The Amazon ECS Container Agent is a component of Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and is responsible for managing containers on behalf of Amazon ECS.
The best source of information on running this software is the Amazon ECS documentation.
Please note that from Agent version 1.20.0, Minimum required Docker version is 1.9.0, corresponding to Docker API version 1.21. For more information, please visit Amazon ECS Container Agent Versions.
On the Amazon Linux AMI, we provide an installable RPM which can be used via
sudo yum install ecs-init && sudo start ecs. This is the recommended way to run it in this environment.
The Amazon ECS Container Agent may also be run in a Docker container on an EC2 instance with a recent Docker version installed. A Docker image is available in our Docker Hub Repository.
$ # Set up directories the agent uses
$ mkdir -p /var/log/ecs /etc/ecs /var/lib/ecs/data
$ touch /etc/ecs/ecs.config
$ # Set up necessary rules to enable IAM roles for tasks
$ sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.route_localnet=1
$ iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d 169.254.170.2 --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:51679
$ iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -d 169.254.170.2 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 51679
$ # Run the agent
$ docker run --name ecs-agent \
--detach=true \
--restart=on-failure:10 \
--volume=/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
--volume=/var/log/ecs:/log \
--volume=/var/lib/ecs/data:/data \
--net=host \
--env-file=/etc/ecs/ecs.config \
--env=ECS_LOGFILE=/log/ecs-agent.log \
--env=ECS_DATADIR=/data/ \
--env=ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE=true \
--env=ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE_NETWORK_HOST=true \
amazon/amazon-ecs-agent:latestFor the AWS VPC networking mode, ECS agent requires CNI plugin and dhclient to be available. ECS also needs the ecs-init to run as part of its startup. The following is an example of docker run configuration for running ecs-agent with Task ENI enabled
$ # Run the agent
$ /usr/bin/docker run --name ecs-agent \
--init \
--restart=on-failure:10 \
--volume=/var/run:/var/run \
--volume=/var/log/ecs/:/log:Z \
--volume=/var/lib/ecs/data:/data:Z \
--volume=/etc/ecs:/etc/ecs \
--volume=/lib:/lib \
--volume=/sbin:/sbin \
--volume=/lib64:/lib64 \
--volume=/usr/lib:/usr/lib \
--volume=/proc:/host/proc \
--volume=/sys/fs/cgroup:/sys/fs/cgroup \
--net=host \
--env-file=/etc/ecs/ecs.config \
--cap-add=sys_admin \
--cap-add=net_admin \
--env ECS_ENABLE_TASK_ENI=true \
--env ECS_UPDATES_ENABLED=true \
--env ECS_ENGINE_TASK_CLEANUP_WAIT_DURATION=1h \
--env ECS_DATADIR=/data \
--env ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE=true \
--env ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE_NETWORK_HOST=true \
--env ECS_LOGFILE=/log/ecs-agent.log \
--env ECS_AVAILABLE_LOGGING_DRIVERS=["json-file","awslogs","syslog","none"] \
--env ECS_LOGLEVEL=info \
--detach \
amazon/amazon-ecs-agent:latest
See also the Advanced Usage section below.
ECS Optimized Windows AMI ships with a pre-installed PowerShell module called ECSTools to install, configure, and run the ECS Agent as a Windows service. To install the service, you can run the following PowerShell commands on an EC2 instance. To launch into another cluster instead of windows, replace the 'windows' in the script below with the name of your cluster.
PS C:\> Import-Module ECSTools
PS C:\> # The -EnableTaskIAMRole option is required to enable IAM roles for tasks.
PS C:\> Initialize-ECSAgent -Cluster 'windows' -EnableTaskIAMRoleTo download different version of ECS Agent, you can do the following:
PS C:\> # use agentVersion = "latest" for the latest available agent version
PS C:\> $agentVersion = "v1.20.4"
PS C:\> Initialize-ECSAgent -Cluster 'windows' -EnableTaskIAMRole -Version $agentVersionThe Amazon ECS Container Agent supports a number of configuration options, most of which should be set through environment variables.
