We launched Elastic Beanstalk in 2011 with support for Java web applications and Tomcat 6 in one region, and we’ve seen the service grow to 6 container types (Java/Tomcat, PHP, Ruby, Python, .NET, and Node.js) supported in 8 AWS regions around the world. The Elastic Beanstalk team spends a lot of time talking to AWS Developers, and in the last few months they’ve noticed a common theme in those conversations: developers tell us they’re interested in Docker, and ask if we are thinking about making it easy to run and scale Docker workloads in AWS.

Several weeks ago we made it simple to yum install Docker on your EC2 Instances running Amazon Linux, and today Elastic Beanstalk introduces the ability to deploy, manage, and scale Docker Containers. Along with the native Docker functionality you’re used to - including log access, volume mapping, and environment variables - enjoy the automated monitoring, provisioning, and configuration of things like Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling that Elastic Beanstalk provides.

Best of Both Worlds

When developers asked us to support Docker in Elastic Beanstalk they described a ‘best of both worlds’ scenario: they love Docker’s impact on their development workflow. Packaging applications as Docker Images makes them portable, reliable, easy to share with others, and simple to test. They wanted to make it similarly easy to deploy and operate their Docker-based applications on AWS and take advantage of features like RDS, VPC, and IAM.

Now, developers can deploy their Docker Containers to Elastic Beanstalk and enjoy the deployment, management, and automation features that come with along with it, including log rotation, VPC integration, IAM Roles, and RDS (including fully-managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server databases).

To get started with Docker and Elastic Beanstalk, check out this short video below or see Jeff’s post for a few samples.