Scalable Web App on ECS Fargate with Terraform

Level:Intermediate

Time:2-3 hours

Cost:medium

Works locally:No

Cloud creds:Yes

Cleanup:No

Reviewed:2026-05-30

Validation:terraform fmt -check

Terraform ECS Fargate ECR VPC AWS

Overview

Terraform ECS/Fargate infrastructure sample.

What You Will Build

Outcome Plan/apply evidence plus destroy proof

Tools used Terraform, ECS, Fargate, ECR, VPC, AWS

Best fit Intermediate - 2-3 hours

Architecture Diagram

Student workstation Repository files IaC plan AWS account Validation proof

Prerequisites

• Install or review: Terraform, ECS, Fargate, ECR, VPC, AWS.
• Use your own cloud account credentials and keep them out of commits.
• This project expects cloud resources, so verify budget alerts and cleanup first.
• Open the safety guide before running commands that create infrastructure.

Credentials And Cost Warning

Cost and credential stance

Cost risk is medium. Cloud target: AWS. Cloud credentials needed: Yes. Always use your own account, never commit secrets, and confirm cleanup before creating paid infrastructure.

Step-By-Step Lab

Use this flow before you run commands:

1. Read the cost and credential warning above.
2. Review the validation, troubleshooting, cleanup, and portfolio proof sections below.
3. Follow the original project guide preserved near the bottom of this page.
4. Return to the validation and cleanup checks before you capture portfolio evidence.

Validation Checks

Run the project validation command before and after meaningful changes:

terraform fmt -check

Troubleshooting

• Run terraform fmt -check first so local tooling issues are visible early.
• If a command fails, check tool versions, working directory, and required environment variables.
• For cloud failures, confirm account identity, region, quotas, and least-privilege IAM.

Cleanup

No dedicated cleanup command was detected in the project README. Treat this as a warning: before provisioning anything, write down the exact delete, destroy, or rollback steps for your environment.

Portfolio Proof

• Validation command output: terraform fmt -check
• Screenshot or terminal proof: Plan/apply evidence plus destroy proof
• Notes explaining what changed, what failed, and how you fixed it
• Cleanup evidence, especially for cloud or Kubernetes resources

Original Project Guide

The original README content is preserved here for lab-specific commands and context. Headings are intentionally demoted so the page outline stays focused on the standard lab flow.

Overview

This project demonstrates how to deploy a fully containerized web application using AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) with Fargate, Elastic Container Registry (ECR), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) using Terraform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

Project Architecture

The application follows this architecture:

• Dockerized Application: A web application (Node.js/Python/Go) is packaged into a Docker container.
• Amazon ECR: Stores the container image for deployment.
• Amazon ECS (Fargate): Runs the containerized application in a serverless environment.
• VPC Configuration: Ensures secure networking with private and public subnets.
• Application Load Balancer (ALB): Distributes traffic to running ECS tasks.
• ECS Tasks & Services: Define how the container runs and scales dynamically.

🛡️ 2026 DevSecOps Enhancements (What You Will Learn)

This repository demonstrates a foundational ECS Fargate deployment via Terraform. In a 2026 DevSecOps context, we emphasize two critical networking and IAM upgrades:

1. Private Networking (VPC Endpoints): Pulling images from ECR or writing logs to CloudWatch across the public internet is a security vulnerability and incurs NAT Gateway charges. Modern architectures utilize AWS PrivateLink (VPC Endpoints) to ensure sensitive container traffic never leaves the internal AWS backbone.
2. IAM Task vs. Execution Roles: Strict differentiation between IAM roles is enforced. The Task Execution Role is scoped purely to allow the ECS agent to pull images and write logs, while the Task Role is granted exclusively to the application code itself for interacting with AWS services (e.g., S3 or DynamoDB), enforcing least privilege boundaries.

Prerequisites

Ensure you have the following installed:

• AWS CLI
• Terraform
• Docker
• AWS Account with necessary IAM permissions

Setup Instructions

Step 1: Clone the Repository and Initialize Terraform

git clone <repo-url>
cd <repo-directory>
terraform init

Step 2: Build and Push Docker Image to ECR

#### Authenticate AWS CLI
aws configure

#### Build Docker image
docker build -t my-web-app .

Terraform will handle the creation of the ECR repository and the image push. Ensure Terraform applies before running the next command.

#### Authenticate Docker with ECR
aws ecr get-login-password --region <aws-region> | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin <aws-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<aws-region>.amazonaws.com

#### Tag and push to ECR
docker tag my-web-app:latest <aws-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<aws-region>.amazonaws.com/my-web-app:latest
docker push <aws-account-id>.dkr.ecr.<aws-region>.amazonaws.com/my-web-app:latest

Step 3: Apply Terraform Configuration

terraform apply -auto-approve

This will:

• Provision an ECS Cluster and Fargate Task Definition
• Deploy the VPC, Security Groups, and Subnets
• Configure an Application Load Balancer (ALB)
• Set up the ECS Service with Auto Scaling

Step 4: Access the Application

• Retrieve the ALB DNS name:

  terraform output alb_dns_name

• Open the ALB URL in your browser to access the application.

Bonus Enhancements

• Implement CI/CD using Terraform Cloud or GitHub Actions for automated deployments.
• Enable CloudWatch Logs for monitoring and debugging.
• Use Secrets Manager for managing sensitive environment variables.

Conclusion

This setup provides a highly scalable, cost-effective, and secure containerized web application deployed on AWS using Terraform for Infrastructure as Code. The architecture is fully managed, ensuring ease of maintenance and auto-scaling capabilities.

Happy Deploying! 🚀

Source Files On GitHub

Use the guide first.

The full learning flow stays on this page. Open GitHub only when a step asks you to inspect code, fork the lab, or download source assets.

Read safety guide Open project source