README - Laravel Fargate Deployment

Requirements

• AWS Account

• Terraform v1.7+

• GitHub repository with secrets:

  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
  • AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
  • EXEC_ROLE_ARN (for ECS task execution)

Features

Infrastructure

• VPC with 2 public subnets (for ALB) and 2 private subnets.

• Application Load Balancer with /healthz health check.

• ECS Fargate Service:

  • Desired count: 2 tasks
  • Rolling deployments
  • Healthy targets in multiple AZs

• ECR repository for the Laravel container image.

• IAM Roles with least privilege for ECS tasks.

Application

• Minimal Laravel app with /healthz route.
• Containerized with Docker (Nginx + PHP-FPM).

CI/CD

• GitHub Actions workflow:

  • Builds and pushes Docker image to ECR.
  • Updates ECS service with new task definition.

• Optional Terraform workflow:

  • apply or destroy infrastructure.
  • Can run manually or trigger on changes in infra/.

Deployment

1. Terraform (Optional)

cd infra/
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply -auto-approve

Output will look like:

alb_dns      = "laravel-fargate-alb-xxxxxxxx.ap-southeast-2.elb.amazonaws.com"
ecr_repo_url = "372836560826.dkr.ecr.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/laravel-fargate-app"

2. CI/CD

Push to main branch to trigger deployment:

• Builds Docker image
• Pushes to ECR
• Updates ECS service and forces new deployment

You can also run workflows manually from GitHub Actions.

Access App

ALB URL from Terraform outputs: http://laravel-fargate-alb-1382219124.ap-southeast-2.elb.amazonaws.com/

Health check:

curl http://laravel-fargate-alb-1382219124.ap-southeast-2.elb.amazonaws.com/healthz
# Should return 200 OK

Notes

• Terraform may fail if resources already exist. This is normal when testing multiple times.
• The Docker image tag is automatically generated from GitHub commit SHA.
• Ensure the ECS task execution role has proper permissions.

Cleanup

To destroy all infrastructure:

cd infra/
terraform destroy -auto-approve

This will remove VPC, subnets, ALB, ECS service, ECR repo, and IAM roles.

Useful Commands

Check ECS service and tasks

aws ecs list-tasks --cluster laravel-fargate-cluster --service-name laravel-app-service --desired-status RUNNING
aws ecs describe-tasks --cluster laravel-fargate-cluster --tasks <task-id>

Check logs for a task

aws logs tail /ecs/laravel-fargate --follow

Verify container and task status inside ECS

aws ecs execute-command \
  --cluster laravel-fargate-cluster \
  --task <task-id> \
  --container app \
  --command "/bin/sh" \
  --interactive