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

Summary


In this chapter, you learned how to build your custom ECS container instance machine image, using the popular open source tool called Packer. You learned how to create a Packer template, and learned about the various sections that make up a template including variables, builders, provisioners, and post-processors. You were able to inject temporary session credentials required to authenticate access to AWS as part of the image build process, using a combination of Packer variables, environment variables, and a dash of Make automation.

You successfully introduced a number of build-time customizations into your ECS container instance image, including installing CloudFormation helper scripts and the CloudWatch logs agent, and ensured the system was configured to run the NTP service on startup with the correct time zone. You disabled automatic security updates in the cloud-init configuration, which can cause problems if you are using an HTTP proxy.

Finally, you created a first-run script...