Build Scalable Infrastructure for ECS with Terragrunt

Tags:

• aws
• ecs
• containers
• terraform
• terragrunt

Categories:

• Cloud Computing

In recent years, containerization has gained immense popularity due to its ability to simplify deployment and management of applications. Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a fully managed container orchestration service that allows you to easily run and scale containerized applications on AWS. To streamline the provisioning of ECS infrastructure, the open-source community has developed various tools, with Terraform and Terragrunt being one of the most powerful combinations.

In this blog post, we will explore a comprehensive Terraform and Terragrunt repository, terraform-aws-ecs-sample-infra, which provides a robust foundation for building scalable ECS infrastructure on AWS. Let’s dive in and see how it can help us accelerate our ECS deployments.

Infrastructure as Code with Terraform

Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that allows you to define and provision infrastructure resources using declarative configuration files. By leveraging Terraform, you can automate the creation, modification, and destruction of infrastructure, making it easier to manage complex systems.

Simplified Infrastructure Management with Terragrunt

Terragrunt, an open-source tool, provides additional functionalities and improvements for managing Terraform configurations. It simplifies the management of infrastructure code by enabling code reuse, remote state management, and dependency management between Terraform modules.

Getting Started

Prerequisite

• An AWS programable account with corresponding permissions
• An ECR - Elastic Container Registry
• A service role already created that grants CodeDeploy access to Amazon ECS (create after run Terragrunt).

Instructions

Prepare your Docker image

Authenticate your AWS client with enironment variable:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

Authenticate your Docker client to the Amazon ECR repository

aws ecr get-login-password --region region | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.region.amazonaws.com

Use docker images to identify the local image to push, then push it:

docker tag nginx:latest public.ecr.aws/xxxxxxxx/nginx:v0.1.0
docker push public.ecr.aws/xxxxxxxx/nginx:v0.1.0

Deploy your Infrastruture with Terragrunt:

Create your environment settings in file envVars.yaml, for example:

env: "dev"
vpcCIDR: "10.0.0.0/16"
privateSubnets: 
  - "10.0.1.0/24"
  - "10.0.2.0/24"
publicSubnets: 
  - "10.0.3.0/24"
  - "10.0.4.0/24"
availabilityZones:
  - "ap-southeast-1a"
  - "ap-southeast-1b"
imageURI: "public.ecr.aws/k2u4r9u5/nginx:v0.1.0"
containerPort: 443

For deploy your entire infrastructure, in the terragrunt root directory, run:

terragrunt run-all apply

Customizing the Infrastructure

The repository offers a flexible and customizable infrastructure setup. You can easily modify the configuration files to adapt to your specific application requirements. For example, you can adjust the number of subnets or change the load balancer type based on your traffic patterns.

By leveraging Terraform’s module structure and Terragrunt’s features, you can extend the repository with additional modules, customize environment-specific configurations, and manage dependencies between modules. This modular and hierarchical approach makes it convenient to enhance and expand your infrastructure without starting from scratch.

Conclusion

The terraform-aws-ecs-sample-infra repository serves as an excellent starting point for building scalable infrastructure for AWS ECS deployments using Terraform and Terragrunt. It provides a well-structured, modular, and reusable setup that simplifies the provisioning and management of ECS resources on AWS.

By leveraging the power of Terraform and Terragrunt, you can accelerate your development workflow, ensure consistent and reliable infrastructure.

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