View a markdown version of this page

How the Amazon ECS deployment circuit breaker detects failures - Amazon Elastic Container Service
Failure threshold

How the Amazon ECS deployment circuit breaker detects failures

The deployment circuit breaker is the rolling update mechanism that determines if the tasks reach a steady state. The deployment circuit breaker has an option that will automatically roll back a failed deployment to the deployment that is in the COMPLETED state. You can customize how the circuit breaker counts failures and the threshold at which it triggers, so that rollback behavior matches your application's startup characteristics and your tolerance for task failures.

When a service deployment changes state, Amazon ECS sends a service deployment state change event to EventBridge. This provides a programmatic way to monitor the status of your service deployments. For more information, see Amazon ECS service deployment state change events. We recommend that you create and monitor an EventBridge rule with an eventName of SERVICE_DEPLOYMENT_FAILED so that you can take manual action to start your deployment. For more information, see Getting started with EventBridge in the Amazon EventBridge User Guide.

When the deployment circuit breaker determines that a deployment failed, it looks for the most recent deployment that is in a COMPLETED state. This is the deployment that it uses as the roll-back deployment. When the rollback starts, the deployment changes from a COMPLETED to IN_PROGRESS. This means that the deployment is not eligible for another rollback until it reaches a COMPLETED state. When the deployment circuit breaker does not find a deployment that is in a COMPLETED state, the circuit breaker does not launch new tasks and the deployment is stalled.

When you create a service, the scheduler keeps track of the tasks that failed to launch in two stages.

  • Stage 1 - The scheduler monitors the tasks to see if they transition into the RUNNING state.

    • Success - The deployment has a chance of transitioning to the COMPLETED state because there is more than one task that transitioned to the RUNNING state. The failure criteria is skipped and the circuit breaker moves to stage 2.

    • Failure - By default, consecutive tasks that do not transition to the RUNNING state count toward the failure threshold (resetOnHealthyTask is true). When resetOnHealthyTask is false, all task failures accumulate regardless of whether healthy tasks start between failures.

  • Stage 2 - The deployment enters this stage when there is at least one task in the RUNNING state. The circuit breaker checks the health checks for the tasks in the current deployment being evaluated. The validated health checks are Elastic Load Balancing, AWS Cloud Map service health checks, and container health checks.

    • Success - There is at least one task in the running state with health checks that have passed.

    • Failure - The tasks that are replaced because of health check failures have reached the failure threshold.

Consider the following when you use the deployment circuit breaker method on a service. EventBridge generates the rule.

  • The DescribeServices response provides insight into the state of a deployment, the rolloutState and rolloutStateReason. When a new deployment is started, the rollout state begins in an IN_PROGRESS state. When the service reaches a steady state, the rollout state transitions to COMPLETED. If the service fails to reach a steady state and circuit breaker is turned on, the deployment will transition to a FAILED state. A deployment in a FAILED state doesn't launch any new tasks.

  • In addition to the service deployment state change events Amazon ECS sends for deployments that have started and have completed, Amazon ECS also sends an event when a deployment with circuit breaker turned on fails. These events provide details about why a deployment failed or if a deployment was started because of a rollback. For more information, see Amazon ECS service deployment state change events.

  • If a new deployment is started because a previous deployment failed and a rollback occurred, the reason field of the service deployment state change event indicates the deployment was started because of a rollback.

  • The deployment circuit breaker is only supported for Amazon ECS services that use the rolling update (ECS) deployment controller.

  • You must use the Amazon ECS console, or the AWS CLI when you use the deployment circuit breaker with the CloudWatch option. For more information, see Create a service using defined parameters and create-service in the AWS Command Line Interface Reference.

The following create-service AWS CLI example shows how to create a Linux service when the deployment circuit breaker is used with the rollback option.

aws ecs create-service \
     --service-name MyService \
     --deployment-controller type=ECS \
     --desired-count 3 \
     --deployment-configuration "deploymentCircuitBreaker={enable=true,rollback=true}" \
     --task-definition sample-fargate:1 \
     --launch-type FARGATE \
     --platform-family LINUX \
     --platform-version 1.4.0 \
     --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[subnet-12344321],securityGroups=[sg-12344321],assignPublicIp=ENABLED}"

The following create-service AWS CLI example shows how to create a service with a custom deployment circuit breaker configuration that uses a fixed failure count of 5 and cumulative failure tracking.

aws ecs create-service \
     --service-name MyService \
     --deployment-controller type=ECS \
     --desired-count 10 \
     --deployment-configuration "deploymentCircuitBreaker={enable=true,rollback=true,resetOnHealthyTask=false,thresholdConfiguration={type=COUNT,value=5}}" \
     --task-definition sample-fargate:1 \
     --launch-type FARGATE \
     --platform-family LINUX \
     --platform-version 1.4.0 \
     --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[subnet-12344321],securityGroups=[sg-12344321],assignPublicIp=ENABLED}"

Example:

Deployment 1 is in a COMPLETED state.

