How do I deploy updated Docker images to Amazon ECS tasks?

Question

What is the right approach to make my Amazon ECS tasks update their Docker images, once said images have been updated in the corresponding registry?

Answer 1

Registering a new task definition and updating the service to use the new task definition is the approach recommended by AWS. The easiest way to do this is to:

1. Navigate to Task Definitions
2. Select the correct task
3. Choose create new revision
4. If you're already pulling the latest version of the container image with something like the :latest tag, then just click Create. Otherwise, update the version number of the container image and then click Create.
5. Expand Actions
6. Choose Update Service (twice)
7. Then wait for the service to be restarted

This tutorial has more detail and describes how the above steps fit into an end-to-end product development process.

Full disclosure: This tutorial features containers from Bitnami and I work for Bitnami. However the thoughts expressed here are my own and not the opinion of Bitnami.