Deploy serverless containers to the cloud from your command line

fargate is a command-line interface to deploy containers to AWS Fargate. Using fargate, developers can easily operate fargate services including things like: deploying applications (images and environment variables), monitoring deployments, viewing container logs, restarting and scaling.

You can install the latest stable CLI with a curl utility script or by downloading the binary from the releases page. Once installed you'll get the fargate command.

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

If you'd like to install the latest prerelease, use this command:

curl -s get-fargate.turnerlabs.io | RELEASE=develop sh

By default, fargate uses us-east-1 as this is the single region where AWS Fargate is available. The CLI accepts a --region parameter for future use and will honor AWS_REGION and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment settings. Note that specifying a region where all required services aren't available will return an error.

See the Region Table for a breakdown of what services are available in which regions.

fargate is built using the AWS SDK for Go which looks for credentials in the following locations:

1. Environment Variables

2. Shared Credentials File

3. EC2 Instance Profile

For more information see Specifying Credentials in the AWS SDK for Go documentation.

There are several ways to specify parameters. Each item takes precedence over the item below it:

1. CLI arguments (e.g., --cluster my-cluster)

2. Environment Variables (e.g., FARGATE_CLUSTER=my-cluster)

3. fargate.yml (e.g., below)

cluster: my-cluster
service: my-service
task: my-task
rule: my-event-rule
verbose: false
nocolor: true

• Services
• Tasks
• Events

Services manage long-lived instances of your containers that are run on AWS Fargate. If your container exits for any reason, the service scheduler will restart your containers and ensure your service has the desired number of tasks running. Services can be used in concert with a load balancer to distribute traffic amongst the tasks in your service.

• list
• deploy
• info
• logs
• ps
• scale
• env set
• env unset
• env list
• update
• restart

fargate service list

List services

fargate service deploy [--image <docker-image>]

Deploy new image to service

The Docker container image to use in the service can be specified via the --image flag.

fargate service deploy [--file docker-compose.yml]

Deploy image, environment variables, and secrets defined in a docker compose file to service

Deploy a docker image and environment variables defined in a docker compose file together as a single unit. Note that environments variables and secrets are replaced with what's in the compose file.

Secrets can be defined as key-value pairs under the docker compose file extension field x-fargate-secrets. To use extension fields, the compose file version must be at least 2.4 for the 2.x series or at least 3.7 for the 3.x series.

This allows you to run docker-compose up locally to run your app the same way it will run in AWS. Note that while the docker-compose yaml configuration supports numerous options, only the image and environment variables are deployed to fargate. If the docker compose file defines more than one container, you can use the label aws.ecs.fargate.deploy: 1 to indicate which container you would like to deploy. For example:

version: "3.7"
services:
  web:
    build: .
    image: 1234567890.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/my-service:0.1.0
    ports:
    - 80:5000
    environment:
      FOO: bar
      BAZ: bam
    env_file:
    - hidden.env
    x-fargate-secrets:
      QUX: arn:key:ssm:us-east-1:000000000000:parameter/path/to/my_parameter
    labels:
      aws.ecs.fargate.deploy: 1
  redis:
    image: redis

fargate service info 

Inspect service

Show extended information for a service including load balancer configuration, active deployments, environment variables, and secrets.

Deployments show active versions of your service that are running. Multiple deployments are shown if a service is transitioning due to a deployment or update to configuration such a CPU, memory, or environment variables.

fargate service logs [--follow] [--start <time-expression>] [--end <time-expression>]
                     [--filter <filter-expression>] [--task <task-id>]
                     [--time] [--no-prefix]

Show logs from tasks in a service

Return either a specific segment of service logs or tail logs in real-time using the --follow option. Logs are prefixed by their log stream name which is in the format of "fargate/<service-name>/<task-id>."

Follow will continue to run and return logs until interrupted by Control-C. If --follow is passed --end cannot be specified.

Logs can be returned for specific tasks within a service by passing a task ID via the --task flag. Pass --task with a task ID multiple times in order to retrieve logs from multiple specific tasks.

A specific window of logs can be requested by passing --start and --end options with a time expression. The time expression can be either a duration or a timestamp:

• Duration (e.g. -1h [one hour ago], -1h10m30s [one hour, ten minutes, and thirty seconds ago], 2h [two hours from now])
• Timestamp with optional timezone in the format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS [TZ]; timezone will default to UTC if omitted (e.g. 2017-12-22 15:10:03 EST)

You can filter logs for specific term by passing a filter expression via the --filter flag. Pass a single term to search for that term, pass multiple terms to search for log messages that include all terms. See the CloudWatch Logs documentation for more details.

--time includes the log timestamp in the output

--no-prefix excludes the log stream prefix from the output

fargate service ps

List running tasks for a service

fargate service scale <scale-expression>

Scale number of tasks in a service

Changes the number of desired tasks to be run in a service by the given scale expression. A scale expression can either be an absolute number or a delta specified with a sign such as 5 or -2.

fargate service env set [--env <key=value>] [--file <pathname>]
                        [--secret <key=valueFrom>] [--secret-file <pathname>]

Set environment variables and secrets

At least one environment variable or secret must be specified via either the --env, --file, --secret, or --secret-file flags. You may specify any number of variables on the command line by repeating --env before each one, or else place multiple variables in a text file, one per line, and specify the filename with --file and/or --secret-file.

