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  5. Build a Container

Build a Container

In this tutorial, we’ll use JavaScript to build and deploy a simple container using the @pulumi/cloud framework. This example can be deployed to AWS (on either Fargate or ECS) or to Azure (on ACI). By authoring our infrastructure using the @pulumi/cloud framework, it can be deployed transparently to either cloud (with support for other clouds on the roadmap). The code for this tutorial is available on GitHub.

Prerequisites

  1. Install Pulumi
  2. Configure AWS and/or Azure credentials

Serve an HTML file in an NGINX container

  1. Make sure Docker is installed and running.

  2. Run pulumi new:

    $ mkdir container-quickstart && cd container-quickstart
    $ pulumi new javascript
    
  3. Replace the contents of index.js with the following:

    const cloud = require("@pulumi/cloud");
    
    let service = new cloud.Service("pulumi-nginx", {
        containers: {
            nginx: {
                build: "./app",
                memory: 128,
                ports: [{ port: 80 }],
            },
        },
        replicas: 2,
    });
    
    // export just the hostname property of the container frontend
    exports.url = service.defaultEndpoint.apply(e => `http://${e.hostname}`);
    

    This example uses cloud.Service, which is a high-level, convenient interface for building containers and provisioning a container service on your target cloud.

  4. Create a subfolder app with the following files:

    • Add the following file as Dockerfile:

      FROM nginx
      COPY index.html /usr/share/nginx/html
      
    • Add the following file as index.html:

      <html>
        <head><title>Hello World</title><meta charset="UTF-8"></head>
      <body><p>Hello containers!</p><p>Made with ❤️ with <a href="">Pulumi</a></p></body>
      </html>
      
  5. Ensure you have the following directory structure:

    index.js
    Pulumi.yaml
    app/
      Dockerfile
      index.html
    
  6. Install the @pulumi/cloud NPM package an one or both of the platform-specific implementations depending on which platform you will deploy to:

    $ npm install --save @pulumi/cloud  @pulumi/cloud-aws @pulumi/cloud-azure
    
  7. If you are running on AWS, configure the provider, the region and whether to use Fargate:

    $ pulumi config set cloud:provider aws
    $ pulumi config set aws:region us-east-1
    $ pulumi config set cloud-aws:useFargate true
    

    If you are running on Azure, configure the provider and the location:

    $ pulumi config set cloud:provider azure
    $ pulumi config set cloud-azure:location WestUS2
    
  8. Preview and deploy changes via pulumi up. This will take a few minutes. Pulumi automatically builds and provisions a container registry (ECR or ACR), builds the Docker container, and pushed the image into the repository. This all happens automatically and does not require manual configuration on your part.

    $ pulumi up
    Previewing update of stack 'container-quickstart-dev'
    Previewing changes:
    ...
    Diagnostics:
        ...
        global: global
        info: Building container image 'pulum-164fa748-container': context=./app
    ...
    Do you want to perform this update? yes
    Updating stack 'container-quickstart-dev'
    ...
    
    ---outputs:---
    url: "http://42dc3ff4-ac65d11-86a100b6e1d7f210.elb.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
    
    info: 19 changes performed:
        + 19 resources created
    Update duration: 3m53.44141303s
    
  9. View the endpoint URL and run curl:

    $ pulumi stack output
    Current stack outputs (1)
        OUTPUT                  VALUE
        url                     42dc3ff4-ac65d11-86a100b6e1d7f210.elb.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
    
    $ curl $(pulumi stack output url)
    <html><head>
        <title>Hello world</title><meta charset="UTF-8">
    </head>
    <body><p>Hello, containers!</p><p>Made with ❤️ with <a href="https://pulumi.com">Pulumi</a></p>
    </body></html>
    
  10. To view the runtime logs from the container, use the pulumi logs command. To get a log stream, use pulumi logs --follow.

    $ pulumi logs --follow
    Collecting logs for stack container-quickstart-dev since 2018-05-22T14:25:46.000-07:00.
    2018-05-22T15:33:22.057-07:00[                  pulumi-nginx] 172.31.13.248 - - [22/May/2018:22:33:22 +0000]
        "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 189 "-" "curl/7.54.0" "-"
    

Clean up

Before moving on, tear down the resources that are part of your stack to avoid incurring any charges.

  1. Run pulumi destroy to tear down all resources. You'll be prompted to make sure you really want to delete these resources. A destroy operation may take some time, since Pulumi waits for the resources to finish shutting down before it considers the destroy operation to be complete.
  2. To delete the stack itself, run pulumi stack rm. Note that this command deletes all deployment history from the Pulumi Service.

Next steps

For an end-to-end application also includes serverless functions, see the Serverless and Container Thumbnailer tutorial.

For an example application that connects two containers, see the Voting App TypeScript sample.