Making Sense Out of Amazon EC2 Container Service : Presented at DevOps Meetup, Banglore on Feb 13, 2016

1. MAKING SENSE OUT OF AMAZON ECS
Swapnil Dahiphale
DevOps Engineer
13 Feb 2016, DevOps Meetup Banglore

2. WhiteHedge
2
INTRODUCTION - HELLO
Hello! Welcome to WhiteHedge
WhiteHedge is an Agile Software Product Development company. But what really
describes us is what we think about Our Work , Our Clients.
We have deep experience in some of the most sought-after technology domains in the
industry today: Mobile Development, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, and
DevOps. Having deep knowledge in these domains make us stand out as the best and
the coolest provider of services. Our DevOps will bring you a single team that works
together with continuous development, continuous testing, continuous deployments,
logging, monitoring and security.

3. WhiteHedge
3
WHITEHEDGE - AN OVERVIEW
 Global Presence
Agile + Flexible
Thorough + Quick Learner
Competitive + Comprehensive
Honest + Transparent
Young + Mature
Innovative + Creative
 More about us…
What definesus?
California
New Jersey Rotterdam
Pune
EnvisionProducts|
Convertintobusinesses
100+employees|50+live
productsworld-wide
Thebest oftheTalentand
Infrastructure
Started2003| FocusedAgile
ProductDevelopment
Selffunded| Wellfunded|
Profitable

4. WhiteHedge
4
TABLE OF CONTENTS - OUR AGENDA
Containers
1
Use case
2
Orchestration
3
Introduction to
ECS
4
Key Components
6
Architecture
7
Overview of Build
Process
8
Why ECS?
5

5. CONTAINERS

6. WhiteHedgeWHAT ARE CONTAINERS?
OS virtualization
Process isolation
Images
Automation
Bins/Libs
Docker Engine
Bins/Libs
App2App1
Host OS
Server
Guest OS
Hypervisor
Guest OS
Bins/LibsBin/Libs
Host OS
Server
App1 App2 Container 1 Container 2
VM 1 VM 2

7. WhiteHedge
“automates the deployment of any
application as a lightweight, portable,
self-sufficient container that will run
virtually anywhere”
CONTAINERS

8. USE CASE

9. WhiteHedgeUSE CASE
A highly available RESTful API server which fetches
data from third-party services and serves its clients.

10. WhiteHedgeARCHITECTURE

11. WhiteHedgeCONTINUOUS DELIVERYWITH JENKINS
Build Image
Push Image
CodeDeploy

12. WhiteHedgeTHE PROBLEM
• A large monolithic application that was difficult to run, deploy, and
scale.
• We were deploying a single docker container to run multiple processes.
• Docker was monitored and we were redeploying docker instance if the
docker instance runs into problems.
• We used to evaluate capacity of EC2 instance manually and are running
one container per instance

13. WhiteHedgeTHE CHALLENGE
• Use microservices architecture using docker
• Orchestration of dockers
• Replicate infrastructure to many regions

14. ORCHESTRATION

15. WhiteHedgeORCHESTRATION
Bins/Libs
Docker Engine
App1
Host OS
Server
Bins/Libs
App2

16. WhiteHedgeORCHESTRATION
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server
DockerEngine
Host OS
Server

17. Why EC2 Container
Service?


18. WhiteHedgeWHY ECS?
• It is a managedservice!
• Easy to integrate with other AWS services
• It is great for storing and enforcing task state
• Designed with custom schedulers in mind
• The agent code is available on a public GitHub repo and … it is in GO!

19. WhiteHedgeWHAT ELSE DID WE LOOK AT?
Home-grown Tech
Tried, but proved to
be unreliable
Difficult to handle
coordination and
synchronization
Powerful but hard
to productionize
Needs developers
with Experience
Not a managed
service, higher Ops
load
“Amazon ECS enabled us to focus on releasing new software rather than
spending time managing clusters”

20. Introduction to ECS

21. WhiteHedge
“a highly scalable, high performance container
management service that supports docker containers
and allows you to easily run and manage Docker-
enabled applications across cluster of EC2 instances”
WHAT IS ECS?

