Launching an Amazon ECS Windows container instance

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/ec2/.

2. In the navigation bar at the top of the screen, the current Amazon Region is displayed (for example, ). Select a Region in which to launch the instance. This choice is important because some Amazon EC2 resources can be shared between Regions, while others can't.

3. From the Amazon EC2 console dashboard, choose Launch instance.

To launch a container instance

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/ec2/.

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

3. From the EC2 Dashboard, choose Launch instance.

4. On the Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) page, complete the following steps:

   1. Choose Amazon Marketplace.

   2. Choose an AMI for your Amazon EC2 instance. You can search for one of the Amazon ECS-optimized AMIs, for example Windows_2019_Full_ECS_Optimized.

5. On the Choose an Instance Type page, you can select the hardware configuration of your instance. The t2.micro instance type is selected by default. The instance type that you select determines the resources available for your tasks to run on.

   Choose Next: Configure Instance Details when you are done.

6. On the Configure Instance Details page, complete the following steps:

   1. Set the Number of instances field depending on how many container instances you want to add to your cluster.

   2. (Optional) To use Spot Instances, for Purchasing option, select the check box next to Request Spot Instances. You also need to set the other fields related to Spot Instances. For more information, see Spot Instance Requests.

      Note

      If you are using Spot Instances and see a Not available message, you may need to choose a different instance type.

   3. For Network, choose the VPC into which to launch your container instance.

   4. For Subnet, choose a subnet to use, or keep the default option to choose the default subnet in any Availability Zone.

   5. Set the Auto-assign Public IP field depending on whether you want your instance to be accessible from the public internet. If your instance should be accessible from the internet, verify that the Auto-assign Public IP field is set to Enable. If not, set this field to Disable.

      Note

      Container instances need access to communicate with the Amazon ECS service endpoint. This can be through an interface VPC endpoint or through your container instances having public IP addresses.

      For more information about interface VPC endpoints, see Amazon ECS interface VPC endpoints (Amazon PrivateLink).

      If you do not have an interface VPC endpoint configured and your container instances do not have public IP addresses, then they must use network address translation (NAT) to provide this access. For more information, see NAT gateways in the Amazon VPC User Guide and HTTP proxy configuration for Linux container instances.

   6. Select your container instance IAM role. This is usually named ecsInstanceRole.

      Important

      If you do not launch your container instance with the proper IAM permissions, your Amazon ECS agent cannot connect to your cluster. For more information, see Amazon ECS container instance IAM role.

   7. Configure your Amazon ECS container instance with user data, such as the agent environment variables from Amazon ECS container agent configuration. Amazon EC2 user data scripts are executed only one time, when the instance is first launched. The following are common examples of what user data is used for:

      • By default, your container instance launches into your default cluster. To launch into a non-default cluster, choose the Advanced Details list. Then, paste the following script into the User data field, replacing your_cluster_name with the name of your cluster.

        The EnableTaskIAMRole turns on the Task IAM roles feature for the tasks.

        In addition, the following options are available when you use the awsvpc network mode.

        • EnableTaskENI: This flag turns on task networking and is required when you use the awsvpc network mode.

        • AwsvpcBlockIMDS: This optional flag blocks IMDS access for the task containers running in the awsvpc network mode.

        • AwsvpcAdditionalLocalRoutes: This optional flag allows you to have additional routes in the task namespace.

          Replace ip-address with the IP Address for the additional routes, for example 172.31.42.23/32.

        <powershell>
        Import-Module ECSTools
        Initialize-ECSAgent -Cluster your_cluster_name -EnableTaskIAMRole -EnableTaskENI -AwsvpcBlockIMDS -AwsvpcAdditionalLocalRoutes
        '["ip-address"]'
        </powershell>

   8. Choose Next: Add Storage.

7. On the Add Storage page, configure the storage for your container instance.

   You can optionally increase or decrease the volume sizes for your instance to meet your application needs.

   When done configuring your volumes, choose Next: Add Tags.

8. On the Add Tags page, specify tags by providing key and value combinations for the container instance. Choose Add another tag to add more than one tag to your container instance. For more information resource tags, see Amazon ECS resource tagging.

   Choose Next: Configure Security Group when you are done.

9. On the Configure Security Group page, use a security group to define firewall rules for your container instance. These rules specify which incoming network traffic is delivered to your container instance. All other traffic is ignored. Select or create a security group as follows, and then choose Review and Launch.

10. On the Review Instance Launch page, under Security Groups, you see that the wizard created and selected a security group for you. Instead, select the security group that you created in Set up to use Amazon ECS using the following steps:

    1. Choose Edit security groups.

    2. On the Configure Security Group page, select the Select an existing security group option.

    3. Select the security group you created for your container instance from the list of existing security groups, and choose Review and Launch.

11. On the Review Instance Launch page, choose Launch.

12. In the Select an existing key pair or create a new key pair dialog box, choose Choose an existing key pair, then select the key pair that you created when getting set up.

    When you are ready, select the acknowledgment field, and then choose Launch Instances.

13. A confirmation page lets you know that your instance is launching. Choose View Instances to close the confirmation page and return to the console.

14. On the Instances screen, you can view the status of your instance. It takes a short time for an instance to launch. When you launch an instance, its initial state is pending. After the instance starts, its state changes to running, and it receives a public DNS name. If the Public DNS column is hidden, choose Show/Hide, Public DNS.