Retrieve Secrets Manager secrets through Amazon ECS environment variables - Amazon Elastic Container Service
Create the Amazon Secrets Manager secretAdd the environment variable to the container definition
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Retrieve Secrets Manager secrets through Amazon ECS environment variables

When you inject a secret as an environment variable, you can specify the full contents of a secret, a specific JSON key within a secret, or a specific version of a secret to inject. This helps you control the sensitive data exposed to your container. For more information about secret versioning, see Key Terms and Concepts for Amazon Secrets Manager in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide.

The following should be considered when using an environment variable to inject a Secrets Manager secret into a container.

  • Sensitive data is injected into your container when the container is initially started. If the secret is subsequently updated or rotated, the container will not receive the updated value automatically. You must either launch a new task or if your task is part of a service you can update the service and use the Force new deployment option to force the service to launch a fresh task.

  • For Amazon ECS tasks on Amazon Fargate, consider the following:

  • For Amazon ECS tasks on EC2, the following should be considered:

    • To inject a secret using a specific JSON key or version of a secret, your container instance must have version 1.37.0 or later of the container agent. However, we recommend using the latest container agent version. For information about checking your agent version and updating to the latest version, see Updating the Amazon ECS container agent.

      To inject the full contents of a secret as an environment variable or to inject a secret in a log configuration, your container instance must have version 1.22.0 or later of the container agent.

  • Use interface VPC endpoints to enhance security controls and connect to Secrets Manager through a private subnet. You must create the interface VPC endpoints for Secrets Manager. For information about the VPC endpoint, see Create VPC endpoints in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide. For more information about using Secrets Manager and Amazon VPC, see How to connect to Secrets Manager service within a Amazon VPC.

  • For Windows tasks that are configured to use the awslogs logging driver, you must also set the ECS_ENABLE_AWSLOGS_EXECUTIONROLE_OVERRIDE environment variable on your container instance. Use the following syntax:

    <powershell>
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("ECS_ENABLE_AWSLOGS_EXECUTIONROLE_OVERRIDE", $TRUE, "Machine")
Initialize-ECSAgent -Cluster <cluster name> -EnableTaskIAMRole -LoggingDrivers '["json-file","awslogs"]'
</powershell>

  • Your task definition must use a task execution role with the additional permissions for Secrets Manager. For more information, see Amazon ECS task execution IAM role.

Create the Amazon Secrets Manager secret

You can use the Secrets Manager console to create a secret for your sensitive data. For more information, see Create an Amazon Secrets Manager secret in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide.

Add the environment variable to the container definition

Within your container definition, you can specify the following:

  • The secrets object containing the name of the environment variable to set in the container

  • The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the Secrets Manager secret

  • Additional parameters that contain the sensitive data to present to the container

The following example shows the full syntax that must be specified for the Secrets Manager secret.

arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:secret-name:json-key:version-stage:version-id

The following section describes the additional parameters. These parameters are optional, but if you do not use them, you must include the colons : to use the default values. Examples are provided below for more context.

json-key

Specifies the name of the key in a key-value pair with the value that you want to set as the environment variable value. Only values in JSON format are supported. If you do not specify a JSON key, then the full contents of the secret is used.

version-stage

Specifies the staging label of the version of a secret that you want to use. If a version staging label is specified, you cannot specify a version ID. If no version stage is specified, the default behavior is to retrieve the secret with the AWSCURRENT staging label.

Staging labels are used to keep track of different versions of a secret when they are either updated or rotated. Each version of a secret has one or more staging labels and an ID. For more information, see Key Terms and Concepts for Amazon Secrets Manager in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide.

version-id

Specifies the unique identifier of the version of a secret that you want to use. If a version ID is specified, you cannot specify a version staging label. If no version ID is specified, the default behavior is to retrieve the secret with the AWSCURRENT staging label.

Version IDs are used to keep track of different versions of a secret when they are either updated or rotated. Each version of a secret has an ID. For more information, see Key Terms and Concepts for Amazon Secrets Manager in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide.

Example container definitions

The following examples show ways in which you can reference Secrets Manager secrets in your container definitions.

Example referencing a full secret

The following is a snippet of a task definition showing the format when referencing the full text of a Secrets Manager secret.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:secret_name-AbCdEf"
    }]
  }]
}

To access the value of this secret from within the container you would need to call the $environment_variable_name.

Example referencing a specific key within a secret

The following shows an example output from a get-secret-value command that displays the contents of a secret along with the version staging label and version ID associated with it.

{
    "ARN": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf",
    "Name": "appauthexample",
    "VersionId": "871d9eca-18aa-46a9-8785-981ddEXAMPLE",
    "SecretString": "{\"username1\":\"password1\",\"username2\":\"password2\",\"username3\":\"password3\"}",
    "VersionStages": [
        "AWSCURRENT"
    ],
    "CreatedDate": 1581968848.921
}

Reference a specific key from the previous output in a container definition by specifying the key name at the end of the ARN.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf:username1::"
    }]
  }]
}
Example referencing a specific secret version

The following shows an example output from a describe-secret command that displays the unencrypted contents of a secret along with the metadata for all versions of the secret.

{
    "ARN": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf",
    "Name": "appauthexample",
    "Description": "Example of a secret containing application authorization data.",
    "RotationEnabled": false,
    "LastChangedDate": 1581968848.926,
    "LastAccessedDate": 1581897600.0,
    "Tags": [],
    "VersionIdsToStages": {
        "871d9eca-18aa-46a9-8785-981ddEXAMPLE": [
            "AWSCURRENT"
        ],
        "9d4cb84b-ad69-40c0-a0ab-cead3EXAMPLE": [
            "AWSPREVIOUS"
        ]
    }
}

Reference a specific version staging label from the previous output in a container definition by specifying the key name at the end of the ARN.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf::AWSPREVIOUS:"
    }]
  }]
}

Reference a specific version ID from the previous output in a container definition by specifying the key name at the end of the ARN.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf:::9d4cb84b-ad69-40c0-a0ab-cead3EXAMPLE"
    }]
  }]
}
Example referencing a specific key and version staging label of a secret

The following shows how to reference both a specific key within a secret and a specific version staging label.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf:username1:AWSPREVIOUS:"
    }]
  }]
}

To specify a specific key and version ID, use the following syntax.

{
  "containerDefinitions": [{
    "secrets": [{
      "name": "environment_variable_name",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region:aws_account_id:secret:appauthexample-AbCdEf:username1::9d4cb84b-ad69-40c0-a0ab-cead3EXAMPLE"
    }]
  }]
}

For information about how to create a task definition with the secret specified in an environment variable, see Creating an Amazon ECS task definition using the console.