Amazon Web Services (AWS), a joint venture with Docker, allows developers to quickly and easily switch between running containers in a Docker Desktop environment and Amazon’s Elastic Container Service.
The announcement was made by the two companies at the recent AWS Cloud Container Conference.
Docker Compose and Docker Desktop are now available to developers to deploy applications on Amazon ECS or the AWS Fargate serverless computing engine. This new functionality simplifies the process for deploying and managing containers on AWS from a local Docker development environment.
It was difficult to take a local Docker Compose and run it on Amazon ECS. This was due to constructs in Amazon ECS, which were not part the Docker Compose specification. However, this was necessary for the application in AWS. AWS and Docker collaborated to create a simplified workflow that allows developers quickly and easily to switch between running containers in a local Docker Desktop environment and Amazon ECS. The companies stated that this allows developers to run highly secure and scalable production apps in Amazon ECS.
Scott Johnston, Docker CEO, stated that this is a significant step towards giving developers the best experience building and sharing cloud-native apps using Docker and Amazon ECS. This experience allows developers to work locally while transferring the same experience to a production-scale cloud service using Amazon ECS. This reduces the amount of knowledge required and speeds up their time to production.
Developers will be able use Docker CLI/Docker Compose to run multi-container applications locally, and then deploy them from Docker Hub to Amazon ECS.
Deepak Singh, VP, Compute Services at AWS, stated that this accelerated path to modern app development and deployment allows customers more time to focus on the unique value and less on how to deploy to cloud.
This “accelerated path” will allow developers leverage their Docker knowledge and the Docker Compose apps to accelerate their ability deploy in the cloud. This was the core problem Docker addressed with its new workflow. There is also native integration between Docker, Amazon ECS, which allows customers more easily target the Amazon service for multi-container deployments. Docker Compose is a popular tool for multi-container application definition. It is open-source and has open governance. This means that the wider community of existing and new users will have access to the specification’s future direction, as well as Docker Compose-based tools.
Singh stated that Docker is a popular tool for building containers. “We’re excited to work with Docker in order to make it easier for developers to build and deploy containerized applications to AWS.” Customers can now deploy containerized applications directly from their Docker environment to Amazon ECS.