Deployment 2 cannot start, so the circuit breaker rolls back to Deployment 1. Deployment 1 transitions to the IN_PROGRESS state.

Deployment 3 starts and there is no deployment in the COMPLETED state, so Deployment 3 cannot roll back, or launch tasks.

Failure threshold

The deployment circuit breaker uses a failure threshold to determine when to move the deployment to a FAILED state. You can configure both how failures are counted and the threshold value itself.

Failure counting mode

The resetOnHealthyTask setting controls how the circuit breaker counts task failures during a deployment.

true (default)

The failure count resets to 0 each time a task reaches a healthy state. Only consecutive failures count toward the threshold. This mode is useful for applications that might experience intermittent startup failures before stabilizing.

false

Task failures accumulate throughout the deployment. The failure count never resets, even when healthy tasks start between failures. This mode provides faster detection when any pattern of failures indicates a problematic deployment.

Threshold configuration

The thresholdConfiguration setting defines when the circuit breaker triggers. It contains a type that determines how the threshold is calculated and a value that specifies the percentage or count to use.

BOUNDED_PERCENT (default)

Amazon ECS multiplies value by the latest service desired count to calculate the failure threshold. The result is clamped to a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 200. This is the default type with a default value of 50.

UNBOUNDED_PERCENT

Amazon ECS multiplies value by the latest service desired count to calculate the failure threshold. There is no minimum or maximum bound on the result. Use this type for services with large desired counts that need a proportional threshold without the 200 cap.

COUNT

Amazon ECS uses value directly as the failure threshold. The threshold remains fixed regardless of the service desired count. Use this type when you want an exact number of tolerated failures, for example, a lower threshold for faster rollbacks in development environments.

For the percentage types (BOUNDED_PERCENT and UNBOUNDED_PERCENT), the valid range for value is 1–100. During a deployment, Amazon ECS continuously uses the latest service desired count in its calculation.

How BOUNDED_PERCENT calculates the threshold

When you use the default BOUNDED_PERCENT threshold type, the deployment circuit breaker calculates the threshold using the following formula.

Minimum threshold (3) <= (value/100) * desired task count => Maximum threshold (200)

When the result of the calculation is less than 3, the threshold is set to 3. When the result is greater than 200, the threshold is set to 200. Otherwise, the threshold is set to the calculated value (rounded up).

The following table provides examples using the default value of 50.

Desired task count Calculation Threshold

1

 
3 <= 0.5 * 1 => 200
 3 (the calculated value is less than the minimum)

25

 
3 <= 0.5 * 25 => 200
 13 (the value is rounded up)

400

 
3 <= 0.5 * 400 => 200
 200 (the calculated value is greater than the maximum)

800

 
3 <= 0.5 * 800 => 200
 200 (the calculated value is greater than the maximum)

With UNBOUNDED_PERCENT, the same calculation applies but without the minimum and maximum bounds. For example, a service with a desired count of 800 and a value of 50 would have a threshold of 400.

There are two stages for the deployment status check.

  1. The deployment circuit breaker monitors tasks that are part of the deployment and checks for tasks that are in the RUNNING state. The scheduler ignores the failure criteria when a task in the current deployment is in the RUNNING state and proceeds to the next stage. When tasks fail to reach the RUNNING state, the deployment circuit breaker increases the failure count by one. When the failure count equals the threshold, the deployment is marked as FAILED.

  2. This stage is entered when there are one or more tasks in the RUNNING state. The deployment circuit breaker performs health checks on the following resources for the tasks in the current deployment:

    • Elastic Load Balancing load balancers

    • AWS Cloud Map service

    • Amazon ECS container health checks

    When a health check fails for the task, the deployment circuit breaker increases the failure count by one. When the failure count equals the threshold, the deployment is marked as FAILED.

For example, when the threshold is 3, the circuit breaker starts with the failure count set at 0. When a task fails to reach the RUNNING state, the deployment circuit breaker increases the failure count by one. When the failure count equals 3, the deployment is marked as FAILED.

For additional examples about how to use the rollback option, see Announcing Amazon ECS deployment circuit breaker.