The table below provides an overview of optional environment variables that can be used to configure the ECS agent. See the Amazon ECS developer guide for additional details on each available environment variable.
| Environment Key | Example Value(s) | Description | Default value on Linux | Default value on Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ECS_CLUSTER |
clusterName | The cluster this agent should check into. | default | default |
ECS_RESERVED_PORTS |
[22, 80, 5000, 8080] |
An array of ports that should be marked as unavailable for scheduling on this container instance. | [22, 2375, 2376, 51678, 51679] |
[53, 135, 139, 445, 2375, 2376, 3389, 5985, 5986, 51678, 51679] |
ECS_RESERVED_PORTS_UDP |
[53, 123] |
An array of UDP ports that should be marked as unavailable for scheduling on this container instance. | [] |
[] |
ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_TYPE |
"docker" | "dockercfg" | The type of auth data that is stored in the ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_DATA key. |
||
ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_DATA |
See the dockerauth documentation | Docker auth data formatted as defined by ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_TYPE. |
||
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION |
<us-west-2>|<us-east-1>|… | The region to be used in API requests as well as to infer the correct backend host. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. |
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID |
AKIDEXAMPLE | The access key used by the agent for all calls. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. |
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY |
EXAMPLEKEY | The secret key used by the agent for all calls. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. |
AWS_SESSION_TOKEN |
The session token used for temporary credentials. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. | Taken from Amazon EC2 instance metadata. | |
DOCKER_HOST |
unix:///var/run/docker.sock |
Used to create a connection to the Docker daemon; behaves similarly to this environment variable as used by the Docker client. | unix:///var/run/docker.sock |
npipe:////./pipe/docker_engine |
ECS_LOGLEVEL |
<crit> | <error> | <warn> | <info> | <debug> | The level of detail that should be logged. | info | info |
ECS_LOGFILE |
/ecs-agent.log | The location where logs should be written. Log level is controlled by ECS_LOGLEVEL. |
blank | blank |
ECS_CHECKPOINT |
<true | false> | Whether to checkpoint state to the DATADIR specified below. | true if ECS_DATADIR is explicitly set to a non-empty value; false otherwise |
true if ECS_DATADIR is explicitly set to a non-empty value; false otherwise |
ECS_DATADIR |
/data/ | The container path where state is checkpointed for use across agent restarts. | /data/ | C:\ProgramData\Amazon\ECS\data |
ECS_UPDATES_ENABLED |
<true | false> | Whether to exit for an updater to apply updates when requested. | false | false |
ECS_UPDATE_DOWNLOAD_DIR |
/cache | Where to place update tarballs within the container. | ||
ECS_DISABLE_METRICS |
<true | false> | Whether to disable metrics gathering for tasks. | false | true |
ECS_POLL_METRICS |
<true | false> | Whether to poll or stream when gathering metrics for tasks. | false | false |
ECS_POLLING_METRICS_WAIT_DURATION |
30s | Time to wait to poll for new metrics for a task. Only used when ECS_POLL_METRICS is true | 15s | 15s |
ECS_RESERVED_MEMORY |
32 | Memory, in MB, to reserve for use by things other than containers managed by Amazon ECS. | 0 | 0 |
ECS_AVAILABLE_LOGGING_DRIVERS |
["awslogs","fluentd","gelf","json-file","journald","logentries","splunk","syslog"] |
Which logging drivers are available on the container instance. | ["json-file","none"] |
["json-file","none"] |
ECS_DISABLE_PRIVILEGED |
true |
Whether launching privileged containers is disabled on the container instance. | false |
false |
ECS_SELINUX_CAPABLE |
true |
Whether SELinux is available on the container instance. | false |
false |
ECS_APPARMOR_CAPABLE |
true |
Whether AppArmor is available on the container instance. | false |
false |
ECS_ENGINE_TASK_CLEANUP_WAIT_DURATION |
10m | Time to wait to delete containers for a stopped task. If set to less than 1 minute, the value is ignored. | 3h | 3h |
ECS_CONTAINER_STOP_TIMEOUT |
10m | Instance scoped configuration for time to wait for the container to exit normally before being forcibly killed. | 30s | 30s |
ECS_CONTAINER_START_TIMEOUT |
10m | Timeout before giving up on starting a container. | 3m | 8m |
ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE |
true |
Whether to enable IAM Roles for Tasks on the Container Instance | false |
false |
ECS_ENABLE_TASK_IAM_ROLE_NETWORK_HOST |
true |
Whether to enable IAM Roles for Tasks when launched with host network mode on the Container Instance |
false |
false |
ECS_DISABLE_IMAGE_CLEANUP |
true |
Whether to disable automated image cleanup for the ECS Agent. | false |
false |
ECS_IMAGE_CLEANUP_INTERVAL |
30m | The time interval between automated image cleanup cycles. If set to less than 10 minutes, the value is ignored. | 30m | 30m |
ECS_IMAGE_MINIMUM_CLEANUP_AGE |
30m | The minimum time interval between when an image is pulled and when it can be considered for automated image cleanup. | 1h | 1h |
ECS_NUM_IMAGES_DELETE_PER_CYCLE |
5 | The maximum number of images to delete in a single automated image cleanup cycle. If set to less than 1, the value is ignored. | 5 | 5 |
ECS_IMAGE_PULL_BEHAVIOR |
<default | always | once | prefer-cached > | The behavior used to customize the pull image process. If default is specified, the image will be pulled remotely, if the pull fails then the cached image in the instance will be used. If always is specified, the image will be pulled remotely, if the pull fails then the task will fail. If once is specified, the image will be pulled remotely if it has not been pulled before or if the image was removed by image cleanup, otherwise the cached image in the instance will be used. If prefer-cached is specified, the image will be pulled remotely if there is no cached image, otherwise the cached image in the instance will be used. |
default | default |
ECS_IMAGE_PULL_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT |
1m | The time to wait after docker pulls complete waiting for extraction of a container. Useful for tuning large Windows containers. | 1m | 3m |
ECS_INSTANCE_ATTRIBUTES |
{"stack": "prod"} |
These attributes take effect only during initial registration. After the agent has joined an ECS cluster, use the PutAttributes API action to add additional attributes. For more information, see Amazon ECS Container Agent Configuration in the Amazon ECS Developer Guide. | {} |
{} |
ECS_ENABLE_TASK_ENI |
false |
Whether to enable task networking for task to be launched with its own network interface | false |
Not applicable |
ECS_CNI_PLUGINS_PATH |
/ecs/cni |
The path where the cni binary file is located | /amazon-ecs-cni-plugins |
Not applicable |
ECS_AWSVPC_BLOCK_IMDS |
true |
Whether to block access to Instance Metadata for Tasks started with awsvpc network mode |
false |
Not applicable |
ECS_AWSVPC_ADDITIONAL_LOCAL_ROUTES |
["10.0.15.0/24"] |
In awsvpc network mode, traffic to these prefixes will be routed via the host bridge instead of the task ENI |
[] |
Not applicable |
ECS_ENABLE_CONTAINER_METADATA |
true |
When true, the agent will create a file describing the container's metadata and the file can be located and consumed by using the container enviornment variable $ECS_CONTAINER_METADATA_FILE |
false |
false |
ECS_HOST_DATA_DIR |
/var/lib/ecs |
The source directory on the host from which ECS_DATADIR is mounted. We use this to determine the source mount path for container metadata files in the case the ECS Agent is running as a container. We do not use this value in Windows because the ECS Agent is not running as container in Windows. | /var/lib/ecs |
Not used |
ECS_ENABLE_TASK_CPU_MEM_LIMIT |
true |
Whether to enable task-level cpu and memory limits | true |
false |
ECS_CGROUP_PATH |
/sys/fs/cgroup |
The root cgroup path that is expected by the ECS agent. This is the path that accessible from the agent mount. | /sys/fs/cgroup |
Not applicable |
ECS_ENABLE_CPU_UNBOUNDED_WINDOWS_WORKAROUND |
true |
When true, ECS will allow CPU unbounded(CPU=0) tasks to run along with CPU bounded tasks in Windows. |
Not applicable | false |
ECS_TASK_METADATA_RPS_LIMIT |
100,150 |
Comma separated integer values for steady state and burst throttle limits for task metadata endpoint | 40,60 |
40,60 |
ECS_SHARED_VOLUME_MATCH_FULL_CONFIG |
true |
When true, ECS Agent will compare name, driver options, and labels to make sure volumes are identical. When false, Agent will short circuit shared volume comparison if the names match. This is the default Docker behavior. If a volume is shared across instances, this should be set to false. |
false |
false |
ECS_CONTAINER_INSTANCE_PROPAGATE_TAGS_FROM |
ec2_instance |
