Containing the Chaos Part 3 of 3: Amazon Elastic Container Service (EC2) | Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Containing the Chaos Part 3 of 3: Amazon Elastic Container Service (EC2) | Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) | Terraform

February 04, 2024

This article is part of a three-part series:

Containing the Chaos Part 1 of 3: Docker | Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
In part 1, the application will be placed into a container image. The container image will then be stored in the Amazon Elastic Container Registtry (ECR).

Containing the Chaos Part 2 of 3: Amazon DynamoDB | Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) | Amazon Elastic Container Services (ECS) | AWS Fargate | Terraform
In part 2, the DynamoDB table and Amazon S3 buckets will created using Terraform. Further the Amazon Elastic Container Services (EC2) cluster will be initiated on AWS Fargate.

Containing the Chaos Part 3 of 3: Amazon Elastic Container Service (EC2) | Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) | Terraform
In part 3 (the final part), the task definition will be created for the cluster. A service will be created to handle running the defined tasks. The application will then be tested. Finally, will decommission the resources.

For background on this series, go here:

Containing the Chaos! | A Three-Part Series Demonstrating the Usefulness of Containerization to HumanGov

1 of 11. Grab some information to be prepared.


Terraform apply output: S3 bucket name.
Terraform apply output: dynamodb table name.
ECR repository for app: public URI.
ECR repository for nginx: public URI.
EC2 security group that permits port 80 to the VPC containing the containers: security group ID.

2 of 11. Create Task definision

Here, will use the URIs, buckets, and table names you noted earlier.


Amazon Elastic Container Service -/- Task definitions -/- [Create new task definition] -/- [Create new task definition]
- Task definition family: humangov-fullstack
- Launch type: AWS Fargate
- OS: Linux/x86/64
- Task size: 1 vCPU / 3 GB
- Task role: HumanGovECSExecutionRole
- Task execution role: HumanGovECSExecutionRole
- Container 1:
    - Name: app
    - Image URI: public.ecr.aws/i7y0m4q9/humangov-app
    - Essential container: yes
    - Container port: 8000
    - Protocol: TCP
    - Port name: Keep auto-generated
    - App protocol: HTTP
    - Environment variables [Add environment variables]
          [KEY]        [VALUE]
        - AWS_BUCKET = humangov-california-s3-nlge
        - AWS_DYNAMODB_TABLE = humangov-california-dynamodb
        - AWS_REGION = us-east-1
        - US_STATE = california
    
[Add more containers]
  
- Container 2:
    - Name: nginx
    - Image URI: public.ecr.aws/i7y0m4q9/humangov-nginx
    - Essential container: no
        - Add port mapping:
        - Container port: 80
        - Protocol: TCP
        - Port name: Keep auto-generated
        - App protocol: HTTP
    
[Create]

3 of 11. Create service.

Make sure the selected security group permits port 80 to the selected VPC.


Select the task definition just created -/- [Deploy] -/- [Create service]
- Existing cluster: humangov-cluster
- Compute options: Launch type
- Launch type: Fargate
- Platform version: latest
- Application type: Service
- Service name: humangov
- Desired tasks: 2
- Networking:
    - VPC: Default
    - Security Group: sg-0bec9482b6dd20064 (make sure it permits port 80)
- Load Balancing:
    - Load balancer type: Application Load Balancer
    - Create a new load balancer
    - Load balancer name: humangov-lb
    - Choose container to load balance: nginx 80:80
    - Listener: create new listener
    - Port: 80 / Protocol: HTTP
    - Target group:
        - Target group name: humangov-tg
        - Health check path: /
    

[Create]

4 of 11. Connect to the application


Elastic Container Service > Clusters > humangov-cluster -/- Services -/- humangov -/- Networking
Look for" DNS names"

5 of 11. Test the application


Add sample user to the web page.

6 of 11. Check the infrastructure


Note URL references the load balancer
By mapping the task to elastic network interface (ENI) to availability zone, show that the application is highly available
Find user added inside dynamodb table
Find file added in S3 bucket
Show All ECS services are ruunning

7 of 11. delete the cluster

First, delete the service [force deletion]. then, delete the cluster.

8 of 11. More clean-up: delete ECR repository

Make sure to delete both repositories: humangov-app and humangov-nginx.

9 of 11. More clean-up: cleanup the S3 bucket

Delete the files inside the bucket

10 of 11. More clean-up: terraform destroy

11 of 11. More clean-up: Delete the access key and re-enabled managed credentials.

Don't forget to remove that access key you created earlier. There is no need for it now. Also,re-enable the managed credentials on Cloud9 and delete the export.sh file.