The document discusses containerizing legacy .NET workloads. It covers deploying an ASP.NET app container to Amazon ECS, benefits of Windows containers like ease of movement and improved OS utilization. It demonstrates containerizing a sample ASP.NET MVC app and SQL Server, describes best practices for building and publishing containers, and announces Amazon ECS support for Windows Server 2016 containers.

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Containerizing Legacy .NET
Workloads
Nicki Klein
Sr. Technical Evangelist
Amazon Web Services
Brian Lewis
Sr. Solutions Architect
Amazon Web Services
C O N 3 4 8

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Containerize a Legacy ASP.NET app
Deploying a .NET app
container to Amazon
Elastic Container
Service (Amazon ECS)
Hypervisor
Status:on
Connections Connections Connections
Network Up/NetworkDown
Amazon
ECS
AZ1 AZ2
Private Subnet
Public Subnet
Internet
Gateway
Private Subnet
Public Subnet
NAT
GATEWAY
NAT
GATEWAY
ALB
Amazon ECS Cluster
What we will cover

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Recent AWS .NET related announcements
• .NET Developer Center (aws.amazon.com/net)—7/2
• .NET Core 2.1 on Amazon Linux and Ubuntu—7/13
• .NET Core 2.1 on AWS Lambda—7/19
• .NET Global Tools—9/10
• PowerShell for Lambda—9/11
• .NET CDK – 9/13

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Windows deployment modes

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.Net 4.x requires server core
Server 2016 version 1803—server core:
•1.58GB, download size, 30% reduction from Windows Server, version 1709
•3.61GB, on disk size, 20% reduction from Windows Server, version 1709
Server version Size on disk
Server 2016 – Server Core ~ 8 Gig
Serve 2016 version 1709 – Server Core ~4.5 Gig
Server 2016 version 1803 - Server Core: ~ 3.6 Gig

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Benefits of Windows containers
• Ease of movement (on-prem or in public cloud)
• Improve operating system utilization/density
• Development/Deployment runtime consistency
• Deployment size and speed/use of base images
• Server boot times under 1 second

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What’s our sample .NET app?
• Sample app circa 2010
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0
• SQL Server Express LocalDB
https://github.com/kneekey23/NerdDinner
NerdDinner

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WinNat network mode
• Similar to bridge mode on Linux
• Container have private IP address only accessible from the host
• Cannot access exposed ports via localhost

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Demo:
Containerize a legacy
ASP.NET appHypervisor
Status:on
Connections Connections Connections
Network Up/NetworkDown
Amazon
ECS

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Microsoft SQL server in a container
Production SQL server container images must be pulled from the Docker
store
• docker pull microsoft/mssql-server-windows
• docker pull microsoft/mssql-server-linux:2017-latest
For persistent SQL data:
• Use data volume containers
• Store the database on a file share (SMB 3.2 suggested)
• Mount a host directory as data volume (Linux)

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Volumes for Windows containers
• Basic volumes work
• Mounting folders—only for folders on the same drive where containers layers are stored
• Plugins for volume not yet supported

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Demo:
Containerizing
Microsoft SQL serverHypervisor
Status:on
Connections Connections Connections
Network Up/NetworkDown
Amazon
ECS

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Storing images in Amazon Elastic Container Registry
(Amazon ECR)
• Amazon ECR Credential Helper for Docker to simplify authentication
• Microsoft base layers are not pushed to Amazon ECR by default
• Compresses image size by 85-90% before storing in Amazon ECR

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Steps to containerize the legacy .NET app

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Best practice:
When building your application, build it in a disposable container and
publish in new containers. This will keep the size of your production
containers down and reduce the attack surface of the containers.

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Amazon ECS for Windows Server 2016
• Dec 5, 2017—Windows Server containers for
production workloads!
• ECS-optimized Windows Server 2016 AMI
• Includes Docker 17.06 Enterprise Edition
• Amazon ECS agent now runs as a native Windows
service
• Windows containers memory and CPU limit(s)
enforcement
• PowerShell module can be use to configure
Amazon ECS agent
• By default, logs are stored in the Windows Event
Viewer
Windows Server on Amazon ECS:

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Amazon ECS for Windows Server 2016
• Reference architecture on GitHub
Step 1. Build ECS cluster
https://github.com/aws-samples/ecs-
refarch-cloudformation-windows

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Amazon ECS for Windows Server 2016
Step 2. Create task definition

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Task definitions for Windows containers
• Most task definition fields of Linux containers work on Windows containers as well
• Some task definition fields need changes to Windows specifics such as volume path
• Network mode—only WinNAT mode is supported
• Container links are not supported
• Ulimits field is not supported

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Amazon ECS for Windows Server 2016
• Service name
• Number of tasks
• Elastic Load Balancing
AWS Identity and
Access Management
(IAM) role
Step 3.
Create service & launch

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Amazon ECS
AZ1 AZ2
Private Subnet
Public Subnet
Internet
Gateway
Private Subnet
Public Subnet
NAT
GATEWAY
NAT
GATEWAY
ALB
Amazon ECS Cluster
Demo:

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Amazon ECS

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Next steps: After you migrate your app
Modernizing your .NET apps
• Rewriting the application is always the cleanest path
• Windows containers offer another option
Use Docker to take a feature-driven approach to breaking up the monolithic
application, splitting the functionality across multiple containers and using Docker
for the plumbing. Use .NET core to extend the application.

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AWS Container Competency—Just announced
• APN partners with this designation have a
validated product or solution on AWS that
supports workloads on containers
• These solutions improve customer's ability to
leverage containers on AWS
• Focus areas include:
• Foundation, orchestration, & scheduling
• Monitoring & logging
• Security
• 17 launch partners

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AWS Container Competency launch partners

27. Thank you!
© 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Code from Demos:
https://github.com/kneekey23/NerdDinner
Nicki Klein—Technical Evangelist @nicki_23
Brian Lewis—Solutions Architect
Want to learn more on .NET and windows containers:
Break out session - WIN305 - Containerize Legacy .NET Framework Web Apps for Cloud Migration –
Tuesday 27, Nov 2018 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM – Bellagio, Level1, Grand Ballroom2

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