Terraform ECS Fargate NLB

A set of Terraform templates used for provisioning network application stacks on AWS ECS Fargate using an NLB (network load balancer) rather than ALB.

The templates are designed to be customized. The optional components can be removed by simply deleting the .tf file.

The templates are used for managing infrastructure concerns and, as such, the templates deploy a default backend docker image. We recommend using the fargate CLI for managing application concerns like deploying your actual application images and environment variables on top of this infrastructure. The fargate CLI can be used to deploy applications from your laptop or in CI/CD pipelines.

Components

base

These components are shared by all environments.

Name	Description	Optional
main.tf	AWS provider, output
state.tf	S3 bucket backend for storing Terraform remote state
ecr.tf	ECR repository for application (all environments share)

env/dev

These components are for a specific environment. There should be a corresponding directory for each environment that is needed.

Name	Description	Optional
main.tf	Terrform remote state, AWS provider, output
ecs.tf	ECS Cluster, Service, Task Definition, ecsTaskExecutionRole, CloudWatch Log Group
nlb.tf	NLB, Target Group, Listener
nsg.tf	NSG for NLB and Task
dashboard.tf	CloudWatch dashboard: CPU, memory, and HTTP-related metrics	Yes
role.tf	Application Role for container	Yes
cicd.tf	IAM user that can be used by CI/CD systems	Yes
autoscale-perf.tf	Performance-based auto scaling	Yes
autoscale-time.tf	Time-based auto scaling	Yes
logs-logzio.tf	Ship container logs to logz.io	Yes

Usage

Typically, the base Terraform will only need to be run once, and then should only need changes very infrequently. After the base is built, each environment can be built.

# Move into the base directory
$ cd base

# Sets up Terraform to run
$ terraform init

# Executes the Terraform run
$ terraform apply

# Now, move into the dev environment
$ cd ../env/dev

# Sets up Terraform to run
$ terraform init

# Executes the Terraform run
$ terraform apply

fargate-create

Alternatively you can use the fargate-create CLI to scaffold new projects based on this template.

install

curl -s get-fargate-create.turnerlabs.io | sh

create an input vars file (terraform.tfvars)

# app/env to scaffold
app = "my-app"
environment = "dev"

internal = "true"
container_port = "8080"
replicas = "1"
region = "us-east-1"
aws_profile = "default"
saml_role = "admin"
vpc = "vpc-123"
private_subnets = "subnet-123,subnet-456"
public_subnets = "subnet-789,subnet-012"
tags = {
  application   = "my-app"
  environment   = "dev"
  team          = "my-team"
  customer      = "my-customer"
  contact-email = "me@example.com"
}

$ fargate-create -f terraform.tfvars -t git@github.com:turnerlabs/terraform-ecs-fargate-nlb