Traefik v2 with Lets Encrypt on Amazon’s Elastic Container Service (ECS)

In this post, we will learn how to setup Traefik v2 on ECS with built in LetsEncrypt SSL.

Before I start, I would like to mention that Traefik is awesome reverse proxy & load balancer.

Steps which we will follow:

Build docker image for Traefik on our local machine
Push it on Amazon’s Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
Use pushed image in Task Definition to run Service & Task for Traefik.

Build docker image for Traefik on our local machine

Dockerfile

FROM      alekitto/traefik-alpine

COPY      traefik_ecs.yaml /etc/traefik/traefik.yaml
RUN touch /etc/traefik/acme.json
RUN chmod +x /etc/traefik/acme.json

traefik_ecs.yaml

## Static configuration
entryPoints:
  web:
    address: ":80"
    http:
      redirections:
        entryPoint:
          to: websecure
          scheme: https

  websecure:
    address: ":443"
    http:
      tls:
        certResolver: myresolver

api:
  dashboard: true

providers:
  ecs:
    exposedByDefault: true
    autoDiscoverClusters: false
    clusters:
    - YOUR_ECS_CLUSTER_NAME
    region: YOUR_AWS_REGION
    accessKeyID: "YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID"
    secretAccessKey: "YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY"

certificatesResolvers:
  myresolver:
    # Enable ACME (Let's Encrypt): automatic SSL.
    acme:
      email: "YOUR_EMAIL"
      storage: "acme.json"

      # CA server to use.
      # Uncomment the line to use Let's Encrypt's staging server,
      # leave commented to go to prod.
      #
      # Optional
      # Default: "https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory"
      #
      # caServer: "https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory"
      # Use a TLS-ALPN-01 ACME challenge.
      #
      # Optional (but recommended)
      #
      # tlsChallenge:
      httpChallenge:

        # EntryPoint to use for the HTTP-01 challenges.
        #
        # Required
        #
        entryPoint: web

Now follow these steps to build docker image and push on Elastic Container Registry(ECR)

* Install AWS CLI https://aws.amazon.com/cli/ to execute these steps

export AWS_REGION='YOUR_AWS_REGION'

export AWS_ACCOUNT_ID='YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID'

export ECR_REPO_NAME='YOUR_REPO_NAME'

(aws ecr create-repository --repository-name $ECR_REPO_NAME) || true

eval $(aws ecr get-login --no-include-email --region eu-central-1)

docker build -t $ECR_REPO_NAME:\latest .

docker tag $ECR_REPO_NAME:\latest $AWS_ACCOUNT_ID.dkr.ecr.$AWS_REGION.amazonaws.com/$ECR_REPO_NAME:\latest

docker push $AWS_ACCOUNT_ID.dkr.ecr.$AWS_REGION.amazonaws.com/$ECR_REPO_NAME:\latest

Create task definition to run task from image pushed on ECR

DOCKER LABELS

traefik.http.routers.dashboard.middlewares auth

traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users anilmaurya:$apr1$1ktoln283782378923T43el/

traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule Host(`example.com`) && (PathPrefix(`/api`) || PathPrefix(`/dashboard`))

traefik.http.routers.dashboard.service api@internal

Generate token for basic auth from this site https://hostingcanada.org/htpasswd-generator/

Create one service and run this traefik task definition, after traefik is running we need to add Docker labels to the containers running in same cluster.

Example Docker labels:

traefik.http.routers.app.rule   Host(`example.com`)

traefik.http.services.app.loadbalancer.server.port  3000

Conclusion

Github: source code link.

App can be accessed on https://example.com with SSL certificate from Lets Encrypt

traefik dashboard can be accessed on https://example.com/dashboard

** Replace example with your DNS.

One thought on “Traefik v2 with Lets Encrypt on Amazon’s Elastic Container Service (ECS)”

Sylwia Swierczek says:

August 27, 2020 at 16:22

Really helpful article, thanks for adding pictures – right now I know step-by-step what to do. Thanks for sharing this instruction.