Docker Deployment Guide – How to Deploy Containers to the Cloud with AWS Lightsail

Containers have taken the software world by storm in recent years, and for good reason. By packaging an application together with its dependencies in a lightweight, portable, and isolated environment, containers provide a number of compelling benefits:

• Consistency: Containers encapsulate an application and its dependencies in a self-contained unit that can reliably run in any environment, from a developer‘s laptop to a production cluster. This eliminates the "works on my machine" problem caused by configuration drift between environments.

• Portability: Container images are portable artifacts that can be easily shipped around and deployed on any platform that supports the container runtime. This enables hybrid and multi-cloud deployments and avoids vendor lock-in.

• Efficiency: Because containers share the host operating system kernel and use a layered filesystem, they are much more lightweight and resource-efficient than traditional virtual machines. You can run many containers on a single host, driving higher server utilization and lower infrastructure costs.

• Scalability: Containers are designed to be scaled out across a cluster of machines to handle increasing load. When combined with an orchestration platform like Kubernetes or Amazon ECS, you can automatically scale your application based on metrics like CPU usage or request volume.

According to a recent Cloud Native Computing Foundation survey, container adoption increased to 84% in 2019, up from 73% in 2018. The same survey found that 41% of respondents are running more than 250 containers in production, with 12% running more than 5,000.

As containers have gone mainstream, so too has the need to deploy them to the cloud for production workloads. According to Flexera‘s 2020 State of the Cloud Report, 50% of enterprises spend more than $1.2 million annually on public cloud, and adoption of public cloud continues to grow rapidly across all provider platforms.

In the cloud provider market, Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to lead in both adoption and revenue. Gartner estimates AWS‘s market share at 45% in 2021, more than Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud combined. For developers and teams looking to deploy containers on AWS, there are a number of managed services to choose from.

One of the simplest and most cost-effective services for deploying containers on AWS is Amazon Lightsail. Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) platform that offers compute, storage, and networking resources in a simple bundle with predictable pricing. You can think of it like an all-in-one developer platform built on top of core AWS building blocks like EC2 instances and EBS volumes.

Deploying containers on Amazon Lightsail

To deploy a containerized application on Amazon Lightsail, you‘ll first need to create a new Lightsail instance. Lightsail offers 5 Linux/Unix instance types and 4 Windows instance types. For this guide we‘ll use a Linux instance, but the steps are similar for Windows.

When creating a new instance, you‘ll need to select your instance image, which is the base operating system and software for your instance. Lightsail offers a number of Linux distributions to choose from, including Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and FreeBSD. You can also use a custom image based on an instance snapshot.

Next, you‘ll need to choose your instance plan, which determines the specs of the virtual server that will host your container. Lightsail offers 6 instance plans with varying combinations of vCPU, memory, storage, and data transfer allowances:

Instance Plan	vCPU	Memory (GB)	SSD Storage (GB)	Transfer (TB)	Price (USD/mo)
$3.50	1 vCPU	0.5 GB	20 GB	1 TB	$3.50
$5	1 vCPU	1 GB	40 GB	2 TB	$5
$10	1 vCPU	2 GB	60 GB	3 TB	$10
$20	2 vCPU	4 GB	80 GB	4 TB	$20
$40	4 vCPU	8 GB	160 GB	5 TB	$40
$80	8 vCPU	16 GB	320 GB	6 TB	$80

For testing and development, the $3.50 or $5 instance plans are sufficient to run a simple containerized application or microservice. For production deployments, you‘ll likely want to use one of the larger plans for improved performance and availability.

Once you‘ve selected your instance image and plan, give your instance a unique name and click "Create". Lightsail will provision your instance, which typically takes less than a minute. Once it‘s ready, your instance will be assigned a public IP address that you can use to connect to it over SSH. You can also use the browser-based SSH client in the Lightsail console.

With your Lightsail instance provisioned, the next step is to install Docker, the popular container runtime. The exact steps will vary depending on your instance‘s operating system, but for an Amazon Linux 2 instance, you can install Docker with the following commands:

sudo amazon-linux-extras install docker
sudo service docker start
sudo usermod -a -G docker ec2-user

These commands will install Docker from Amazon‘s extras repository, start the Docker service, and add the ec2-user (the default user for Amazon Linux) to the docker group so you can run Docker commands without sudo.

With Docker installed, you‘re ready to pull your container image and run it on the Lightsail instance. Let‘s say you‘ve built a simple web application using the Python Flask framework and packaged it into a Docker image. You can pull the image from a public registry like Docker Hub with:

docker pull myusername/myapp:latest

Then, run the container with:

docker run -d -p 80:5000 --name myapp myusername/myapp:latest

This command runs the container in detached mode (-d), maps port 5000 inside the container (which Flask listens on by default) to port 80 on the host, and gives it a friendly name (myapp).

Your containerized application is now running on the Lightsail instance, but to make it accessible to the public internet, you‘ll need to configure the instance‘s firewall to allow traffic on port 80. In the Lightsail console, go to your instance‘s "Networking" tab and add a new rule to allow TCP traffic on port 80.

