Deploy application containers to AWS App Runner with AWS App2Container

AWS App Runner is an AWS service that provides a way for existing container images or source code to run directly as web services in AWS. App Runner uses Fargate as its underlying environment, but has its own management layer on top. With App Runner, you can access your application through an assigned web service URL, via HTTP requests.

Considerations for deploying to App Runner using App2Container:

• App Runner is not available in all Regions. To see the Regions and service endpoints for App Runner, refer to App Runner Service endpoints in the AWS General Reference.

• Resources that are created by App Runner reside in the multi-tenant App Runner service account. With other container management services, you might access resources such as an Amazon EC2 instance that your container runs on, or an Amazon EBS volume attached to your container instance, using the standard access methods for those resources directly. With App Runner you access resources that App Runner creates for your application through the App Runner service, using the App Runner console, API, SDKs, or by using apprunner commands in the AWS CLI.

• App Runner supports continuous integration and deployment from the Amazon ECR repository that App2Container creates on your behalf. When continuous deployment is configured, an update to the container image in the Amazon ECR repository automatically initiates an update in App Runner.

  You can turn this on or off in the deployment.json file. For more information, see Configure deployment.

• App Runner integrates with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail to provide logging and monitoring support for your application. App Runner creates the following log groups for each App Runner service:

  • An application group, which contains stdout from your containers.

  • A service group, which contains high-level logs from App Runner to notify you about service-related events, such as new deployments or health check failures.

  These logs can also be viewed from the App Runner console, or by using the App Runner API, SDKs, or by using apprunner commands in the AWS CLI.

• App Runner enforces limits for the application containers that it hosts, such as the number of concurrent requests, the size of the application, and the amount of memory it can use. To learn more about Service Quotas for App Runner, see App Runner Service quotas in the AWS General Reference.

• Application state is not guaranteed to be maintained between requests.

For more information about using App Runner to host your application container, see What is AWS App Runner in the AWS App Runner Developer Guide.

Prerequisites

To configure an App Runner integration for your application container with App2Container, your application must meet the following criteria:

• Your application runs on Linux. [Windows applications are not currently supported.]

• Your application meets all of the requirements that are listed in the Supported applications section for Linux.

• Your application container size is less than 3 GB.

• Your application must not be dependent on background processing. App Runner heavily throttles container CPU when requests are not actively being processed.

App Runner integration for App2Container workflow

Setting up application containers for hosting in App Runner integrates smoothly with the App2Container workflow. Initial steps for App2Container are the same for all applications:

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 (see Prerequisites).

   • 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 as the destination by default, but if your application is suitable for App Runner, you can set the createAppRunnerArtifacts flag in the appRunnerParameters section to true, and the createEcsArtifacts flag in the ecsParameters section to false. For more information about configuring the deployment.json file, see Configure deployment.

5. The deployment step generates a CloudFormation template and pipeline.json file that are targeted for the App Runner container management service, based on the settings in the deployment.json file, where the createAppRunnerArtifacts 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 App Runner deployment that contains the IAM role that App Runner uses to pull your application container images from Amazon ECR, and the App Runner 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 AWS CloudFormation stack that creates the App Runner service for the containerized application, using the configuration values in the AWS 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 App Runner 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, and verifies that initial deployment to App Runner has been completed, and 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.

     Note

     If you have automatic deployments configured for App Runner, an update to your application container image in Amazon ECR automatically kicks off an update for your application in App Runner.

     To configure automatic deployments, use the following settings in the deployment.json file:

     • Set autoDeploymentsEnabled to true to automatically deploy updates to App Runner when you deploy updates to Amazon ECR. This is the default setting.

     • Set autoDeploymentsEnabled to false if you want to update App Runner manually, using the App Runner service console, API, SDKs, or AWS CLI.