Deploying Docker Images to ECS Clusters with Terraform
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Setting Up Your Terraform Environment
To begin, we need to prepare our .tf files. Open your preferred code editor; I personally enjoy using Cloud9. Before diving in, ensure you have the AWS CLI and other necessary tools installed. If you're familiar with deploying Docker images to ECS clusters via Terraform, you probably have everything configured already.
Create a new directory for your project. I named mine week_19_project as I'm currently working on a project 19 weeks into my cohort. Once inside your directory, create the following files:
touch main.tf
touch providers.tf
touch resources.tf
touch variables.tf
I already have my state files ready since I've completed the project. Notably, I didn't utilize the variables.tf file in this instance. Next, we'll proceed to add code to each of the files, starting with providers.tf.
Configuring Your Terraform Files
Let's first set up our resources.tf file.
Now we will configure the main.tf file.
After setting up all our files, we need to run a few commands in the CLI to initiate the process. We'll start with terraform init, which initializes the setup.
Next, we will validate our configuration using terraform validate.
A warning appeared, indicating that an argument may soon be deprecated. However, we can continue for now. If you are writing your own code rather than copying mine, it's a good idea to run terraform fmt to ensure your formatting is tidy.
Next, we will execute terraform plan to preview what resources will be created.
Finally, we will apply our configurations with terraform apply --auto-approve.
Verifying the Deployment
Now, we can check our AWS console to confirm that everything is operational.
The VPC is active!
The subnets are correctly configured!
Moreover, our cluster is operational!
To clean up, execute terraform destroy to remove all resources created during the deployment. Note: I had to manually delete a couple of items that were not removed automatically.
And there you have it! That's the process for deploying a Docker image to an ECS cluster utilizing Terraform.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this. I hope you found it helpful!
Jason Wood
@jwood9799
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Video Resources
To enhance your understanding of deploying Docker images with Terraform on AWS, consider watching the following videos:
This video demonstrates how to provision ECR and ECS infrastructure to deploy a Node.js application in a Docker container using Terraform.
Learn how to deploy an ECS cluster with Terraform and avoid common mistakes in this informative guide.