Each --env and --secret parameter string or line in the file must be of the form "key=value", with no quotation marks and no whitespace around the "=" unless you want literal leading whitespace in the value. Additionally, the "key" side must be a legal shell identifier, which means it must start with an ASCII letter A-Z or underscore and consist of only letters, digits, and underscores.

The "value" in "key=value" for each --secret flag should reference the ARN to the AWS Secrets Manager secret or AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store parameter.

fargate service env unset --key <key-name>

Unset environment variables and secrets

Unsets the environment variable or secret specified via the --key flag. Specify --key with a key name multiple times to unset multiple variables.

fargate service env list

Show environment variables

fargate service update [--cpu <cpu-units>] [--memory <MiB>]

Update service configuration

CPU and memory settings are specified as CPU units and mebibytes respectively using the --cpu and --memory flags. Every 1024 CPU units is equivilent to a single vCPU. AWS Fargate only supports certain combinations of CPU and memory configurations:

At least one of --cpu or --memory must be specified.

fargate service restart 

Restart service

Creates a new set of tasks for the service and stops the previous tasks. This is useful if your service needs to reload data cached from an external source, for example.

Tasks are one-time executions of your container. Instances of your task are run until you manually stop them either through AWS APIs, the AWS Management Console, or until they are interrupted for any reason.

• register
• describe
• logs

fargate task register [--image <docker-image>] 
                      [-e KEY=value -e KEY2=value] [--env-file dev.env]
                      [--secret KEY3=valueFrom] [--secret-file secrets.env]

Registers a new task definition for the specified docker image, environment variables, or secrets based on the latest revision of the task family and returns the new revision number.

The Docker container image to use in the new Task Definition can be specified via the --image flag.

The environment variables can be specified using one or many --env flags or the --env-file flag.

The secrets can be specified using one or many --secret flags or the --secret-file flag.

fargate task register [--file docker-compose.yml]

Registers a new Task Definition using the image, environment variables, and secrets defined in a docker compose file. Note that environments variables are replaced with what's in the compose file.

Secrets can be defined as key-value pairs under the docker compose file extension field x-fargate-secrets. To use extension fields, the compose file version must be at least 2.4 for the 2.x series or at least 3.7 for the 3.x series.

If the docker compose file defines more than one container, you can use the label aws.ecs.fargate.deploy: 1 to indicate which container you would like to deploy.

fargate task describe

The describe command describes a Task Definition in Docker Compose format. The Docker image, environment variables, secrets, and target port are the mapped elements.

This command can be useful for looking at changes made by the task register, service deploy, or service env set commands. It can also be useful for running a task definition locally for debugging or troubleshooting purposes.

fargate task describe -t my-app > docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up

You can specify the task definition family by using a fargate.yml file, the FARGATE_TASK envvar, or using the -t flag, including an optional revision number.

fargate task describe -t my-app
fargate task describe -t my-app:42

Example output:

version: "3.7"
services:
  app:
    image: 1234567890.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/my-app:1.0
    ports:
    - published: 8080
      target: 8080
    environment:
      AWS_REGION: us-east-1
      ENVIRONMENT: dev
      FOO: bar
    x-fargate-secrets:
      KEY: arn:key:ssm:us-east-1:000000000000:parameter/path/to/my_parameter      
    labels:
      aws.ecs.fargate.deploy: "1"

fargate task logs [--follow] [--start <time-expression>] [--end <time-expression>]
                  [--filter <filter-expression>] [--task <task-id>] 
                  [--container-name] [--time] [--no-prefix]

Show logs from tasks

Assumes a cloudwatch log group with the following convention: fargate/task/<task> where task is specified via --task, or fargate.yml, or environment variable options

Return either a specific segment of task logs or tail logs in real-time using the --follow option. Logs are prefixed by their log stream name which is in the format of fargate/<container-name>/<task-id>.

--container-name allows you to specifiy the container within the task definition to get logs for (defaults to app)

Follow will continue to run and return logs until interrupted by Control-C. If --follow is passed --end cannot be specified.

Logs can be returned for specific tasks by passing a task ID via the --task flag. Pass --task with a task ID multiple times in order to retrieve logs from multiple specific tasks.

A specific window of logs can be requested by passing --start and --end options with a time expression. The time expression can be either a duration or a timestamp:

• Duration (e.g. -1h [one hour ago], -1h10m30s [one hour, ten minutes, and thirty seconds ago], 2h [two hours from now])
• Timestamp with optional timezone in the format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS [TZ]; timezone will default to UTC if omitted (e.g. 2017-12-22 15:10:03 EST)

You can filter logs for specific term by passing a filter expression via the --filter flag. Pass a single term to search for that term, pass multiple terms to search for log messages that include all terms.

--time includes the log timestamp in the output

--no-prefix excludes the log stream prefix from the output

The events command provides subcommands for working with CloudWatch Events (scheduled tasks, etc.)

• target

fargate events target --revision <revision>

"Deploys" (causes the next event rule invocation to run the new version) a task definition revision to a CloudWatch Event Rule by updating the rule target's EcsParameters.TaskDefinitionArn.

A typical CI/CD system might do something like:

REVISION=$(fargate task register -i 123456789.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/my-app:${VERSION}-${CIRCLE_BUILD_NUM} -e FOO=bar)
fargate events target -r ${REVISION}