Deploy docker on AWS beanstalk with docker composer

Question

I'm trying to deploy multiple node.js micro services on AWS beanstalk, and I want them to be deployed on the same instance. It's my first time to deploy multiple services, so there're some failures I need someone to help me out. So, I tried to package them in a docker container first. Meanwhile I'm using docker composer to manage the structure. It's up and running locally in my virtual machine, but when I deployed it on to beanstalk, I met a few problems.

What I know:

1. I know I have to choose to deploy as multi-container docker.
2. The best practice to manage multiple node.js services is using docker composer.
3. I need a dockerrun.aws.json for node.js app.
4. I need to create task definition for that ecs instance.

Where I have problems:

1. I can only find dockerrun.aws.json and task_definition.json template for php, so I can't verify if my configuration for node.js in those two json files are in correct shape.
2. It seems like docker-compose.yml, dockerrun.aws.json and task_definition.json are doing similar jobs. I must keep task_definition, but do I still need dockerrun.aws.json?
3. I tried to run the task in ecs, but it stopped right away. How can I check the log for the task?

I got:

No ecs task definition (or empty definition file) found in environment

because my task will always stop immediately. If I can check the log, it will be much easier for me to do trouble shooting.

Here is my task_definition.json:

{
  "requiresAttributes": [],
  "taskDefinitionArn": "arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:231440562752:task-definition/ComposerExample:1",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "revision": 1,
  "containerDefinitions": [
    {
      "volumesFrom": [],
      "memory": 100,
      "extraHosts": null,
      "dnsServers": null,
      "disableNetworking": null,
      "dnsSearchDomains": null,
      "portMappings": [
        {
          "hostPort": 80,
          "containerPort": 80,
          "protocol": "tcp"
        }
      ],
      "hostname": null,
      "essential": true,
      "entryPoint": null,
      "mountPoints": [
        {
          "containerPath": "/usr/share/nginx/html",
          "sourceVolume": "webdata",
          "readOnly": true
        }
      ],
      "name": "nginxexpressredisnodemon_nginx_1",
      "ulimits": null,
      "dockerSecurityOptions": null,
      "environment": [],
      "links": null,
      "workingDirectory": null,
      "readonlyRootFilesystem": null,
      "image": "nginxexpressredisnodemon_nginx",
      "command": null,
      "user": null,
      "dockerLabels": null,
      "logConfiguration": null,
      "cpu": 99,
      "privileged": null
    }
  ],
  "volumes": [
    {
      "host": {
        "sourcePath": "/ecs/webdata"
      },
      "name": "webdata"
    }
  ],
  "family": "ComposerExample"
}

Answer 1

I had a similar problem and it turned out that I archived the containing folder directly in my Archive.zip file, thus giving me this structure in the Archive.zip file:

RootFolder
    - Dockerrun.aws.json
    - Other files...

It turned out that by archiving only the RootFolder's content (and not the folder itself), Amazon Beanstalk recognized the ECS Task Definition file.

Hope this helps.