If ec2_instance is specified, existing tags defined on the container instance will be registered to Amazon ECS and will be discoverable using the ListTagsForResource API. Using this requires that the IAM role associated with the container instance have the ec2:DescribeTags action allowed. |
none |
none |
ECS_CONTAINER_INSTANCE_TAGS |
{"tag_key": "tag_val"} |
The metadata that you apply to the container instance to help you categorize and organize them. Each tag consists of a key and an optional value, both of which you define. Tag keys can have a maximum character length of 128 characters, and tag values can have a maximum length of 256 characters. If tags also exist on your container instance that are propagated using the ECS_CONTAINER_INSTANCE_PROPAGATE_TAGS_FROM parameter, those tags will be overwritten by the tags specified using ECS_CONTAINER_INSTANCE_TAGS. |
{} |
{} |
ECS_ENABLE_UNTRACKED_IMAGE_CLEANUP |
true |
Whether to allow the ECS agent to delete containers and images that are not part of ECS tasks. | false |
false |
ECS_EXCLUDE_UNTRACKED_IMAGE |
alpine:latest |
Comma seperated list of imageName:tag of images that should not be deleted by the ECS agent if ECS_ENABLE_UNTRACKED_IMAGE_CLEANUP is enabled. |
||
ECS_DISABLE_DOCKER_HEALTH_CHECK |
false |
Whether to disable the Docker Container health check for the ECS Agent. | false |
false |
ECS_NVIDIA_RUNTIME |
nvidia | The Nvidia Runtime to be used to pass Nvidia GPU devices to containers. | nvidia | Not Applicable |
When you run the Amazon ECS Container Agent in production, its datadir should be persisted between runs of the Docker
container. If this data is not persisted, the agent registers a new container instance ARN on each launch and is not
able to update the state of tasks it previously ran.
The agent also supports the following flags:
-k— The agent will not require valid SSL certificates for the services that it communicates with. We recommend against using this flag.-loglevel— Options:[<crit>|<error>|<warn>|<info>|<debug>]. The agent will output on stdout at the given level. This is overridden by theECS_LOGLEVELenvironment variable, if present.
Running the Amazon ECS Container Agent outside of Amazon EC2 is not supported.
The Amazon ECS Container Agent may be built by typing make with the Docker
daemon (v1.5.0) running.
This produces an image tagged amazon/ecs-container-agent:make that
you may run as described above.
The Amazon ECS Container Agent may also be run outside of a Docker container as a Go binary. This is not recommended for production on Linux, but it can be useful for development or easier integration with your local Go tools.
The following commands run the agent outside of Docker:
make gobuild
./out/amazon-ecs-agent
The following targets are available. Each may be run with make <target>.
| Make Target | Description |
|---|---|
release |
(Default) Builds the agent within a Docker container and and packages it into a scratch-based image |
gobuild |
Runs a normal go build of the agent and stores the binary in ./out/amazon-ecs-agent |
static |
Runs go build to produce a static binary in ./out/amazon-ecs-agent |
test |
Runs all unit tests using go test |
test-in-docker |
Runs all tests inside a Docker container |
run-integ-tests |
Runs all integration tests in the engine and stats packages |
run-functional-tests |
Runs all functional tests |
clean |
Removes build artifacts. Note: this does not remove Docker images |
The Amazon ECS Container Agent may be built by typing go build -o amazon-ecs-agent.exe ./agent.
The following scripts are available to help develop the Amazon ECS Container Agent on Windows:
scripts\run-integ-tests.ps1- Runs all integration tests in theengineandstatspackagesscripts\run-functional-tests.ps1- Runs all functional testsmisc\windows-deploy\Install-ECSAgent.ps1- Install the ECS agent as a Windows servicemisc\windows-deploy\amazon-ecs-agent.ps1- Helper script to set up the host and run the agent as a processmisc\windows-deploy\user-data.ps1- Sample user-data that can be used with the Windows Server 2016 with Containers AMI to run the agent as a process
Contributions and feedback are welcome! Proposals and pull requests will be considered and responded to. For more information, see the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
If you have a bug/and issue around the behavior of the ECS agent, please open it here.
If you have a feature request, please open it over at the AWS Containers Roadmap.
Amazon Web Services does not currently provide support for modified copies of this software.
The Amazon ECS Container Agent is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.