Tag Archives: AWS Fargate

Field Notes: Optimize your Java application for Amazon ECS with Quarkus

Post Syndicated from Sascha Moellering original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/field-notes-optimize-your-java-application-for-amazon-ecs-with-quarkus/

In this blog post, I show you an interesting approach to implement a Java-based application and compile it to a native image using Quarkus. This native image is the main application, which is containerized, and runs in an Amazon Elastic Container Service and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service cluster on AWS Fargate.

Amazon ECS is a fully managed container orchestration service, Amazon EKS is a fully managed Kubernetes service, both services support Fargate to provide serverless compute for containers. Fargate removes the need to provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per application, and improves security through application isolation by design. AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you.

Quarkus is a Supersonic Subatomic Java framework that uses OpenJDK HotSpot as well as GraalVM and over fifty different libraries like RESTEasy, Vertx, Hibernate, and Netty. In a previous blog post, I demonstrated how GraalVM can be used to optimize the size of Docker images. GraalVM is an open source, high-performance polyglot virtual machine from Oracle. I use it to compile native images ahead of time to improve startup performance, and reduce the memory consumption and file size of Java Virtual Machine (JVM)-based applications. The framework that allows ahead-of-time-compilation (AOT) is called Substrate.

Application Architecture

First, review the GitHub repository containing the demo application.

Our application is a simple REST-based Create Read Update Delete (CRUD) service that implements basic user management functionalities. All data is persisted in an Amazon DynamoDB table. Quarkus offers an extension for Amazon DynamoDB that is based on AWS SDK for Java V2. This Quarkus extension supports two different programming models: blocking access and asynchronous programming. For local development, DynamoDB Local is also supported. DynamoDB Local is the downloadable version of DynamoDB that lets you write and test applications without accessing the DynamoDB service. Instead, the database is self-contained on your computer. When you are ready to deploy your application in production, you can make a few minor changes to the code so that it uses the DynamoDB service.

The REST-functionality is located in the class UserResource which uses the JAX-RS implementation RESTEasy. This class invokes the UserService that implements the functionalities to access a DynamoDB table with the AWS SDK for Java. All user-related information is stored in a Plain Old Java Object (POJO) called User.

Building the application

To create a Docker container image that can be used in the task definition of my ECS cluster, follow these three steps: build the application, create the Docker Container Image, and push the created image to my Docker image registry.

To build the application, I used Maven with different profiles. The first profile (default profile) uses a standard build to create an uber JAR – a self-contained application with all dependencies. This is very useful if you want to run local tests with your application, because the build time is much shorter compared to the native-image build. When you run the package command, it also execute all tests, which means you need DynamoDB Local running on your workstation.

$ docker run -p 8000:8000 amazon/dynamodb-local -jar DynamoDBLocal.jar -inMemory -sharedDb

$ mvn package

The second profile uses GraalVM to compile the application into a native image. In this case, you use the native image as base for a Docker container. The Dockerfile can be found under src/main/docker/Dockerfile.native and uses a build-pattern called multi-stage build.

$ mvn package -Pnative -Dquarkus.native.container-build=true

An interesting aspect of multi-stage builds is that you can use multiple FROM statements in your Dockerfile. Each FROM instruction can use a different base image, and begins a new stage of the build. You can pick the necessary files and copy them from one stage to another, thereby limiting the number of files you have to copy. Use this feature to build your application in one stage and copy your compiled artifact and additional files to your target image. In this case, you use ubi-quarkus-native-image:20.1.0-java11 as base image and copy the necessary TLS-files (SunEC library and the certificates) and point your application to the necessary files with JVM properties.

FROM quay.io/quarkus/ubi-quarkus-native-image:20.1.0-java11 as nativebuilder
RUN mkdir -p /tmp/ssl-libs/lib \
  && cp /opt/graalvm/lib/security/cacerts /tmp/ssl-libs \
  && cp /opt/graalvm/lib/libsunec.so /tmp/ssl-libs/lib/

FROM registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/ubi-minimal
WORKDIR /work/
COPY target/*-runner /work/application
COPY --from=nativebuilder /tmp/ssl-libs/ /work/
RUN chmod 775 /work
EXPOSE 8080
CMD ["./application", "-Dquarkus.http.host=0.0.0.0", "-Djava.library.path=/work/lib", "-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/work/cacerts"]

In the second and third steps, I have to build and push the Docker image to a Docker registry of my choice which is straight forward:

$ docker build -f src/main/docker/Dockerfile.native -t

$ docker push <repo/image:tag>

Setting up the infrastructure

You’ve compiled the application to a native-image and have built a Docker image. Now, you set up the basic infrastructure consisting of an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), an Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS cluster with on AWS Fargate launch type, an Amazon DynamoDB table, and an Application Load Balancer.