22. WhiteHedgeWHAT IS ECS?
• Building Block Service
• Easily Manage Clusters for Any Scale
Nothing to run
Complete state
Control and monitoring
Scale
• Flexible Container Placement
• Designed for use with other AWS services
• Secure
• Extensible - ComprehensiveAPIs

23. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

24. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
• Amazon EC2 Instances
• Docker daemon
• Amazon ECS agent
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

25. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
• Grouping of Container
Instances
• Resource pool
• Regional
• Start empty, dynamically
scalable
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

26. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
• Unit of work
• Grouping of related
Containers
• Run on Container Instances
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

27. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS: TASK DEFINITIONS
{
"environment": [],
"name": "simple-demo",
"image": "my-
demo", "cpu": 10,
"memory": 500,
"portMappings": [
{
"containerPort": 80,
"hostPort": 80
}
],
"mountPoints": [
{
"sourceVolume": "my-vol",
"containerPath":
"/var/www/my-
vol"
}
],
"entryPoint": [
"/usr/sbin/apache2"
, "-D",
"FOREGROUND"
],
"essential": true
},
{
"name": "busybox",
"image":
"busybox",
"cpu": 10,
"memory":
500,
"volumesFrom"
: [
{
"sourceContainer": "simple-demo"
}
],
"entryPoint"
: [
"sh",
"-c"
],
"command": [
"/bin/sh -c "while true; do
/bin/date > /var/www/my-vol/date; sleep 1;
done""
],
"essential": false
}

28. WhiteHedge
{
"environment": [],
"name": "simple-demo",
"image": "amazon/amazon-ecs-
sample", "cpu": 10,
"memory": 500,
"portMappings":
[
{
"containerPort": 80,
"hostPort": 80
}
],
"mountPoints": [
{
"sourceVolume": "my-vol",
"containerPath":
"/var/www/my-
vol"
}
],
"entryPoint": [
"/usr/sbin/apache2
", "-D",
"FOREGROUND"
],
"essential": true
},
KEY COMPONENTS: TASK DEFINITIONS
Essential to our
task
10 CPU units (1024 is full
CPU), 500 megabytes of
memory
Expose port 80 in container
to port 80 on host
Create and mount volumes

29. WhiteHedge
{
"name": "busybox",
"image":
"busybox",
"cpu": 10,
"memory":
500,
"volumesFrom"
: [
{
"sourceContainer": "simple-demo"
}
],
"entryPoint"
: [
"sh",
"-c"
],
"command": [
"/bin/sh -c "while true; do
/bin/date > /var/www/my-vol/date; sleep 1;
done""
],
"essential": false
}
KEY COMPONENTS: TASK DEFINITIONS
[
{
"image": "tutum/wordpress-stackable",
"name": "wordpress",
"cpu": 10,
"memory": 500,
"essential": true,
"links": [
"db"
],
"entryPoint": [
"/bin/sh",
"-c"
],
"environment": [
…
],
"portMappings": [
{
"containerPort": 80,
"hostPort": 80
}
]
},
]
From Docker Hub
Mount volume from other
container
Command to
exec

30. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
Good for short-lived containers,
e.g. batch jobs
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

31. WhiteHedgeKEY COMPONENTS
Good for long-running
applications and services
Container Instances
Clusters
Tasks
Run a task
Create a service

32. Typical user workflow

33. WhiteHedgeTYPICAL USER WORKFLOW
I want to run aservice

34. WhiteHedgeTYPICAL USER WORKFLOW
Run Instances Amazon
EC2
Use custom AMI with
Docker support and
ECS Agent. Instances
will register with
defaultcluster.

35. WhiteHedgeTYPICAL USER WORKFLOW
Create Task Definition
Declare resource
requirements for
containers
SharedDataVolume
Node.jsApp
Time of day
App

36. WhiteHedgeTYPICAL USER WORKFLOW
Create Service
Declare resource
requirements for
service
SharedDataVolume
Node.jsApp
Time of day
App
Elastic
Load
Balancin
g
X 3

37. WhiteHedgeTYPICAL USER WORKFLOW
Describe Service

38. Architecture with ECS

39. WhiteHedgeARCHITECTURE

40. WhiteHedgeCONTINUOUS DELIVERYWITH JENKINS
Build Image
Push Image
Update ECS service

41. WhiteHedge
Features Without ECS Using ECS
High availability If any of the container dies, we
have to redeploy on all servers.
Restarts that container itself.
(Its a cluster management
system so it will always be in
desired state)
Managing number of
containers on a given EC2
instance
It will be complicated to run
and manage multiple
containers effectively.
Can manage multiple
containers.
Deployment method Handle deployments using
various methods.
(CodeDeploy, chef etc.)
ECS manages deployment of
new revision.
COMPARISON OF ARCHITECTURES

42. WhiteHedge
42
FOLLOW US
Questions?
 
http://www.whitehedge.com/devops.html
Swapnil Dahiphale
devops@whitehedge.com
- SOCIAL NETWORKS / PHONE

43. THANK YOU!
Have a Nice Day!

Swapnil Dahiphale
@Swapnil2233
sdahiphale@whitehedge.com