json file, App2Container initially sets the deployTarget parameter as follows:

     • ec2 – App2Container targets the Amazon ECS default environment, which runs containers on EC2 instances, for .NET applications that do not meet the criteria specified in the Fargate section under Prerequisites. Java applications are not currently supported for this deployment target.

     • fargate – App2Container targets the Fargate environment by default for Java applications, and for .NET applications that meet the criteria specified in the Fargate section under Prerequisites.

       If you want your container to run on EC2 instances instead of running in Fargate, you can change the deployTarget parameter to ec2. However, this is currently only true for .NET applications. If you change the value for a Java application, the generate app-deployment command throws an error when you run it.

     For more information about configuring the deployment.json file, see Configure deployment.

     Note

     The gMSAParameters are not valid for deployments to Fargate, and will generate an error when the generate app-deployment command runs.

5. The deployment step generates an ECS task definition and pipeline.json file that are targeted for the Amazon ECS container management service, based on the settings in the deployment.json file, where the createEcsArtifacts flag is set to true.

   • When you run the generate app-deployment command, App2Container validates the properties in the deployment.json file, and pushes the container image to Amazon ECR. This is the standard workflow.

   • The command generates a CloudFormation template for Amazon ECS deployment (ecs-master.yml) that contains the IAM role that Amazon ECS uses to pull your application container images from Amazon ECR, and the Amazon ECS service definition.

   • The command generates the pipeline.json file to support creating a pipeline to deploy updates to your application container in Amazon ECR.

   • If you use the --deploy option for the generate app-deployment command, App2Container deploys the CloudFormation stack that creates the Amazon ECS service for the containerized application, using the configuration values in the CloudFormation template that it generates. To customize the configuration, run the command without the --deploy option, and then manually deploy using the AWS CLI when you are ready.

6. The pipeline step generates a CloudFormation template for the pipeline that is targeted for the Amazon ECS container management service, based on the settings in the pipeline.json file.

   • When you run the generate pipeline command, App2Container validates the properties in the pipeline.json file, verifies that initial deployment to Amazon ECS has been completed, and verifies that your application is active.

   • The command generates a CloudFormation template to create a two-step pipeline:

     1. Code commit – Creates or updates an AWS CodeCommit repository that contains the Dockerfile and application artifacts that are required to create your application container image.

     2. Code build – Builds the Docker image for your application container, and pushes the updated image to the Amazon ECR repository that you configured for your application.

     3. If you use the --deploy option for the generate pipeline command, App2Container deploys the pipeline with the configuration values in the CloudFormation template it generates. To customize the configuration, run the command without the --deploy option, and then manually deploy using the AWS CLI when you are ready.