ECS with ALB integration in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

ECS with ALB integration

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple web application on AWS using Elastic Container Service (ECS) with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) to distribute traffic.This setup helps your app handle more users by spreading requests across multiple containers.

🎯 Goal: Build an ECS service running a container behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) that routes HTTP traffic to the container.You will create the ECS cluster, task definition, ALB, target group, and ECS service with ALB integration.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an ECS cluster named my-ecs-cluster

Define a task definition named my-task-def with a container named my-container using the image nginx:latest

Create an Application Load Balancer named my-alb with a listener on port 80

Create a target group named my-target-group for the ALB with port 80 and protocol HTTP

Create an ECS service named my-ecs-service that runs 2 tasks and integrates with the ALB target group

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This project shows how to deploy containerized web applications on AWS ECS with load balancing to handle user traffic efficiently.

💼 Career

Understanding ECS and ALB integration is essential for cloud engineers and DevOps professionals managing scalable containerized applications.

1

Create ECS cluster

Create an ECS cluster named my-ecs-cluster using AWS CLI syntax.

AWS

# Create ECS cluster named my-ecs-cluster
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the AWS CLI command aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name my-ecs-cluster to create the cluster.

2

Define ECS task definition

Create a task definition JSON file named task-def.json with a container named my-container using the image nginx:latest and port 80 exposed. Register the task definition.

AWS

aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name my-ecs-cluster
# Create task definition JSON file task-def.json and register it
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Create the JSON file using cat > task-def.json << 'EOF' ... EOF with family as my-task-def and a container named my-container using nginx:latest image exposing port 80. Then register with aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://task-def.json.

3

Create Application Load Balancer and target group

Create an Application Load Balancer named my-alb with a listener on port 80 and a target group named my-target-group with protocol HTTP and port 80.

AWS

aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name my-ecs-cluster
cat > task-def.json << 'EOF'
{
  "family": "my-task-def",
  "containerDefinitions": [
    {
      "name": "my-container",
      "image": "nginx:latest",
      "portMappings": [
        {
          "containerPort": 80,
          "protocol": "tcp"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}
EOF
aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://task-def.json
# Create ALB named my-alb with listener on port 80 and target group my-target-group
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use aws elbv2 create-load-balancer to create ALB and aws elbv2 create-target-group for the target group. Then create a listener on port 80 forwarding to the target group.

4

Create ECS service with ALB integration

Create an ECS service named my-ecs-service in cluster my-ecs-cluster that runs 2 tasks of my-task-def and integrates with the ALB target group my-target-group.

AWS

aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name my-ecs-cluster
cat > task-def.json << 'EOF'
{
  "family": "my-task-def",
  "containerDefinitions": [
    {
      "name": "my-container",
      "image": "nginx:latest",
      "portMappings": [
        {
          "containerPort": 80,
          "protocol": "tcp"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}
EOF
aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://task-def.json
aws elbv2 create-load-balancer --name my-alb --subnets subnet-12345678 subnet-87654321 --security-groups sg-12345678
aws elbv2 create-target-group --name my-target-group --protocol HTTP --port 80 --vpc-id vpc-12345678
aws elbv2 create-listener --load-balancer-arn arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:region:account-id:loadbalancer/app/my-alb/1234567890abcdef --protocol HTTP --port 80 --default-actions Type=forward,TargetGroupArn=arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:region:account-id:targetgroup/my-target-group/abcdef1234567890
# Create ECS service my-ecs-service with 2 tasks and ALB integration
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use aws ecs create-service with cluster, service name, task definition, desired count 2, and load balancer target group ARN with container name and port.