Is running Beyla as an AWS ECS daemon possible?

[robenie-cwt]

I've seen the blog post How to run Grafana Beyla as a sidecar in Amazon ECS recently. This got me interested. We're currently running CAdvisor as a daemon in ECS, and so I was wondering if it is possible to use Beyla in ECS as a daemon? Running Beyla as a daemon would be awesome because that would mean that the task definitions of existing services will not be modified.

Does someone know? Has anyone tried it already?

[marctc]

Hey @robenie-cwt, it's actually possible. I'm quoting what one of our SE did to make it work. We dont have documented yet, so I'll paste it here:

In ECS, you have to create a new Task definition for Beyla. You can use this and input the JSON. Obviously need to change a few details like the arn, and the various OTEL enpoints/tokens. Then when you create the service, you reference this "task template" you just created, and specifically have to set the following three options:
Compute Options -> Launch Type
Launch Type -> EC2
Service type -> Daemon

{
    "family": "beyla-test-task",
    "containerDefinitions": [
        {
            "name": "beyla",
            "image": "docker.io/grafana/beyla",
            "cpu": 0,
            "memory": 2048,
            "portMappings": [],
            "essential": true,
            "environment": [
                {
                    "name": "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_HEADERS",
                    "value": "Authorization=Basic <base64 code>"
                },
                {
                    "name": "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS",
                    "value": "Authorization=Basic <base64 code>"
                },
                {
                    "name": "BEYLA_OTEL_METRIC_FEATURES",
                    "value": "application_span,application_service_graph,application"
                },
                {
                    "name": "BEYLA_NETWORK_METRICS",
                    "value": "true"
                },
                {
                    "name": "BEYLA_OPEN_PORT",
                    "value": "8080,80"
                },
                {
                    "name": "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT",
                    "value": ""
                },
                {
                    "name": "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT",
                    "value": ""
                }
            ],
            "mountPoints": [],
            "volumesFrom": [],
            "linuxParameters": {
                "capabilities": {
                    "add": [
                        "NET_ADMIN",
                        "NET_RAW",
                        "SYS_ADMIN",
                        "SYS_PTRACE"
                    ],
                    "drop": []
                },
                "initProcessEnabled": true
            },
            "privileged": true,
            "logConfiguration": {
                "logDriver": "awslogs",
                "options": {
                    "awslogs-group": "/ecs/beyla-test-task",
                    "awslogs-create-group": "true",
                    "awslogs-region": "eu-west-2",
                    "awslogs-stream-prefix": "beyla"
                }
            },
            "systemControls": []
        }
    ],
    "executionRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::1234567890:role/ecsTaskExecutionRole",
    "networkMode": "host",
    "volumes": [],
    "placementConstraints": [],
    "requiresCompatibilities": [
        "EC2"
    ],
    "cpu": "1024",
    "memory": "4096",
    "pidMode": "host"
}

[robenie-cwt]

Thank you @marctc! We'll give it a go.