ECS Deploy App - WordPress Front & Back

A production-ready WordPress deployment on AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service) using Docker containers, showcasing modern cloud infrastructure and containerization best practices.

🚀 Overview

This project demonstrates a scalable, highly available WordPress application deployed on AWS ECS Fargate. It leverages Docker containers for consistent deployment across environments, with a focus on security, performance, and automation.

🏗️ Architecture

The deployment architecture includes:

• Container Platform: AWS ECS Fargate (serverless containers)
• Application: WordPress 6.5.5 with PHP 8.1 & Apache
• Database: Amazon RDS with RDS Proxy for connection pooling
• Storage: Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) for persistent WordPress data
• Secrets Management: AWS Secrets Manager for secure credential storage
• Logging: CloudWatch Logs for centralized log management
• Networking: VPC with proper security groups and private/public subnets

🐳 Docker Configuration

WordPress Container

The application uses the official WordPress Docker image with specific optimizations:

• Base Image: wordpress:6.5.5-php8.1-apache
• CPU: 1024 units (1 vCPU)
• Memory: 2048 MB (2 GB)
• PHP Memory Limit: 512M for optimal performance
• Port Mapping: Container port 80 → Host port 80

Container Features

• ✅ Rootless capable with configurable user permissions
• ✅ EFS integration for persistent WordPress files and media
• ✅ CloudWatch logging with automatic log group creation
• ✅ Secrets injection from AWS Secrets Manager
• ✅ Health monitoring and auto-restart capabilities

📦 Deployment

Prerequisites

• AWS Account with appropriate permissions
• AWS CLI configured
• Docker installed (for local testing)
• ECS CLI (optional, for easier deployment)

Task Definition

The project includes a production-ready ECS task definition (tasks-definition/wordpress-front.json) that defines:

{
  "family": "wordpress-front-new",
  "requiresCompatibilities": ["FARGATE"],
  "networkMode": "awsvpc",
  "cpu": "1024",
  "memory": "2048"
}

Deployment Steps

1. Register the Task Definition:

   aws ecs register-task-definition \
     --cli-input-json file://tasks-definition/wordpress-front.json

2. Create or Update ECS Service:

   aws ecs create-service \
     --cluster your-cluster-name \
     --service-name wordpress-front-service \
     --task-definition wordpress-front-new \
     --desired-count 2 \
     --launch-type FARGATE \
     --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[subnet-xxx],securityGroups=[sg-xxx],assignPublicIp=ENABLED}"

3. Deploy with Load Balancer (recommended):

   aws ecs create-service \
     --cluster your-cluster-name \
     --service-name wordpress-front-service \
     --task-definition wordpress-front-new \
     --desired-count 2 \
     --launch-type FARGATE \
     --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[subnet-xxx],securityGroups=[sg-xxx]}" \
     --load-balancers "targetGroupArn=arn:aws:elasticloadbalancing:.. .,containerName=wordpress-front,containerPort=80"

🔒 Security

Secrets Management

Database credentials are securely stored in AWS Secrets Manager and injected at runtime:

• WORDPRESS_DB_USER: Retrieved from Secrets Manager
• WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: Retrieved from Secrets Manager
• No hardcoded credentials in the codebase

Network Security

• VPC isolation with private subnets for database
• RDS Proxy for secure database connections
• Security groups restricting traffic flow
• EFS encryption in transit enabled

IAM Roles

• Execution Role: wordpress-prod-role with minimal required permissions
• Follows AWS principle of least privilege

📊 Infrastructure Components

Component	Service	Purpose
Compute	ECS Fargate	Serverless container orchestration
Database	RDS (via Proxy)	Managed MySQL/MariaDB
Storage	EFS	Persistent file storage
Secrets	Secrets Manager	Credential management
Logging	CloudWatch Logs	Centralized logging
Networking	VPC + Subnets	Network isolation

🔧 Configuration

Environment Variables

• WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: RDS Proxy endpoint
• WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: Database name (wordpressdatabase)
• PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT: Set to 512M
• ECS_RESERVED_MEMORY: 100MB reserved for system

Volume Mounts

{
  "sourceVolume": "efs-wordpress-volume",
  "containerPath": "/bitnami/wordpress"
}

📈 Scaling

The Fargate deployment supports:

• Horizontal Scaling: Increase task count for more capacity
• Auto Scaling: Configure based on CPU/Memory metrics
• Load Balancing: Distribute traffic across multiple tasks

Example auto-scaling configuration:

aws application-autoscaling register-scalable-target \
  --service-namespace ecs \
  --resource-id service/your-cluster/wordpress-front-service \
  --scalable-dimension ecs:service:DesiredCount \
  --min-capacity 2 \
  --max-capacity 10

🔍 Monitoring & Logging

CloudWatch Logs

All container logs are automatically sent to CloudWatch:

• Log Group: wordpress-front-container
• Region: eu-west-1
• Stream Prefix: wordpress-front

Viewing Logs

aws logs tail wordpress-front-container --follow

🚦 CI/CD Integration

This setup is ready for CI/CD integration with:

• GitHub Actions
• AWS CodePipeline
• Jenkins
• GitLab CI

Example GitHub Actions workflow snippet:

- name: Deploy to ECS
  run: |
    aws ecs update-service \
      --cluster your-cluster \
      --service wordpress-front-service \
      --force-new-deployment

🛠️ Local Development

Test the Docker container locally:

docker run -d \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=localhost \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_NAME=wordpress \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_USER=root \
  -e WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD=password \
  wordpress:6.5.5-php8.1-apache

📝 Task Definition Tags

• Name: wordpress-prod-task-front
• Easy identification in AWS Console
• Cost allocation tracking

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Commit your changes
4. Push to the branch
5. Create a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

🙋‍♂️ Support

For issues and questions:

• Open an issue in this repository
• Check AWS ECS documentation
• Review CloudWatch logs for troubleshooting

🔗 Useful Links

• AWS ECS Documentation
• Docker WordPress Image
• AWS Fargate Pricing
• EFS Best Practices

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Built with ❤️ using Docker and AWS ECS