Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Creating an Amazon ECS task for the EC2 launch type with the Amazon CLI

The following steps help you set up a cluster, register a task definition, run a task, and perform other common scenarios in Amazon ECS with the Amazon CLI. Use the latest version of the Amazon CLI. For more information on how to upgrade to the latest version, see Installing or updating to the latest version of the Amazon CLI.

Prerequisites

This tutorial assumes that the following prerequisites have been completed:

Create a cluster

By default, your account receives a default cluster when you launch your first container instance.

Create your own cluster with a unique name with the following command:

aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name MyCluster

Output:

{
    "cluster": {
        "clusterName": "MyCluster",
        "status": "ACTIVE",
        "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:region:aws_account_id:cluster/MyCluster"
    }
}

Launch a container instance with the Amazon ECS AMI

Container instances are EC2 instances that run the Amazon ECS container agent and have been registered into a cluster. In this section, you'll launch an EC2 instance using the ECS-optimized AMI.

List container instances

Within a few minutes of launching your container instance, the Amazon ECS agent registers the instance with your default cluster. You can list the container instances in a cluster by running the following command:

aws ecs list-container-instances --cluster default

Output:

{
    "containerInstanceArns": [
        "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:container-instance/container_instance_ID"
    ]
}

Describe your container instance

After you have the ARN or ID of a container instance, you can use the describe-container-instances command to get valuable information on the instance, such as remaining and registered CPU and memory resources.

aws ecs describe-container-instances --cluster MyCluster --container-instances container_instance_ID

Output:

{
    "failures": [],
    "containerInstances": [
        {
            "status": "ACTIVE",
            "registeredResources": [
                {
                    "integerValue": 1024,
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "type": "INTEGER",
                    "name": "CPU",
                    "doubleValue": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "integerValue": 995,
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "type": "INTEGER",
                    "name": "MEMORY",
                    "doubleValue": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "name": "PORTS",
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "doubleValue": 0.0,
                    "stringSetValue": [
                        "22",
                        "2376",
                        "2375",
                        "51678"
                    ],
                    "type": "STRINGSET",
                    "integerValue": 0
                },
                {
                    "name": "PORTS_UDP",
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "doubleValue": 0.0,
                    "stringSetValue": [],
                    "type": "STRINGSET",
                    "integerValue": 0
                }
            ],
            "ec2InstanceId": "instance_id",
            "agentConnected": true,
            "containerInstanceArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-west-2:aws_account_id:container-instance/container_instance_ID",
            "pendingTasksCount": 0,
            "remainingResources": [
                {
                    "integerValue": 1024,
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "type": "INTEGER",
                    "name": "CPU",
                    "doubleValue": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "integerValue": 995,
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "type": "INTEGER",
                    "name": "MEMORY",
                    "doubleValue": 0.0
                },
                {
                    "name": "PORTS",
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "doubleValue": 0.0,
                    "stringSetValue": [
                        "22",
                        "2376",
                        "2375",
                        "51678"
                    ],
                    "type": "STRINGSET",
                    "integerValue": 0
                },
                {
                    "name": "PORTS_UDP",
                    "longValue": 0,
                    "doubleValue": 0.0,
                    "stringSetValue": [],
                    "type": "STRINGSET",
                    "integerValue": 0
                }
            ],
            "runningTasksCount": 0,
            "attributes": [
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.privileged-container"
                },
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.docker-remote-api.1.17"
                },
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.docker-remote-api.1.18"
                },
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.docker-remote-api.1.19"
                },
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.logging-driver.json-file"
                },
                {
                    "name": "com.amazonaws.ecs.capability.logging-driver.syslog"
                }
            ],
            "versionInfo": {
                "agentVersion": "1.5.0",
                "agentHash": "b197edd",
                "dockerVersion": "DockerVersion: 1.7.1"
            }
        }
    ]
}

You can also find the Amazon EC2 instance ID that you can use to monitor the instance in the Amazon EC2 console or with the aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-id instance_id command.

Register a task definition

Before you can run a task on your Amazon ECS cluster, you must register a task definition. Task definitions are lists of containers grouped together. The following example is a simple task definition that uses an nginx image. For more information about the available task definition parameters, see Amazon ECS task definitions.

{
    "family": "nginx-task",
    "containerDefinitions": [
        {
            "name": "nginx",
            "image": "public.ecr.aws/ecs-sample-image/amazon-ecs-sample:latest",
            "cpu": 256,
            "memory": 512,
            "essential": true,
            "portMappings": [
                {
                    "containerPort": 80,
                    "hostPort": 80,
                    "protocol": "tcp"
                }
            ]
        }
    ],
    "requiresCompatibilities": ["EC2"],
    "networkMode": "bridge"
}

The above example JSON can be passed to the Amazon CLI in two ways: You can save the task definition JSON as a file and pass it with the --cli-input-json file://path_to_file.json option. Or, you can escape the quotation marks in the JSON and pass the JSON container definitions on the command line. If you choose to pass the container definitions on the command line, your command additionally requires a --family parameter that is used to keep multiple versions of your task definition associated with each other.

