Terraform ECS Fargate API Gateway

A Terraform template for provisioning API stacks on AWS ECS Fargate fronted by API Gateway and NLB.

The templates are designed to be customized. The optional components can be removed by simply deleting the .tf file.

The templates are used for managing infrastructure concerns and, as such, the templates deploy a default backend docker image. We recommend using the fargate CLI for managing application concerns like deploying your actual application images and environment variables on top of this infrastructure. The fargate CLI can be used to deploy applications from your laptop or in CI/CD pipelines.

fargate-create

We recommend using the fargate-create CLI to scaffold new projects based on this template. fargate-create will download this template, update it based on environment, and add files that make it easy to test your app locally and then deploy to the cloud using fargate CLI.

install

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

create an input vars file (fargate-create.tfvars)

# app/env to scaffold
app = "my-app"
environment = "dev"

container_port = "8080"
replicas = "1"
region = "us-east-1"
aws_profile = "default"
saml_role = "admin"
domain = "api.app.example.com"
zone = "app.example.com"
vpc = "vpc-123"
private_subnets = "subnet-123,subnet-456"
secrets_saml_users = []
tags = {
  application   = "my-app"
  environment   = "dev"
  team          = "my-team"
  customer      = "my-customer"
  contact-email = "me@example.com"
}

$ fargate-create -f fargate-create.tfvars -t git@github.com:turnerlabs/terraform-ecs-fargate-apigateway

The template can also be used standalone without fargate-create.

Components

base

These components are shared by all environments.

Name	Description	Optional
main.tf	AWS provider, output
state.tf	S3 bucket backend for storing Terraform remote state
ecr.tf	ECR repository for application (all environments share)
dns.tf	Route53 zone for DNS (all environments share)	Yes

env/dev

These components are for a specific environment. There should be a corresponding directory for each environment that is needed.

Name	Description	Optional
main.tf	Terrform remote state, AWS provider, output
api-gateway.tf	Regional API Gateway proxy
api-usage-plans.tf	API Gateway Usage Plan	Yes
autoscale-perf.tf	Performance-based auto scaling	Yes
autoscale-time.tf	Time-based auto scaling	Yes
cert.tf	ACM Certificate to enable HTTPS (with auto-validation)
cicd.tf	IAM user that can be used by CI/CD systems	Yes
dns.tf	Registers a custom domain name for use with AWS API Gateway
dashboard.tf	CloudWatch dashboard: CPU, memory, and HTTP-related metrics	Yes
ecs.tf	ECS Cluster, Service, Task Definition, ecsTaskExecutionRole, CloudWatch Log Group
ecs-event-stream.tf	Cloudwatch dashboard for ECS events	yes
logs-logzio.tf	Ship container logs to logz.io	Yes
nlb.tf	NLB, Target Group, Listener
nsg.tf	NSG for NLB and Task
role.tf	Application Role for container
secretsmanager.tf	Add a Secrets Manager secret with a CMK KMS key. Also gives app role and ECS task definition role access to read secrets from Secrets Manager	Yes
ssm-parameters.tf	Add a CMK KMS key for use with SSM Parameter Store. Also gives ECS task definition role access to read secrets from parameter store.	Yes
waf.tf	WAF Regional Web ACL	Yes

Usage

Typically, the base Terraform will only need to be run once, and then should only need changes very infrequently. After the base is built, each environment can be built.

# Move into the base directory
$ cd base

# Sets up Terraform to run
$ terraform init

# Executes the Terraform run
$ terraform apply

# Now, move into the dev environment
$ cd ../env/dev

# Sets up Terraform to run
$ terraform init

# Executes the Terraform run
$ terraform apply

Important (after initial terraform apply)

The generated base .tfstate is not stored in the remote state S3 bucket. Ensure the base .tfstate is checked into your infrastructure repo. The default Terraform .gitignore generated by GitHub will ignore all .tfstate files; you'll need to modify this!

Additional Information

• Base README

• Environment dev README