Book Image

Docker on Amazon Web Services

By : Justin Menga
Book Image

Docker on Amazon Web Services

By: Justin Menga

Overview of this book

Over the last few years, Docker has been the gold standard for building and distributing container applications. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a leader in public cloud computing, and was the first to offer a managed container platform in the form of the Elastic Container Service (ECS). Docker on Amazon Web Services starts with the basics of containers, Docker, and AWS, before teaching you how to install Docker on your local machine and establish access to your AWS account. You'll then dig deeper into the ECS, a native container management platform provided by AWS that simplifies management and operation of your Docker clusters and applications for no additional cost. Once you have got to grips with the basics, you'll solve key operational challenges, including secrets management and auto-scaling your infrastructure and applications. You'll explore alternative strategies for deploying and running your Docker applications on AWS, including Fargate and ECS Service Discovery, Elastic Beanstalk, Docker Swarm and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). In addition to this, there will be a strong focus on adopting an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach using AWS CloudFormation. By the end of this book, you'll not only understand how to run Docker on AWS, but also be able to build real-world, secure, and scalable container platforms in the cloud.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Understanding ECS cluster resources


Before you can start to manage the capacity of your ECS clusters, you need to have a clear and solid understanding of the various resources that affect the capacity of your ECS clusters. 

In general, there are three key resources that you need to consider:

  • CPU
  • Memory
  • Network

CPU resources

CPU is a core resource that Docker supports and manages as a first-class citizen. ECS leverages the CPU resource management capabilities of Docker, and exposes the ability to manage these via your ECS task definitions. ECS defines CPU resources in terms of CPU units, where a single CPU core contains 1,024 CPU units. When you configure your ECS task definitions, you specify a CPU reservation, which defines how much CPU time will be allocated to the application whenever there is contention for CPU time.

Note that a CPU reservation is not a limit as to how much CPU the ECS task can use–each ECS task is free to burst and use all available CPU resources–the reservation is only applied...