# Creating an Amazon ECS cluster for External instance workloads
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You create a cluster to define the infrastructure your tasks and services run on.

Before you begin, be sure that you've completed the steps in [Set up to use Amazon ECS](get-set-up-for-amazon-ecs.md) and assign the appropriate IAM permission. For more information, see [Amazon ECS cluster examples](security_iam_id-based-policy-examples.md#IAM_cluster_policies). The Amazon ECS console provides a simple way to create the resources that are needed by an Amazon ECS cluster by creating a Amazon CloudFormation stack. 

To make the cluster creation process as easy as possible, the console has default selections for many choices which we describe below. There are also help panels available for most of the sections in the console which provide further context. 

You can modify the following options:
+ Add a namespace to the cluster.

  A namespace allows services that you create in the cluster can connect to the other services in the namespace without additional configuration. For more information, see [Interconnect Amazon ECS services](interconnecting-services.md).
+ Configure the cluster for external instances
+ Assign a Amazon KMS key for your managed storage. For information about how to create a key, see [Create a KMS key](https://docs.amazonaws.cn/kms/latest/developerguide/create-keys.html) in the *Amazon Key Management Service User Guide*.
+ Add tags to help you identify your cluster.

**To create a new cluster (Amazon ECS console)**

1. Open the console at [https://console.amazonaws.cn/ecs/v2](https://console.amazonaws.cn/ecs/v2).

1. From the navigation bar, select the Region to use.

1. In the navigation pane, choose **Clusters**.

1. On the **Clusters** page, choose **Create cluster**.

1. Under **Cluster configuration**, configure the following:
   + For **Cluster name**, enter a unique name.

     The name can contain up to 255 letters (uppercase and lowercase), numbers, and hyphens.
   + (Optional) To have the namespace used for Service Connect be different from the cluster name, for **Namespace**, enter a unique name.

1. (Optional) Use Container Insights, expand **Monitoring**, and then choose one of the following options:
   + To use the recommended Container Insights with enhanced observability, choose **Container Insights with enhanced observability**.
   + To use Container Insights, choose **Container Insights**.

1. (Optional) To use ECS Exec to debug tasks in the cluster, expand **Troubleshooting configuration**, and then configure the following:
   + Select **Turn on ECS Exec**.
   + (Optional) For **Amazon KMS key for ECS Exec**, enter the ARN of the Amazon KMS key you want to use to encrypt the ECS Exec session data.
   + (Optional) For **ECS Exec logging**, choose the log destination:
     + To send logs to CloudWatch Logs, choose **Amazon CloudWatch**.
     + To send logs to Amazon S3, choose **Amazon S3**.
     + To disable logging, choose **None**.

1. (Optional) Encrypt the data on managed storage. Under **Encryption**, for **Managed storage**, enter the ARN of the Amazon KMS key you want to use to encrypt the managed storage data.

1. (Optional) To help identify your cluster, expand **Tags**, and then configure your tags.

   [Add a tag] Choose **Add tag** and do the following:
   + For **Key**, enter the key name.
   + For **Value**, enter the key value.

1. Choose **Create**.

## Next steps
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You must register the instances with the cluster. For more information, see [Registering an external instance to an Amazon ECS cluster](ecs-anywhere-registration.md).

Create a task definition for the external launch type. For more information, see [Creating an Amazon ECS task definition using the console](create-task-definition.md)

Run your applications as standalone tasks, or as part of a service. For more information, see the following:
+ [Running an application as an Amazon ECS task](standalone-task-create.md)
+ [Creating an Amazon ECS rolling update deployment](create-service-console-v2.md)