Tracing and Observing AWS ECS
Tags: ecs, containers, observability
Published: 2022-09-08 06:02:02

---
title: Tracing and Observing AWS ECS
published: true
description: Application containerization has revolutionized the digital world as we know it. This post dives into how to trace and observe AWS ECS 
tags: ecs, containers, observability
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qp1m1zu0pkro3oidnce9.png
---
It’s no secret that application containerization has revolutionized the digital world as we know it by providing a transient gateway into elastic infrastructure that can scale and grow as needed. Where traditional virtualization was all about creating a single homogenous entity, containers are self-contained units of software, able to run in just about any environment, making them extremely portable.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nb36x5n7olh4e4msa1eq.png)

Like with all excellent adventures, there are a few things we need to prepare before we begin our journey. Have an AWS account set up and at least one ECS cluster deployed—extra points for also having a few Lambdas or other traceable services.

The other thing you will need is a Lumigo account that is connected to your AWS. It’s easy to do, free, and only takes a few minutes. 

To get started, head to the Lumigo signup page and create your account by clicking the “Continue with Google” button, or by entering an email and password. The next step is then to connect your AWS account by clicking the “Connect to AWS” button. 

Once the AWS connection process is complete, Lumigo will automatically start scanning for services and applications to trace from the connected account. This process will identify resources of interest and will start tracing them in your Lumigo instance. 

Give it a few moments to complete the initial scans, then explore your newly created Lumigo account to see which applications have been observed and discovered. Clicking into the ECS tab from your Lumigo instance will display any clusters that Lumigo has detected from your connected AWS account. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rdcxfdsoa9e98yj5smev.jpg)

It’s really important to note here that those cluster metrics are only visible if you have CloudWatch container insights enabled on your cluster.

Clicking into a monitored ECS application will display an overview for a cluster that includes metrics such as CPU and Memory utilization alongside running task metrics. These metrics combined give a useful insight into where resources are being consumed and the timing associated with their usage. 

This is where things get **REALLY** interesting.

By adding the Lumigo tracers into our application you can gain even more insight into the inner workings of your ECS container applications. 

To get started all you need to do is add a library, a few lines of code, and some environmental variables. This will slightly vary depending on what your language and codebase look like, but first, let’s check out some libraries. 

Lumigo has some open-source libraries for getting trace information from your application. It currently supports [Python}(https://github.com/lumigo-io/opentelemetry-js-distro) and [NodeJS](https://github.com/lumigo-io/opentelemetry-js-distro) languages.

Install the library with your nominated package manager and reference the library from within your application. Again, this may vary slightly depending on how your application is structured. 

Finally, we need to set 2 environmental variables on the container as part of its deployment to ECS. These can be set within the code as part of the library, but it is highly recommended to set these as environment variables.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2g45r6oyo0dbwy71cpte.png)

Now we will be able to see a lot more information from that ECS cluster application, right down to the application level and beyond. Clicking through from the services button on the cluster overview page will whisk you away to the Explore page with a resource filter set. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/5wdxlx3w19miym4yuziq.jpg)

This will then let you see additional information from a trace and view the associated invocation in greater detail. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/bgi3jg1yrcrydbarbmmw.jpg)

From the invocation view page you can see any associated connected services, which is really handy to being able to see the full end to end trace view from your ECS deployments.

To read more check out [Observing ECS Containers](https://lumigo.io/blog/tracing-and-observing-aws-ecs/)