AWS CLI ECS Cheatsheet

Register Task Definitions

$ aws --profile default ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://taskdef.json

Describe Task Definitions

If your service has multiple containers, you can view one container’s environment as:

aws --profile default ecs describe-task-definition --task-definition my-web-service | jq -r '.taskDefinition.containerDefinitions[] | select(.name == "web-container") | .environment'

List ECS Clusters

List ECS Clusters for a given profile:

$ aws --profile default ecs list-clusters

List ECS Services

List ECS Services for a given ECS Cluster:

$ aws --profile default ecs list-services --cluster $cluster_name

Describe ECS Service

Get the running count of containers for a given service:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-services --cluster $cluster_name --services $service_name | jq -r '.services[].runningCount'

Get the task definition revision for a given service:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-services --cluster $cluster_name --services $service_name | jq -r '.services[].taskDefinition'

Describe ECS Task States

Check if the deployment info has accepted the new deployment:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-services --cluster $cluster_name --services $service_name | jq -r '.services[].deployments'

If not, get the latest event info:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-services --cluster $cluster_name --services $service_name | jq -r '.services[].events[0]'

Grab the task id and describe the info to get the last know status:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-tasks --tasks 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --cluster $cluster_name  | jq -r '.tasks[].lastStatus'
STOPPED

Get the stop code:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-tasks --tasks 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --cluster $cluster_name   | jq -r '.tasks[].stopCode'
TaskFailedToStart

Get the stop reason:

$ aws --profile default ecs describe-tasks --tasks 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --cluster $cluster_name   | jq -r '.tasks[].stoppedReason'
Fetching secret data from SSM Parameter Store in eu-west-1: invalid parameters: /demo/dev/MY_INVALID_PARAMETER

Create ECS Service

Create a ECS Service and specifying a Capacity Provider:

$ aws --profile default ecs create-service --cluster $cluster_name --service-name $service_name --task-definition mytaskdef:1 --desired-count 1 --scheduling-strategy "REPLICA" --capacity-provider-strategy='[{"capacityProvider": "ondemand-capacity","weight": 0, "base": 1},{"capacityProvider": "spot-capacity", "weight": 100, "base": 0}]'

Update ECS Service

Update ECS Service to the latest task definition revision:

$ aws --profile default ecs update-service --cluster $cluster_name --service $service_name --task-definition $task_def

Update ECS Service to 3 replicas:

$ aws --profile default ecs update-service --cluster $cluster_name --service $service_name --desired-count 3

Update ECS Service to use Capacity Providers:

$ aws --profile default ecs update-service --cluster $cluster_name --service $service_name --capacity-provider-strategy='[{"capacityProvider": "ondemand-capacity", "weight": 0, "base": 1},{"capacityProvider": "spot-capacity", "weight": 100, "base": 0}]' --force-new-deployment