Tech note January 2025: Updating Hybrid SaaS agents on AWS ECS

Note

Following recent AWS changes to the AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS), this tech note replaces the tech note released by Matillion in August 2024.

Previously, the operation of the Elastic Container Service required a "deploy to zero" work-around when restarting a Matillion Data Productivity Cloud agent. Following an AWS change to the Elastic Container Service, a new flag, versionConsistency, has been introduced to makes this work-around unnecessary. Matillion has updated the Data Productivity Cloud agent template to take advantage of this new flag, simplifying the processes of agent deployment and agent restart.

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How this impacts you

When installing a new agent, you don't need to do anything. The current CloudFormation template is configured to install the agent with "versionConsistency": "disabled" set.

If you are using an agent configured prior to February 2025 using the "deploy to zero" method, you will need to manually update the agent's task definition to add the "versionConsistency": "disabled" property, as described below.

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Updating a task definition

1. In the AWS console, type Elastic Container Service in the search bar and choose that service.
2. In the left-hand menu, click Task definitions.
3. Select the task definition.
4. Click Create new revision, then Create new revision with JSON. This will open the task definition JSON file in a text editor.

5. Edit the JSON to include the property "versionConsistency": "disabled". This must be inserted under the containerDefinitions heading. The JSON should look something like this after your edit (some lines have been removed here for clarity):

   "containerDefinitions": [
       {
           "name": "matillion-agent",
           ...
           "versionConsistency": "disabled",
           ...
       }
   ]
   

6. Click Create.

7. Navigate back to your cluster and click the agent's service name at the bottom of the page to open the service details page.
8. Click Update service in the top right.
9. From the Revision drop-down, choose your latest task definition revision, which should be labeled (LATEST) in the drop-down.
10. Set the Desired tasks to the level you need. We normally recommend 2 as a default.
11. Click Update.

The service will redeploy with the new setting.