Figure 1: Architecture of the infrastructure (for Amazon ECS)

Figure 1: Architecture of the infrastructure (for Amazon ECS)

Codifying your infrastructure allows you to treat your infrastructure just as code. In this case, you use the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK), an open source software development framework, to model and provision your cloud application resources using familiar programming languages. The code for the CDK application can be found in the demo application’s code repository under eks_cdk/lib/ecs_cdk-stack.ts or ecs_cdk/lib/ecs_cdk-stack.ts. Set up the infrastructure in the AWS Region us-east-1:

$ npm install -g aws-cdk // Install the CDK
$ cd ecs_cdk
$ npm install // retrieves dependencies for the CDK stack
$ npm run build // compiles the TypeScript files to JavaScript
$ cdk deploy  // Deploys the CloudFormation stack

The output of the AWS CloudFormation stack is the load balancer’s DNS record. The heart of our infrastructure is an Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS cluster with AWS Fargate launch type. The Amazon ECS cluster is set up as follows:

const cluster = new ecs.Cluster(this, "quarkus-demo-cluster", {
      vpc: vpc
    });
    
    const logging = new ecs.AwsLogDriver({
      streamPrefix: "quarkus-demo"
    })

    const taskRole = new iam.Role(this, 'quarkus-demo-taskRole', {
      roleName: 'quarkus-demo-taskRole',
      assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('ecs-tasks.amazonaws.com')
    });
    
    const taskDef = new ecs.FargateTaskDefinition(this, "quarkus-demo-taskdef", {
      taskRole: taskRole
    });
    
    const container = taskDef.addContainer('quarkus-demo-web', {
      image: ecs.ContainerImage.fromRegistry("<repo/image:tag>"),
      memoryLimitMiB: 256,
      cpu: 256,
      logging
    });
    
    container.addPortMappings({
      containerPort: 8080,
      hostPort: 8080,
      protocol: ecs.Protocol.TCP
    });

    const fargateService = new ecs_patterns.ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService(this, "quarkus-demo-service", {
      cluster: cluster,
      taskDefinition: taskDef,
      publicLoadBalancer: true,
      desiredCount: 3,
      listenerPort: 8080
    });

Cleaning up

After you are finished, you can easily destroy all of these resources with a single command to save costs.

$ cdk destroy

Conclusion

In this post, I described how Java applications can be implemented using Quarkus, compiled to a native-image, and ran using Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS on AWS Fargate. I also showed how AWS CDK can be used to set up the basic infrastructure. I hope I’ve given you some ideas on how you can optimize your existing Java application to reduce startup time and memory consumption. Feel free to submit enhancements to the sample template in the source repository or provide feedback in the comments.

We also encourage you to explore how you to optimize your Java application for AWS Lambda with Quarkus.

Field Notes provides hands-on technical guidance from AWS Solutions Architects, consultants, and technical account managers, based on their experiences in the field solving real-world business problems for customers.

The Satellite Ear Tag that is Changing Cattle Management

Post Syndicated from Karen Hildebrand original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/the-satellite-ear-tag-that-is-changing-cattle-management/

Most cattle are not raised in cities—they live on cattle stations, large open plains, and tracts of land largely unpopulated by humans. It’s hard to keep connected with the herd. Cattle don’t often carry their own mobile phones, and they don’t pay a mobile phone bill. Naturally, the areas in which cattle live, often do not have cellular connectivity or reception. But they now have one way to stay connected: a world-first satellite ear tag.

Ceres Tag co-founders Melita Smith and David Smith recognized the problem given their own farming background. David explained that they needed to know simple things to begin with, such as:

  • Where are they?
  • How many are out there?
  • What are they doing?
  • What condition are they in?
  • Are they OK?

Later, the questions advanced to:

  • Which are the higher performing animals that I want to keep?
  • Where do I start when rounding them up?
  • As assets, can I get better financing and insurance if I can prove their location, existence, and condition?

To answer these questions, Ceres Tag first had to solve the biggest challenge, and it was not to get cattle to carry their mobile phones and pay mobile phone bills to generate the revenue needed to get greater coverage. David and Melita knew they needed help developing a new method of tracking, but in a way that aligned with current livestock practices. Their idea of a satellite connected ear tag came to life through close partnership and collaboration with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. They brought expertise to the problem, and rallied together teams of experts across public and private partnerships, never accepting “that’s not been done before” as a reason to curtail their innovation.

