Book Image

Running Windows Containers on AWS

By : Marcio Morales
Book Image

Running Windows Containers on AWS

By: Marcio Morales

Overview of this book

Windows applications are everywhere, from basic intranet applications to high-traffic public APIs. Their prevalence underscores the importance of combining the same tools and experience for managing a modern containerized application with existing critical Windows applications to reduce costs, achieve outstanding operational excellence, and modernize quickly. This comprehensive guide to running and managing Windows containers on AWS looks at the best practices from years of customer interactions to help you stay ahead of the curve. Starting with Windows containers basics, you’ll learn about the architecture design that powers Amazon ECS, EKS, and AWS Fargate for Windows containers. With the help of examples and best practices, you’ll explore in depth how to successfully run and manage Amazon ECS, EKS, and AWS Fargate clusters with Windows containers support. Next, the book covers day 2 operations in detail, from logging and monitoring to using ancillary AWS tools that fully containerize existing legacy .NET Framework applications into containers without any code changes. The book also covers the most common Windows container operations, such as image lifecycle and working with ephemeral hosts. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered how to run Windows containers on AWS and be ready to start your modernization journey confidently.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Why Windows Containers on Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
4
Part 2: Windows Containers on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
9
Part 3: Windows Containers on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
14
Part 4: Operationalizing Windows Containers on AWS

Deploying an EC2 Windows-Based Task

I hope you are enjoying the book so far; we have learned things ranging from Windows container basics to advanced Amazon ECS task networking. Next, it is time to launch your first Windows container on Amazon ECS.

In this chapter, we will learn how to run Windows containers as EC2 Windows-based tasks, starting by diving deep into ECS task definitions; then, we will explore how a task supports Active Directory (AD) integration through group managed service accounts (gMSAs). Next, we will explore using Amazon FSx for Windows File Server as persistent storage for legacy Windows applications. Finally, the chapter will cover the following topics:

  • Understanding a task definition
  • Setting up AD integration
  • Setting up persistent storage
  • Scheduling an EC2 Windows-based task with Terraform