Bind mount examples
The following examples cover the common use cases for using a bind mount for your containers.
To allocate an increased amount of ephemeral storage space for a Fargate task
For Amazon ECS tasks that are hosted on Fargate using platform version
1.4.0
or later (Linux) or 1.0.0
(Windows), you can
allocate more than the default amount of ephemeral storage for the containers in
your task to use. This example can be incorporated into the other examples to
allocate more ephemeral storage for your Fargate tasks.
-
In the task definition, define an
ephemeralStorage
object. ThesizeInGiB
must be an integer between the values of21
and200
and is expressed in GiB."ephemeralStorage": { "sizeInGiB":
integer
}
To provide an empty data volume for one or more containers
In some cases, you want to provide the containers in a task some scratch space. For example, you might have two database containers that need to access the same scratch file storage location during a task. This can be achieved using a bind mount.
-
In the task definition
volumes
section, define a bind mount with the namedatabase_scratch
."volumes": [ { "name": "
database_scratch
" } ] -
In the
containerDefinitions
section, create the database container definitions. This is so that they mount the volume."containerDefinitions": [ { "name": "
database1
", "image": "my-repo/database
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "database_scratch
", "containerPath": "/var/scratch
" } ] }, { "name": "database2
", "image": "my-repo/database
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "database_scratch
", "containerPath": "/var/scratch
" } ] } ]
To expose a path and its contents in a Dockerfile to a container
In this example, you have a Dockerfile that writes data that you want to mount inside a container. This example works for tasks that are hosted on Fargate or Amazon EC2 instances.
-
Create a Dockerfile. The following example uses the public Amazon Linux 2 container image and creates a file that's named
examplefile
in the/var/log/exported
directory that we want to mount inside the container. TheVOLUME
directive should specify an absolute path.FROM public.ecr.aws/amazonlinux/amazonlinux:latest RUN mkdir -p
/var/log/exported
RUN touch/var/log/exported/examplefile
VOLUME ["/var/log/exported
"]By default, the volume permissions are set to
0755
and the owner asroot
. These permissions can be changed in the Dockerfile. In the following example, the owner of the/var/log/exported
directory is set tonode
.FROM public.ecr.aws/amazonlinux/amazonlinux:latest RUN yum install -y shadow-utils && yum clean all RUN useradd
node
RUN mkdir -p /var/log/exported && chownnode
:node
/var/log/exported USERnode
RUN touch /var/log/exported/examplefile VOLUME ["/var/log/exported"] -
In the task definition
volumes
section, define a volume with the nameapplication_logs
."volumes": [ { "name": "
application_logs
" } ] -
In the
containerDefinitions
section, create the application container definitions. This is so they mount the storage. ThecontainerPath
value must match the absolute path that's specified in theVOLUME
directive from the Dockerfile."containerDefinitions": [ { "name": "
application1
", "image": "my-repo/application
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "application_logs
", "containerPath": "/var/log/exported
" } ] }, { "name": "application2
", "image": "my-repo/application
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "application_logs
", "containerPath": "/var/log/exported
" } ] } ]
To provide an empty data volume for a container that's tied to the lifecycle of the host Amazon EC2 instance
For tasks that are hosted on Amazon EC2 instances, you can use bind mounts and have
the data tied to the lifecycle of the host Amazon EC2 instance. You can do this by
using the host
parameter and specifying a sourcePath
value. Any files that exist at the sourcePath
are presented to the
containers at the containerPath
value. Any files that are written
to the containerPath
value are written to the
sourcePath
value on the host Amazon EC2 instance.
Important
Amazon ECS doesn't sync your storage across Amazon EC2 instances. Tasks that use persistent storage can be placed on any Amazon EC2 instance in your cluster that has available capacity. If your tasks require persistent storage after stopping and restarting, always specify the same Amazon EC2 instance at task launch time with the Amazon CLI start-task command. You can also use Amazon EFS volumes for persistent storage. For more information, see Use Amazon EFS volumes with Amazon ECS.
