ECS Fargate on Graviton and Intel

Run containers from the same image (multi architecture image) on both Graviton and Intel.

Getting started

Requirements

• AWS account with cdk bootstrap
• AWS Region: us-east-1
• AWS CLI
• Docker
• Docker Buildx
• Npm

Clone the repository and install cdk

git clone https://github.com/hkford/ecs-fargate-on-graviton-intel.git
cd /ecs-fargate-on-graviton-intel
npm install

Deploy InfrastructureStack

Run the following command. Press y to the question Do you wish to deploy these changes (y/n)?.

npx cdk deploy ECSInfrastructureStack

Build and push a multi architecture container image

The application code and Dockerfile is in the app directory.

cd app

First run docker login for authentication. Run the command printed on the terminal ECSInfrastructureStack.DockerLoginCommand.

aws ecr get-login-password --region us-east-1 | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin ${account id}.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

WARNING! Your password will be stored unencrypted in /home/ec2-user/.docker/config.json.
Configure a credential helper to remove this warning. See
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/login/#credentials-store

Login Succeeded

Then build and push a multi architecture container image using Docker Buildx plugin. Run the command printed on the terminal ECSInfrastructureStack.DockerBuildxPushCommand. It takes longer time (370s in my x86 environment) to build an image for arm64 than for x86.

docker buildx build --platform linux/arm64,linux/amd64 --tag ${ECR repository URI}:v1 --push .

Let's check if application server can handle requests locally. Run the command printed on the terminal ECSInfrastructureStack.DockerRunCommand.

docker run --init -p 3000:3000 --rm {ECR repository URI}:v1
curl http://localhost:3000/

Deploy EcsServiceStack

Run the following command. Press y to the question Do you wish to deploy these changes (y/n)?.

npx cdk deploy ECSServiceStack

Access application server via load balancer

Application server is running both on Graviton(Arm64) and Intel(X86). Let's see both application.

The endpoint for application server on arm64 is printed on the terminal ECSInfrastructureStack.AccessALBArm64 and one for x86 is on the terminal ECSInfrastructureStack.AccessALBX86.

curl ${AccessALBArm64}
curl ${AccessALBX86}

Delete entire stack

Run the following command to delete two stacks. Press y to the question Are you sure you want to delete: ECSServiceStack, ECSInfrastructureStack (y/n)?.

npx cdk destroy "*"