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

Building a custom AMI using Packer


Now that you understand the rationale for building a custom ECS container instance image, let's introduce a tool called Packer, which allows you to build machine images for a wide variety of platforms, including AWS.

Packer is an open source tool created by HashiCorp, which you can find out more about at https://www.packer.io/. Packer can build machine images for a wide variety of target platforms, however in this chapter we will only focus on building Amazon Machine Images.

Installing Packer

Before you can get started using Packer, you need to install it on your local environment. Packer is supported for Linux, mac OS, and Windows platforms, and to install Packer for your target platform, follow the instructions located at https://www.packer.io/intro/getting-started/install.html.

Note that Packer is widely supported in operating systems and third-party package management tools—for example, on mac OS you can install Packer using the Brew package manager by...