With the firewall configured, you can now access your containerized application from a web browser using the instance‘s public IP address.

Managing and monitoring containers on Lightsail

Running a single container on a single Lightsail instance is fine for development and testing, but in production, you‘ll likely want to run multiple container instances to ensure high availability and scalability. You‘ll also want to collect logs and metrics from your running containers to monitor performance and troubleshoot issues.

Lightsail makes it easy to scale the number of instances in your deployment up or down from the console or API. In the console, you can simply adjust the "Desired count" slider under the "Capacity" tab to add or remove instances:

As you scale out, Lightsail automatically distributes container instances across availability zones to maximize fault tolerance. Lightsail also includes built-in load balancing to route traffic evenly across all healthy instances.

For monitoring, Lightsail automatically collects and aggregates logs from your running containers and displays them in the console. You can view live logs from all container instances in real-time, or search and filter historical logs:

Lightsail also includes a number of built-in metrics that you can use to monitor CPU, memory, and network usage for your container instances. Metrics are displayed as graphs in the Lightsail console, and you can set alarms to notify you when metrics exceed defined thresholds.

Simplifying container deployments with Lightsail

As a full-stack developer, I know firsthand how challenging it can be to deploy and manage containerized applications, especially when you‘re just getting started with containers and microservices. With so many moving parts – the container runtime, orchestration framework, virtual machine instances, load balancers, monitoring tools, etc. – it can be overwhelming to piece together a production-grade container deployment from scratch.

This is where Amazon Lightsail really shines. By abstracting away the underlying infrastructure and providing an intuitive interface for deploying, scaling, and monitoring containers, Lightsail dramatically simplifies the process of running containers in the cloud.

Instead of having to provision EC2 instances, configure ECS clusters and tasks, set up Application Load Balancers, and wire up CloudWatch logging and metrics, with Lightsail you can deploy a containerized application with just a few clicks or API calls. Lightsail handles all the heavy lifting under the hood, so you can focus on writing code and shipping features.

But simplicity doesn‘t mean sacrificing power or control. Because Lightsail is built on top of industry-leading AWS technologies, you still get production-grade availability, durability, and security out of the box. And if you outgrow Lightsail, you can easily graduate to using the underlying AWS services directly.

Beyond Lightsail: Additional AWS container services

While Lightsail is a great choice for deploying containers on AWS, especially for developers and small teams, there are several other AWS services that can be used for running containers in the cloud. Here‘s a quick overview:

Service	Description
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)	Managed container orchestration service that supports Docker
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)	Managed Kubernetes service for running containers
AWS Fargate	Serverless compute engine for containers that works with ECS and EKS
Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)	Fully-managed Docker container registry
AWS App Runner	Fully managed service for building and running containerized web apps

The main differences between these services are the orchestration layer and management model. ECS uses its own orchestration engine and integrates deeply with other AWS services, while EKS provides a fully-managed Kubernetes control plane. Fargate is a serverless option that eliminates the need to manage cluster instances yourself. And App Runner is the simplest option, providing a fully-managed service for running web apps packaged as containers.

So which service should you choose? It depends on your specific needs and requirements. If you‘re already using Docker and don‘t need the advanced features of Kubernetes, ECS is a good choice. If you want to use Kubernetes but don‘t want to manage the control plane yourself, EKS is the way to go. If you want to run containers without managing any infrastructure at all, Fargate or App Runner may be the best fit.

Ultimately, the beauty of containers is that they provide a consistent, portable unit of deployment across all these services. You can start with Lightsail to get up and running quickly, then migrate to ECS, EKS, or even on-premises Kubernetes clusters as your needs evolve, all without changing your application code.

Conclusion

As containers continue to gain adoption and become the default way to package and deploy applications in the cloud, developers need simple yet powerful tools to streamline the process of running containers in production. Amazon Lightsail is a great option for developers looking to deploy containerized applications on AWS without the overhead of managing infrastructure or complex orchestration frameworks.

By providing an intuitive interface and fully-managed service for deploying, scaling, and monitoring containers, Lightsail makes it easy to get started with containers in the cloud. And because it‘s built on proven AWS technologies, you can be confident that your applications will be secure, reliable, and performant.

Whether you‘re a seasoned developer looking to simplify your container workflows or just getting started with containers and cloud-native development, I encourage you to give Amazon Lightsail a try. With its generous free tier and low, predictable pricing, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

To learn more about deploying containers on Lightsail, check out these resources:

• Lightsail Containers documentation
• AWS containers portal
• Deploying a MEAN stack app on Amazon Lightsail Containers
• CI/CD pipeline for Amazon Lightsail Containers with AWS CodePipeline

You can also find plenty of tutorials, guides, and case studies on the AWS Containers Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/

Best of luck on your container journey!

— John Doe, Senior Full-stack Developer & AWS Container Expert