Waypoint
AWS

Deploy an Application to AWS Elastic Container Service

  • 20min

  • Waypoint

With Waypoint, it is quick and easy to deploy and release applications on AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS).

In this tutorial, you will use Waypoint's AWS ECS plugin to build a container image containing a NodeJS application, push it to a Elastic Container Registry (ECR) repository, then deploy and update the application to ECS.

Prerequisites

You will need to install waypoint binary locally, clone the examples repository (detailed in the next section), set up your AWS credentials, and create an Elastic Container Registry.

You will be most comfortable if you have already used Waypoint to do a local deployment with our Get Started tutorials.

Optional: Provision a Kubernetes cluster and install the Waypoint server to Kubernetes in order to unlock all Waypoint functionality (including application logs, exec, and ui access).

Clone the examples repository

The code for this tutorial is in the hashicorp/waypoint-examples repository. Clone the repository with git.

$ git clone https://github.com/hashicorp/waypoint-examples.git

Change into the subdirectory for the AWS ECS project. This project uses NodeJS but the following instructions will work with any language that can be built with a cloud native buildpack.

$ cd waypoint-examples/aws/aws-ecs/nodejs

Install the Waypoint server

The Waypoint server must be installed. You may install it locally which requires fewer steps but limits the functionality of some Waypoint commands. Or, install to a remote Kubernetes cluster for full functionality (including the logs, exec, and ui commands).

You can run the Waypoint server locally in Docker in order to achieve a minimal deployment of your applications on ECS.

Note: A local server used with a remote deployment only supports limited functionality. The logs, exec, and other commands require a remote server with a remote deployment.

Install the Waypoint server to your local Docker instance.

$ waypoint install --platform=docker -accept-tos

If you run into any errors, see the troubleshooting page which has instructions for resetting the Waypoint server in Docker.

Explore waypoint.hcl

Open the waypoint.hcl file. In this section, you will explore the build and deploy steps for this project.

The waypoint.hcl file uses the aws-ecr registry plugin during the build stage. The aws-ecr plugin uses your AWS credentials and internally builds the correct URL to the AWS API.

It is also possible to configure this manually with the docker plugin. Other configuration options are listed in the plugin documentation.

build {
  use "pack" {}
  registry {
    use "aws-ecr" {
      region     = "us-east-1"
      repository = "waypoint-example"
      tag        = "latest"
    }
  }
}

Use the aws-ecs plugin for the deploy stage. You can specify the region, memory, and cpu as well as a count of how many instances to launch or a log_group to store the logs in a CloudWatch log group.

See the plugin documentation for other configuration options.

deploy {
  use "aws-ecs" {
    region = "us-east-1"
    memory = "512"
  }
}

Note: When using this configuration, Waypoint will automatically provision an ECS cluster that uses Fargate. Fargate instances are temporary and will only run while they are being actively used. Read the plugin documentation if you prefer to use permanent EC2 instances in an existing ECS cluster instead.

Initialize Waypoint

Initialize the project with the init command.

$ waypoint init

✓ Configuration file appears valid
✓ Connection to Waypoint server was successful
✓ Project "example-nodejs" and all apps are registered with the server.
✓ Plugins loaded and configured successfully

Project initialized!

You may now call 'waypoint up' to deploy your project or
commands such as 'waypoint build' to perform steps individually.

Read the troubleshooting page if you run into any errors.

Build, deploy, and release the application

Deploy the application with up.

Note: This may take a few minutes to execute, especially if this is the first time that you push the image to the registry.

$ waypoint up

Creating new buildpack-based image using builder: heroku/buildpacks:18
✓ Creating pack client
✓ Building image
 │ [exporter] Adding layer 'launcher'
 │ [exporter] Adding layer 'config'
 │ [exporter] Adding label 'io.buildpacks.lifecycle.metadata'
 │ [exporter] Adding label 'io.buildpacks.build.metadata'
 │ [exporter] Adding label 'io.buildpacks.project.metadata'
 │ [exporter] Saving index.docker.io/library/example-nodejs:latest...
 │ [exporter] *** Images (112c224206f3):
 │ [exporter]       index.docker.io/library/example-nodejs:latest
 │ [exporter] Adding cache layer 'heroku/nodejs-engine:nodejs'
 │ [exporter] Adding cache layer 'heroku/nodejs-engine:toolbox'
✓ Injecting entrypoint binary to image

Generated new Docker image: example-nodejs:latest
✓ All services available.
✓ Set ECR Repository name to 'waypoint-example'
✓ Tagging Docker image: example-nodejs:latest => REDACTED.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/waypoint-example:latest
✓ Pushing image...
 │ 1b94c66ec97b: Pushed
 │ eafa73f345f6: Pushed
 │ 189eac09bed1: Pushed
 │ 4458c5b0b0d0: Pushed
 │ 08477604fc2a: Pushed
 │ 6f15325cc380: Pushed
 │ 1e77dd81f9fa: Pushed
 │ 030309cad0ba: Pushed
 │ latest: digest: sha256:cc45b97c76360c5d3c9a5b27a4f995913c4a5ed45c32b2a74b271a26e
 │ 77522fb size: 2831
Docker image pushed: REDACTED.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/waypoint-example:latest

» Deploying...
✓ Created new ECS cluster: waypoint
✓ Found existing IAM role to use: ecr-example-nodejs
✓ Using default subnets for Service networking
✓ Created new ALB Listener
✓ Configured security group: example-nodejs-inbound-internal
✓ Created ECS Service (example-nodejs-01F2QVM90G9KX5CJC, cluster-name: waypoint)

» Releasing...

The deploy was successful! A Waypoint deployment URL is shown below. This
can be used internally to check your deployment and is not meant for external
traffic. You can manage this hostname using "waypoint hostname."

   Release URL: http://waypoint-ecs-example-nodejs-1065146915.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com
Deployment URL: https://barely-big-hen--v1.waypoint.run

Visit the Release URL or the Deployment URL to view the application running on ECS.

Web application

You can visit the ECS console to view the server side of the cluster.

ECS cluster

The cluster also lists individual tasks.

ECS tasks

Destroy the instance

To deprovision the container, run destroy.

$ waypoint destroy -auto-approve

» Destroying releases for application 'example-nodejs'...

» Destroying deployments for application 'example-nodejs'...
Destroy successful!

If there is an error, try again after a few seconds.

Note: The destroy command will not delete container images in the registry or the ECS cluster itself. Visit the ECR console to manually delete the entire registry or individual container images.

Next steps

Learn more about Waypoint by following along with the other tutorials for Azure, Google Cloud, and others, or read the documentation for other Waypoint plugins.

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