To use a JSON file for container definitions:

aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://$HOME/tasks/nginx.json

The register-task-definition returns a description of the task definition after it completes its registration.

{
    "taskDefinition": {
        "taskDefinitionArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:123456789012:task-definition/nginx-task:1",
        "family": "nginx-task",
        "revision": 1,
        "status": "ACTIVE",
        "containerDefinitions": [
            {
                "name": "nginx",
                "image": "public.ecr.aws/docker/library/nginx:latest",
                "cpu": 256,
                "memory": 512,
                "essential": true,
                "portMappings": [
                    {
                        "containerPort": 80,
                        "hostPort": 80,
                        "protocol": "tcp"
                    }
                ],
                "environment": [],
                "mountPoints": [],
                "volumesFrom": []
            }
        ],
        "volumes": [],
        "networkMode": "bridge",
        "compatibilities": [
            "EC2"
        ],
        "requiresCompatibilities": [
            "EC2"
        ]
    }
}

List task definitions

You can list the task definitions for your account at any time with the list-task-definitions command. The output of this command shows the family and revision values that you can use together when calling create-service.

aws ecs list-task-definitions

Output:

{
    "taskDefinitionArns": [
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/sleep360:1",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/sleep360:2",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/nginx-task:1",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/wordpress:3",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/wordpress:4",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/wordpress:5",
        "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/wordpress:6"
    ]
}

Create a service

After you have registered a task for your account and have launched a container instance that is registered to your cluster, you can create an Amazon ECS service that runs and maintains a desired number of tasks simultaneously using the task definition that you registered. For this example, you place a single instance of the nginx:1 task definition in your default cluster.

aws ecs create-service --cluster default --service-name nginx-service --task-definition nginx-task:1 --desired-count 1

Output:

{
    "service": {
        "serviceArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:service/MyCluster/nginx-service",
        "serviceName": "nginx-service",
        "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:cluster/MyCluster",
        "taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/nginx-task:1",
        "desiredCount": 1,
        "runningCount": 0,
        "pendingCount": 0,
        "launchType": "EC2",
        "status": "ACTIVE",
        "createdAt": "2025-01-13T10:45:00.000Z"
    }
}

List services

List the services for your cluster. You should see the service that you created in the previous section. You can note the service ID or the full ARN that is returned from this command and use it to describe the service later.

aws ecs list-services --cluster MyCluster

Output:

{
    "taskArns": [
        "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task/task_ID"
    ]
}

Describe the service

Describe the service using the following command to get more information about the service.

aws ecs describe-services --cluster MyCluster --services nginx-service

Output:

{
    "services": [
        {
            "serviceArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:service/MyCluster/nginx-service",
            "serviceName": "nginx-service",
            "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:cluster/MyCluster",
            "taskDefinition": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/nginx-task:1",
            "desiredCount": 1,
            "runningCount": 1,
            "pendingCount": 0,
            "launchType": "EC2",
            "status": "ACTIVE",
            "createdAt": "2025-01-13T10:45:00.000Z",
            "events": [
                {
                    "id": "abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
                    "createdAt": "2025-01-13T10:45:30.000Z",
                    "message": "(service nginx-service) has started 1 tasks: (task abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab)."
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Describe the running task

After describing the service, run the following command to get more information about the task that is running as part of your service.

aws ecs list-tasks --cluster MyCluster --service-name nginx-service

Output:

{
    "tasks": [
        {
            "taskArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task/MyCluster/abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
            "clusterArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:cluster/MyCluster",
            "taskDefinitionArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task-definition/nginx-task:1",
            "containerInstanceArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:container-instance/MyCluster/abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
            "lastStatus": "RUNNING",
            "desiredStatus": "RUNNING",
            "containers": [
                {
                    "containerArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:container/MyCluster/abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab/abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
                    "taskArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:aws_account_id:task/MyCluster/abcd1234-5678-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
                    "name": "nginx",
                    "lastStatus": "RUNNING",
                    "networkBindings": [
                        {
                            "bindIP": "0.0.0.0",
                            "containerPort": 80,
                            "hostPort": 80,
                            "protocol": "tcp"
                        }
                    ]
                }
            ],
            "createdAt": "2025-01-13T10:45:00.000Z",
            "startedAt": "2025-01-13T10:45:30.000Z"
        }
    ]
}

Test the web server

Clean up resources

To avoid incurring charges, clean up the resources that you created in this tutorial.