How do I manage EBS volumes for Amazon ECS tasks?

Resolution

Note: If you receive errors when you run AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, then see Troubleshooting errors for the AWS CLI. Also, make sure that you're using the most recent AWS CLI version.

Prerequisites:

• Use an Amazon ECS infrastructure AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role to create a service or a standalone task that configures a volume at deployment.
• Use a supported operating system (OS) and launch type.
• Check the Amazon EBS volume considerations.
• Select a storage option for Amazon ECS tasks based on your requirements.

To attach a new EBS volume to your task, specify the following configurations in your task definition under mountPoints:

• For sourceVolume, enter the name of the volume that you want to mount.
• For containerPath, enter the path in the container instance where you mount the volume.
• For readOnly, enter true or false based on whether the container has read-only access to the volume.

Then, set configuredAtLaunch to true.

Example task definition:

{
    "family": "mytaskdef",
    "containerDefinitions": [
        {
            ....
            #Some fields removed from example
            ....
            "mountPoints": [
                {
                    "sourceVolume": "myEBSVolume",  
                    "containerPath": "/mount/ebs",  
                    "readOnly": true                
                }
            ]
        }
     ],
     ....
     #Some fields removed from example
     ....
     "volumes": [
        {
            "name": "myEBSVolume",                 
            "configuredAtLaunch": true
        }
    ]
}

Save the task definition template as a JSON file, and then run register-task-definition to register the task definition:

aws ecs register-task-definition \
    --cli-input-json file://json_file_name.json \
    --region Region_name

Note: Replace json_file_name.json with your JSON file and Region_name with your AWS Region.

Then, configure the Amazon EBS volume at deployment when you run a standalone task. Or, configure when you create or update a service.

To use data from an existing EBS volume, create a snapshot of the volume. Then, add the snapshot ID for SnapshotID under VolumeConfigurations in the task definition. For an example configuration, see Configure a volume at service creation.

Related information

Troubleshooting Amazon EBS volume attachments to Amazon ECS tasks

Use Amazon EBS volumes with Amazon ECS