AWS Fargate Launch Type for ECS Cluster: VPC Flow Logs Interface

VPC Flow Logs Interface

Question

An ECS cluster running on docker containers is launched using AWS Fargate Launch type.

The Operations Team is looking for traffic logs between each of the tasks and engaging you to collect these logs. Which is the correct interface on which VPC flow logs can be applied to meet this requirement?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answer: C.

Default networking mode for AWS Fargate launch type is awsvpc, in which each Amazon ECS task launched on the instance gets a separate ENI.

For monitoring traffic between tasks, VPC Flow Logs can be applied at the ENI of each task.

Options A, B & D is incorrect as these are invalid options on applying VPC flow logs in the case of AWS Fargate launch type.

For more information on Amazon Fargate task networking, refer to the following URL,

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/userguide/fargate-task-networking.html

Sure, I can provide a detailed explanation of the options provided and suggest the correct one.

First, let's understand some basic concepts:

  • ECS cluster: It's a logical grouping of tasks or services in ECS, which can span across multiple availability zones.
  • Task: It's the definition of a set of containers that should be scheduled together on the same instance. Tasks are the atomic unit of deployment in ECS.
  • Fargate Launch type: It's a serverless compute engine for containers that works with both ECS and EKS. It allows you to run containers without the need to manage underlying EC2 instances.
  • VPC flow logs: It's a feature that allows you to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in a VPC. You can use it for monitoring, troubleshooting, and security purposes.

Now let's review the options provided:

A. Apply VPC flow logs on the docker virtual interface to monitor traffic between each task.

This option is not correct because there is no docker virtual interface in Fargate Launch type. Fargate abstracts the underlying infrastructure, including the network interfaces, from the user.

B. Apply VPC flow logs on Amazon EC2 instance secondary ENI to monitor traffic between each task.

This option is not correct either because in Fargate Launch type, there are no EC2 instances, and therefore, no secondary ENIs.

C. Apply VPC flow logs on ENI of the Amazon ECS task to monitor traffic between each task.

This option is the correct one. When you launch a Fargate task, it gets assigned an elastic network interface (ENI) by AWS. This ENI is unique to the task and can be used to apply VPC flow logs to monitor the traffic between the containers in the task.

D. Apply VPC flow logs on Amazon EC2 instance primary ENI to monitor traffic between each task.

This option is also incorrect because, as mentioned earlier, there are no EC2 instances in Fargate Launch type.

Therefore, the correct answer is C. Apply VPC flow logs on ENI of the Amazon ECS task to monitor traffic between each task.