Docker Cookbook

See Also
• Task definition 
reference
268 | Chapter 8: Docker in the Cloud

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8.14 Starting an Application in the Cloud Using Docker
Support in AWS Beanstalk
Problem
You would like to deploy a Docker-based application in the cloud by just 
pushing
your Dockerfile. You want the cloud service to automatically spin up instances and
configure possible load-balancers.
Solution
Use 
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
. Beanstalk uses AWS EC2 instances, and can automatically
create an elastic load-balancer, create a security group, and monitor the health of your
application and resources. Docker support in Beanstalk was 
announced
in April
2014. Originally, Beanstalk supported only single-container applications, but recently
AWS announced a 
coupling
between AWS ECS and Beanstalk. This coupling allows
you to let Beanstalk use an ECS cluster as an environment for your application and
run multiple containers per instances.
To illustrate Docker support in Beanstalk, you are going to set up a Beanstalk envi‐
ronment using AWS CLI tools, and deploy the 
2048 game
using a single Dockerfile.
This is a variant of the official Beanstalk 
documentation
.
To get started, you will need a few things:
• An AWS account (see 
Figure 8-1
)
• The AWS CLI (see 
Recipe 8.2
)
• Register for Beanstalk by accessing the 
console
 and following the onscreen
instructions
The application deployment consists of three steps:
1. Create a Beanstalk application with 
awscli
.
2. Create a Beanstalk environment based on a Docker software stack (called a 
solu‐
tion stack
in Beanstalk).
3. Create your Dockerfile and deploy it using the 
eb
CLI.
All these steps can be done via the AWS console. This recipe shows
a complete CLI-based deployment, but the output of the 
awscli
calls are truncated.