Getting started with container products - AWS Marketplace
Product lifecyclePrerequisitesOverview: Create a container productStep 1: Create the product ID and product code for your container productStep 2: Create an initial listingStep 3: Add an initial version of your productStep 4: (For paid products only) Integrate metering or contract pricingStep 5: Update product visibilityNext stepsContainer product scans for security issues

Getting started with container products

As an AWS Marketplace seller, you can create container-based software products. Container products consist of delivery options that are a set of container images and deployment templates that go together.The following topic shows you how to get started with container products.

Product lifecycle

When you create a product in AWS Marketplace, it's initially published with limited visibility so that accounts on the allow list can see it, including the account that created the product. When you're ready, you can publish it to the AWS Marketplace catalog to allow buyers to subscribe and purchase your product.

On the Server product page, you can view the list of your products. Depending on what stage it is at, the product will have one of the following statuses.

  • Staging – An incomplete product for which you're still adding information. At the first Save and exit from the self-service experience, the successful change request creates an unpublished product with information from the completed steps that you submitted. From this status, you can continue adding information to the product or change already submitted details through change requests.

  • Limited – A product is complete after it is submitted to the system and passes all validation in the system. Then the product is released to a Limited status. At this point, the product has a detail page that's only accessible to your account and whoever you have allowlisted. You can test your product through the detail page. For more information or help, contact the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team.

  • Public – When you're ready to publish the product so that buyers can view and subscribe to the product, you use the Update visibility change request. This request initiates a workflow for the AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team to review and audit your product against AWS policies. After the product is approved and the change request is processed, the product is moved from a status of Limited to Public. For information about AWS guidelines, see Container-based product requirements for AWS Marketplace.

  • Restricted – If you want to stop new users from subscribing to your product, you can restrict the product by using the Update visibility change request. A Restricted status means that existing allowlisted users can continue to use the product. However, the product will no longer be visible to the public or be available to new users.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you must complete the following prerequisites:

  1. Access and use the AWS Marketplace Management Portal. This is the tool that you use to register as a seller and manage the products that you sell on AWS Marketplace. For more information, see AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

  2. Register as a seller, and submit your tax and banking information. For more information, see Registering as an AWS Marketplace seller.

  3. Create at least one container in Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), or AWS Fargate. Make sure that you have links for the associated images.

  4. Plan how you'll create and integrate your container product in AWS Marketplace.

    We recommend that you plan your pricing, entitlement, and metering strategy well in advance of publicly publishing your product.

Overview: Create a container product

Creating a container product involves the following steps:

  1. Step 1: Create the product ID and product code for your container product

  2. Step 2: Create an initial listing

  3. Step 3: Add an initial version of your product

  4. Step 4: (For paid products only) Integrate metering or contract pricing

  5. Update product visibility

For information on the product lifecycle, see Product lifecycle.

Step 1: Create the product ID and product code for your container product

To get started with a container product, you must create a product ID and product code record in AWS Marketplace. The product ID is used to track your product throughout its lifecycle.

Use the following procedure to create a new container product in the AWS Marketplace Management Portal, and generate the product ID.

Note

This process also creates a public key for your container that pairs with your product.

To create the container product ID

  1. Open a web browser and sign into the AWS Marketplace Management Portal.

  2. From the menu bar, select Product, and choose Server.

  3. Choose Create server product and then choose Container.

  4. Generate a container product ID and code.

    Note

    (Optional) You can tag your product for tag-based authorization. For more information, see Tagging your AWS resources.

  5. Choose Continue to continue creating your product.

Step 2: Create an initial listing

After generating the product ID, product code, and public key, you'll use a wizard to create an initial listing.

  1. Provide product information for your product listing.

  2. Determine the pricing model for your product.

    Note

    For more information, see Container products pricing.

    Note

    For paid products, your product will start with $0.01 pricing to allow you and AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team to test the product without incurring a high cost. You'll provide the actual price when you go public.

  3. Provide additional offer information, including a refund policy, EULA, and offer availability.

  4. Add an initial repository for your container product.

  5. Choose Submit on the last step to move the product to Limited visibility.

    Note

    Your container product is initially created with a placeholder version. You'll add the final version when the product has a Limited visibility.

Step 3: Add an initial version of your product

Your product might have several versions over its lifetime. Each version has a set of container images that are specific to that version. To add an initial version of your product, see Adding a new version of your container product on AWS Marketplace.

Step 4: (For paid products only) Integrate metering or contract pricing

For container-based products with usage pricing, you use the AWS Marketplace Metering Service for both checking entitlement to use your product and metering usage for billing. You must meter for the pricing model that you created when setting your pricing information. For more information, see Hourly and custom metering with AWS Marketplace Metering Service.

Contract pricing

For container-based products with contract pricing, you use the AWS License Manager to associate licenses with your product.

For more information about integrating with AWS License Manager, see Contract pricing for container products with AWS License Manager.

Step 5: Update product visibility

When you create a product in AWS Marketplace, it's initially published with limited visibility so that accounts on the allow list can see it, including the account that created the product. You can update the product visibility to allow buyers to subscribe and purchase your product. Alternately you can update the product allow list to add AWS accounts. This topic shows you how to manage which buyers can view your product in AWS Marketplace.

For more information about product visibility and lifecycle, see Product lifecycle.

Update product visibility

To update visibility

  1. Open the AWS Marketplace Management Portal at https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/management/tour/, and then sign in to your seller account.

  2. Go to the Server products page, on the Current server product tab, select the container-based product that you want to modify.

  3. From the Request changes dropdown, choose Update visibility.

    Note

    You can request that the product be moved from a Limited status to a Public status by using this change request. However, the change request must go through an AWS Marketplace Seller Operations team approval process to be moved to Public.

  4. Choose Submit to submit your request for review.

  5. Verify that the Requests tab shows the Request status as Under review. When the request completes, the status becomes Succeeded.

Updating the allowlist of AWS account IDs

You can change the list of AWS account IDs that can view your product in a limited state. Allow-listed accounts display a Limited badge alongside the product version on the product detail page.

  1. Open the AWS Marketplace Management Portal at https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/management/tour/ and sign in to your seller account.

  2. From the Server Products page, select the container product that you want to modify.

  3. From the Request changes dropdown list, select Update allowlist. The current list of accounts that are allowlisted is shown.

  4. In the Allowlisted AWS accounts field, enter the AWS account IDs and separate them using a comma.

  5. Choose Submit to submit your request for review.

  6. Verify that the Requests tab shows the Request status as Under review. When the request completes, the status will update to Succeeded or Failed.

Next steps

After you create a container product, you can use the information in the following topics to configure and manage it:

Container product scans for security issues

When you create a change request to add a new version to your container product, we scan the container images included in that new version and check for security vulnerabilities. To do this, we perform a layer-by-layer static scan on the image. If we find critical vulnerabilities with remotely exploitable risk vectors, we provide you with a list of found issues. We strongly recommend that you perform your own security analysis using a container image scanner such as Clair, Twistlock, Aqua Security, or Trend Micro to avoid delays in the ingestion and publishing process.

Your choice of base image for building your container images can have a significant influence on the security profile of the final image. If you choose a base image that already has known critical vulnerabilities, they will be flagged because of the base layer, even if your application software layers are clean. We recommend that you verify that you're starting with a base container that is free of vulnerabilities before you build your images and submit them to AWS Marketplace.