-
In the task definition
volumes
section, define a bind mount withname
andsourcePath
values. In the following example, the host Amazon EC2 instance contains data at/ecs/webdata
that you want to mount inside the container."volumes": [ { "name": "
webdata
", "host": { "sourcePath": "/ecs/webdata
" } } ] -
In the
containerDefinitions
section, define a container with amountPoints
value that references the name of the bind mount and thecontainerPath
value to mount the bind mount at on the container."containerDefinitions": [ { "name": "web", "image": "nginx", "cpu": 99, "memory": 100, "portMappings": [ { "containerPort": 80, "hostPort": 80 } ], "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "
webdata
", "containerPath": "/usr/share/nginx/html
" } ] } ]
To mount a defined volume on multiple containers at different locations
You can define a data volume in a task definition and mount that volume at
different locations on different containers. For example, your host container
has a website data folder at /data/webroot
. You might want
to mount that data volume as read-only on two different web servers that have
different document roots.
-
In the task definition
volumes
section, define a data volume with the namewebroot
and the source path/data/webroot
."volumes": [ { "name": "
webroot
", "host": { "sourcePath": "/data/webroot
" } } ] -
In the
containerDefinitions
section, define a container for each web server withmountPoints
values that associate thewebroot
volume with thecontainerPath
value pointing to the document root for that container."containerDefinitions": [ { "name": "
web-server-1
", "image": "my-repo/ubuntu-apache
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "portMappings": [ { "containerPort": 80, "hostPort": 80 } ], "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "webroot
", "containerPath": "/var/www/html
", "readOnly": true } ] }, { "name": "web-server-2
", "image": "my-repo/sles11-apache
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 100, "portMappings": [ { "containerPort": 8080, "hostPort": 8080 } ], "essential": true, "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "webroot
", "containerPath": "/srv/www/htdocs
", "readOnly": true } ] } ]
To mount volumes from another container using
volumesFrom
For tasks hosted on Amazon EC2 instances, you can define one or more volumes on a
container, and then use the volumesFrom
parameter in a different
container definition within the same task to mount all of the volumes from the
sourceContainer
at their originally defined mount points. The
volumesFrom
parameter applies to volumes defined in the task
definition, and those that are built into the image with a Dockerfile.
-
(Optional) To share a volume that is built into an image, use the
VOLUME
instruction in the Dockerfile. The following example Dockerfile uses anhttpd
image, and then adds a volume and mounts it atdockerfile_volume
in the Apache document root. It is the folder used by thehttpd
web server.FROM httpd VOLUME ["/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/dockerfile_volume"]
You can build an image with this Dockerfile and push it to a repository, such as Docker Hub, and use it in your task definition. The example
my-repo/httpd_dockerfile_volume
image that's used in the following steps was built with the preceding Dockerfile. -
Create a task definition that defines your other volumes and mount points for the containers. In this example
volumes
section, you create an empty volume calledempty
, which the Docker daemon manages. There's also a host volume defined that's calledhost_etc
. It exports the/etc
folder on the host container instance.{ "family": "test-volumes-from", "volumes": [ { "name": "empty", "host": {} }, { "name": "host_etc", "host": { "sourcePath": "/etc" } } ],
In the container definitions section, create a container that mounts the volumes defined earlier. In this example, the
web
container mounts theempty
andhost_etc
volumes. This is the container that uses the image built with a volume in the Dockerfile."containerDefinitions": [ { "name": "web", "image": "
my-repo/httpd_dockerfile_volume
", "cpu": 100, "memory": 500, "portMappings": [ { "containerPort": 80, "hostPort": 80 } ], "mountPoints": [ { "sourceVolume": "empty", "containerPath": "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/empty_volume" }, { "sourceVolume": "host_etc", "containerPath": "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs/host_etc" } ], "essential": true },Create another container that uses
volumesFrom
to mount all of the volumes that are associated with theweb
container. All of the volumes on theweb
container are likewise mounted on thebusybox
container. This includes the volume that's specified in the Dockerfile that was used to build themy-repo/httpd_dockerfile_volume
image.{ "name": "busybox", "image": "busybox", "volumesFrom": [ { "sourceContainer": "web" } ], "cpu": 100, "memory": 500, "entryPoint": [ "sh", "-c" ], "command": [ "echo $(date) > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/empty_volume/date && echo $(date) > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/host_etc/date && echo $(date) > /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/dockerfile_volume/date" ], "essential": false } ] }
When this task is run, the two containers mount the volumes, and the
command
in thebusybox
container writes the date and time to a file. This file is calleddate
in each of the volume folders. The folders are then visible at the website displayed by theweb
container.Note
Because the
busybox
container runs a quick command and then exits, it must be set as"essential": false
in the container definition. Otherwise, it stops the entire task when it exits.