Amazon ECS Adds Support for Docker Device and Init Flags in Container Task Definitions

Device and init flags can now be specified in task definitions for Docker containers managed by Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS).

The device flag enables containers to attach to external devices without using privileged mode. Previously, to mount a device to a Docker container required starting the container in privileged mode. Now, you can specify devices in the Amazon ECS task definition, allowing containers to mount devices such as EBS volumes.

The init flag runs an init process as PID 1 in the container. Previously, if certain containerized processes did not exit nicely, they could continue to run – incurring unneeded utilization and cost. Now, you can specify the Docker init parameter in the Amazon ECS task definition. This ensures the init process is the parent for all processes inside a container, and can terminate processes that have finished execution, but are still running.

For more information on using devices and init flags, see the Amazon ECS documentation. You can learn more about running Docker containers with Amazon ECS here.

Amazon ECS is available in US East (Ohio), US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), EU (Frankfurt), EU (Ireland), EU (London), and China (Beijing) regions. For more information on AWS regions and service, please visit here.