 

Figure 1: How Ceres Tag works in practice

Thinking Big: Ceres Tag Protocol

Melita and David constructed their idea and brought the physical hardware to reality. This meant finding strategic partners to build hardware, connectivity partners that provided global coverage at a cost that was tenable to cattle operators, integrations with existing herd management platforms and a global infrastructure backbone that allowed their solution to scale. They showed resilience, tenacity and persistence that are often traits attributed to startup founders and lifelong agricultural advocates. Explaining the purpose of the product often requires some unique approaches to defining the value proposition while fundamentally breaking down existing ways of thinking about things. As David explained, “We have an internal saying, ‘As per Ceres Tag protocol …..’ to help people to see the problem through a new lens.” This persistence led to the creation of an easy to use ear tagging applicator and a two-prong smart ear tag. The ear tag connects via satellite for data transmission, providing connectivity to more than 120 countries in the world and 80% of the earth’s surface.

The Ceres Tag applicator, smart tag, and global satellite connectivity

Figure 2: The Ceres Tag applicator, smart tag, and global satellite connectivity

Unlocking the blocker: data-driven insights

With the hardware and connectivity challenges solved, Ceres Tag turned to how the data driven insights would be delivered. The company needed to select a technology partner that understood their global customer base, and what it means to deliver a low latency solution for web, mobile and API-driven solutions. David, once again knew the power in leveraging the team around him to find the best solution. The evaluation of cloud providers was led by Lewis Frost, COO, and Heidi Perrett, Data Platform Manager. Ceres Tag ultimately chose to partner with AWS and use the AWS Cloud as the backbone for the Ceres Tag Management System.

Ceres Tag conceptual diagram

Figure 3: Ceres Tag conceptual diagram

The Ceres Tag Management System houses the data and metadata about each tag, enabling the traceability of that tag throughout each animal’s life cycle. This includes verification as to whom should have access to their health records and history. Based on the nature of the data being stored and transmitted, security of the application is critical. As a startup, it was important for Ceres Tag to keep costs low, but to also to be able to scale based on growth and usage as it expands globally.

Ceres Tag is able to quickly respond to customers regardless of geography, routing traffic to the appropriate end point. They accomplish this by leveraging Amazon CloudFront as the Content Delivery Network (CDN) for traffic distribution of front-end requests and Amazon Route 53 for DNS routing. A multi-Availability Zone deployment and AWS Application Load Balancer distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, increasing the availability of your application.

Ceres Tag is using AWS Fargate to provide a serverless compute environment that matches the pay-as-you-go usage-based model. AWS also provides many advanced security features and architecture guidance that has helped to implement and evaluate best practice security posture across all of the environments. Authentication is handled by Amazon Cognito, which allows Ceres Tag to scale easily by supporting millions of users. It leverages easy-to-use features like sign-in with social identity providers, such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0.

The data captured from the ear tag on the cattle is will be ingested via AWS PrivateLink. By providing a private endpoint to access your services, AWS PrivateLink ensures your traffic is not exposed to the public internet. It also makes it easy to connect services across different accounts and VPCs to significantly simplify your network architecture. In leveraging a satellite connectivity provider running on AWS, Ceres Tag will benefit from the AWS Ground Station infrastructure leveraged by the provider in addition to the streaming IoT database.

 

Introducing queued purchases for Savings Plans

Post Syndicated from Roshni Pary original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/introducing-queued-purchases-for-savings-plans/

This blog post is contributed by Idan Maizlits, Sr. Product Manager, Savings Plans

AWS now provides the ability for you to queue purchases of Savings Plans by specifying a time, up to 3 years in the future, to carry out those purchases. This blog reviews how you can queue purchases of Savings Plans.

In November 2019, AWS launched Savings Plans. This is a new flexible pricing model that allows you to save up to 72% on Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, and AWS Lambda in exchange for making a commitment to a consistent amount of compute usage measured in dollars per hour (for example $10/hour) for a 1- or 3-year term. Savings Plans is the easiest way to save money on compute usage while providing you the flexibility to use the compute options that best fits your needs as they change.

Queueing Savings Plans allows you to plan ahead for future events. Say, you want to purchase a Savings Plan three months into the future to cover a new workload. Now, with the ability to queue plans in advance, you can easily schedule the purchase to be carried out at the exact time you expect your workload to go live. This helps you plan in advance by eliminating the need to make “just-in-time” purchases, and benefit from low prices on your future workloads from the get-go. With the ability to queue purchases, you can also enjoy uninterrupted Savings Plans coverage by scheduling renewals of your plans ahead of their expiry. This makes it even easier to save money on your overall AWS bill.

