Amazon elastic container service - Kubernetes liveness/readiness checks equivalent for ECS - docker

My task is to warm up an ASP.Net Core app that run inside Docker containers deployed on ECS. It seem that with Kubernetes, we can define a readiness check path that Kubernetes will first send request to and only start sending real traffic once that request is completed.
Do we have a equivalent feature on ECS?
A reference regarding this issue but can be solved in Kubernetes:
https://blog.markvincze.com/running-asp-net-core-in-auto-scaling-containers-warm-up/

It is not supported yet.
There is an open ticket for that https://github.com/aws/containers-roadmap/issues/1670

Related

How to configure SCDF Skipper to use pre-existing docker instance?

I'm currently evaluating the usage of Spring Cloud Data Flow for our infrastructure. We already use RabbitMQ and Kubernetes so that would be our target environment.
For local testing purposes I use dockerized MySQL and RabbitMQ and I want SCDF-Skipper to deploy the Stream-Services to my local docker instance so they can use the pre-existing MySQL and RabbitMQ-Containers (and I can manage and monitor everything in one single docker instance).
My first approach was to use Skipper and Dataflow Server from docker-compose but since I failed deploying something, I switched to use the jars following this tutorial:
https://dataflow.spring.io/docs/installation/local/manual/
By now, deployment of the stream works but fails to connect to my preexisting, dockerized MySQL. That is because by default SCDF Skipper seems to deploy to an internal Docker-Instance.
So my question is:
Is there any way to configure SCDF Skipper to use the Docker-Instance on my local machine as deployment-target?
After another iteration of research, I stumbled upon
https://dataflow.spring.io/docs/installation/local/docker/#docker-stream--task-applications
Apparently, to use Skipper and Dataflow-Server from within Docker (DooD, Docker-out-of-Docker), you have to add another docker-compose.yml.
That does NOT solve how to use a pre-existing docker-instance when running Skipper locally from jar, but at least it enables me to run them as a container on a pre-existing docker and thus lets it use it as deployment-target.

Run a web page similar to kubernetes dashboard

I a want to run a web page similar like kubernetes dashboard.The web page takes input from the user and generates a small file but i want the web page to be loaded without using any server. kubernetes is deploying a pod and bringing up the web page i want to do the same.If kubernetes is also using a server how is it using it(is it directly downloading it with the OS in the pod or how is kubernetes doing it).
Overview I want to know how kubernetes dashboard is getting deployed is it using a server if so how is it getting the server installed in the kubernetes pod else how is it bring up the UI.
Actually, Kubernetes plays the role as an orchestrator and provides sufficient way for building communication channels between containers in the cluster and uses Docker by default as a container runtime.
Containers represent run-time environment for images, however images consist with OS layer and application binaries, a good explanation you can find here. In order to build own image you might consider two ways to afford this: create an image from existing one in Docker Hub or compose image from Dockerfile.To store the customized image might be the option to push it into Docker Hub repository or stand for some private isolated repo by deploying a Registry server.
When you are ready with an image, and you plan to implement application in Kubernetes cluster, that's a good time to create first microservice. Although, there are tons of materials about Kubernetes cluster and its run-time engine architecture in the globe, I would focus on the application deployment lifecycle.
Deployment is the main mechanism which defines how are Pods should to be implemented within a cluster and provides specific configuration for further application run-time workflow.
Service describes a way how the particular Pod will communicate with other resources within a cluster, providing endpoint IP address and port where your application will respond.
In general scenario with Kubernetes Dashboard, the method in use kubectl proxy will expose the application by proxying gateway between host and Kubernetes API, which is more like for testing purposes and not secure, in comparison with Nodeport type which brings more convenient way to make application accessible outside the cluster, as described in this Stack thread.
I encourage you to get some more learning stuff in the official Kubernetes documentation.

Does Cloud Composer have failover?

I've read the Cloud Composer overview (https://cloud.google.com/composer/) and documentation (https://cloud.google.com/composer/docs/).
It doesn't seem to mention failover.
I'm guessing it does, since it runs on Kubernetes cluster. Does it?
By failover I mean if the airflow webserver or scheduler stops for some reason, does it get started automatically again?
Yes, since Cloud Composer is built on Google Kubernetes Engine, it benefits from all the fault tolerance of any other service running on Kubernetes Engine. Pod and machine failures are automatically healed.