So how do queued purchases for Savings Plans work? Queued purchases are similar to regular purchases in all aspects but one – the start date. With a regular purchase, a plan goes active immediately whereas with a queued purchase, you select a date in the future for a plan to start. Up until the said future date, the Savings Plan remains in a queued state, and on the future date any upfront payments are charged and the plan goes active.

Now, let’s look at this in more detail with a couple of examples. I walk through three scenarios – a) queuing Savings Plans to cover future usage b) renewing expiring Savings Plans and c) deleting a queued Savings plan.

How do I queue a Savings Plan?

If you are planning ahead and would like to queue a Savings Plan to support future needs such as new workloads or expiring Reserved Instances, head to the Purchase Savings Plans page on the AWS Cost Management Console. Then, select the type of Savings Plan you would like to queue, including the term length, purchase commitment, and payment option.

Select the type of Savings Plan

Now, indicate the start date and time for this plan (this is the date/time at which your Savings Plan becomes active). The time you indicate is in UTC, but is also shown in your browser’s local time zone. If you are looking to replace an existing Reserved Instance, you can provide the start date and time to align with the expiration of your existing Reserved Instances. You can find the expiration time of your Reserved Instances on the EC2 Reserved Instances Console (this is in your local time zone, convert it to UTC when you queue a Savings Plan).

After you have selected the start time and date for the Savings Plan, click “Add to cart”. When you are ready to complete the purchase, click “Submit Order,” which completes the purchase.

Once you have submitted the order, the Savings Plans Inventory page lists the queued Savings Plan with a “Queued” status and that purchase will be carried out on the date and time provided.

How can I replace an expiring plan?

If you have already purchased a Savings Plan, queuing purchases allow you to renew that Savings Plan upon expiry for continuous coverage. All you have to do is head to the AWS Cost Management Console, go to the Savings Plans Inventory page, and select the Savings Plan you would like to renew. Then, click on Actions and select “Renew Savings Plan” as seen in the following image.

This action automatically queues a Savings Plan in the cart with the same configuration (as your original plan) to replace the expiring one. The start time for the plan automatically sets to one second after expiration of the old Savings Plan. All you have to do now is submit the order and you are good to go.

If you would like to renew multiple Savings Plans, select each one and click “Renew Savings Plan,” which adds them to the Cart. When you are done adding new Savings Plans, your cart lists all of the Savings Plans that you added to the order. When you are ready to submit the order, click “Submit order.”

How can I delete a queued Savings Plan?

If you have queued Savings Plans that you no longer need to purchase, or need to modify, you can do so by visiting the console. Head to the AWS Cost Management Console, select the Savings Plans Inventory page, and then select the Savings Plan you would like to delete. By selecting the Savings Plan and clicking on Actions, as seen in the following image, you can delete the queued purchase if you need to make changes or if you no longer need the plan to be purchased. If you need the Savings Plan at a different commitment value, you can make a new queued purchase.

Conclusion

AWS Savings Plans allow you to save up to 72% of On-demand prices by committing to a 1- or 3- year term. Starting today, with the ability to queue purchases of Savings Plans, you can easily plan for your future needs or renew expiring Savings Plan ahead of time, all with just a few clicks. In this blog, I walked through various scenarios. As you can see, it’s even easier to save money with AWS Savings Plans by queuing your purchases to meet your future needs and continue benefiting from uninterrupted coverage.

Click here to learn more about queuing purchases of Savings Plans and visit the AWS Cost Management Console to get started.

Fundbox: Simplifying Ways to Query and Analyze Data by Different Personas

Post Syndicated from Annik Stahl original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/fundbox-simplifying-ways-to-query-and-analyze-data-by-different-personas/

Fundbox is a leading technology platform focused on disrupting the $21 trillion B2B commerce market by building the world’s first B2B payment and credit network. With Fundbox, sellers of all sizes can quickly increase average order volumes (AOV) and improve close rates by offering more competitive net terms and payment plans to their SMB buyers. With heavy investments in machine learning and the ability to quickly analyze the transactional data of SMB’s, Fundbox is reimagining B2B payments and credit products in new category-defining ways.

Learn how how the company simplified the way different personas in the organization query and analyze data by building a self-service data orchestration platform. The platform architecture is entirely serverless, which simplifies the ability to scale and adopt to unpredictable demand. The platform was built using AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Fargate, and other AWS Serverless managed services.

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