Container delivery on amazon ecs

I’m using Amazon ECS to auto deploy my containers on uat/production.
What is the best way to do that?
I have a REST api with a several front-end clients
Should I package my api container with nginx in the same container?
And do the same thing with the others front end clients.
Or I have to write a big task definition to bring together all my containers(db, nginx, php, api, clients) :(, but that's mean that I should redeploy all my infrastructure at each push uat/prod
I'm very confusing.
I would avoid including too much in a single container. Try and distill your containers down to one process doing one thing. If all you're doing is serving up a REST API for consumption by your front end, just put the essential pieces in for that and no more.
In my experience you also want your ECS tasks to be able to handle failure gracefully and restart, and the more complicated your containers are the harder this is to get right.
Depending on your requirements I would look into using ELB instead of nginx, you can have your ECS cluster point at an ELB and not have to deal with that piece at all.
Do not use ECS - it's too crude. I was using it as a platform for our staging/production environments and had odd problems during deployments - sometimes it worked well, sometimes - not (with the same Docker images). ECS provides not clear model of container deployment and maintenance.
There is another good, stable and predictive option - Docker Cloud service. It's new tool (a.k.a. Tutum) that was acquired by Docker. I switched the CI/CD to use it and we're happy with it.
Bind Amazon user credentials to Docker Cloud account. Docker Cloud uses AWS (or other provider) API for creating appropriate computer instances.
Create Node. Select Amazon EC2 instance type and parameters of storage, security group and so on. New instance will contain installed docker software and managing container that handles messages from Docker Cloud (deploy, destroy and others).
Create Stackfile, see https://docs.docker.com/docker-cloud/apps/stack-yaml-reference/. Stackfile is a definition of container group you required. You can define different scaling/distribution models for your containers using specific Stackfile options like deployment strategy, see https://docs.docker.com/docker-cloud/apps/stack-yaml-reference/#deployment-strategy-1.
Define ELB configurations in AWS for your new instances.
P.S. I'm not a member of Docker team and I like other AWS services :).
Here is my two cents on the topic, the question is not really related to ecs, it applies to any body deploying their apps on docker.
I would suggest separating the containers, one for nginx and one for API.
if they need to be co-located on the same instance, on ECS you can define them as part of the same task and on kubernetes you can make them part of same pod.
Define a docker link between the nginx and the api container. This will allow the nginx process to talk to api container without the api container exposing its ports to the host.
One advantage of using the container running platforms such as kubernetes and ecs is that they ensure each of the container run all the time and dynamically restart if one of the processes/containers go down.
Separating the containers will allow these platforms to monitor both the processes separately. When you combine the two into one container the docker container can only run with one of the processes in foreground, so you will loose the advantage of auto-healing for one of the processes.
Also moving from nginx to ELB is not a straightforward solution, you may have redirections and other things configured on the nginx, which are not available on ELB(As of date).
If you also need the ELB, there is no harm in forwarding the requests from the ELB to the nginx port.

What is Container as a Service

What is a Container as a Service (CaaS) means in general terminology. I found Kubernetes, Docker provide these services. But, what does that mean?
Does Container mean it provides the different OS platform to deploy our code to work?
It means, as seen in dockercon here, that docker provides a set of services (a Service Platform) around containers for:
building,
shipping and
running:
Building and shipping can be either:
to a data center
to a cloud:
It means you combine Iaas and PaaS into a Caas: Infrastructure + Platform.
(Source: Hyper.sh blog, currently unavailable, from Thibault Bronchain)
The term CaaS was seen in GOTO conference: Patterns for Docker Success • Simon Eskildsen (video).
You take your container and put them in that service and you don't care about the server and network structure behind them. For that Google use Kubernetes. So if you want yes. You can deploy your container on different services if you want.
On AWS you can do the same and deploy your container with the AWS Container service.
https://aws.amazon.com/de/documentation/ecs/
In short words: CaaS allows any Docker container to run on provider platform.

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