AWS ECS Service Status Check

Validates the status of an Amazon ECS service. This probe checks if the specified ECS service has reached the desired state (e.g., running tasks count matches desired count) within the given timeout.

Infrastructure type

• Kubernetes

Use cases

AWS ECS Service Status Check probe helps you:

• Ensure ECS services maintain desired task count during failures
• Validate service auto-scaling behavior during load changes
• Monitor service health during container chaos experiments
• Verify service deployment and rollback operations

---

Overview

This probe uses the AWS CLI to query ECS service status and validates that the service has reached its desired state. It continuously checks the running task count against the desired count, making it ideal for monitoring service stability during chaos experiments.

Probe type

Command Probe

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes cluster with chaos infrastructure installed
• AWS credentials configured with appropriate IAM permissions:
  • ecs:DescribeServices
  • ecs:DescribeClusters
  • ecs:ListTasks
• Network connectivity to AWS API endpoints
• Target ECS cluster and services should be accessible

---

Probe properties

Command

healthchecks -name aws-ecs

Comparator

Type	Criteria	Value
string	contains	[Pass]

The probe passes when the command output contains [Pass], indicating the ECS service has reached the desired state.

Environment variables

Variable	Description	Required	Default
CLUSTER_NAME	Name of the ECS cluster containing the service (e.g., my-ecs-cluster).	Yes	-
SERVICE_NAMES	Comma-separated list of ECS service names to check (e.g., web-service,api-service).	Yes	-
REGION	AWS region where the ECS cluster is located (e.g., us-east-1, eu-west-2).	Yes	-
STATUS_CHECK_TIMEOUT	Maximum time in seconds to wait for the service to reach desired state.	No	180
STATUS_CHECK_DELAY	Delay in seconds between status checks.	No	2

---

Run properties

Property	Description	Type	Default
timeout	Maximum time to wait for the probe to complete (e.g., 30s, 1m, 5m)	String	300s
interval	Time between probe executions (e.g., 5s, 30s, 1m)	String	10s
attempt	Number of retry attempts before marking the probe as failed	Integer	1
pollingInterval	Time between retry attempts (e.g., 1s, 5s, 10s)	String	-
initialDelay	Initial delay before starting the probe (e.g., 0s, 10s, 30s)	String	-
stopOnFailure	Stop the experiment if the probe fails	Boolean	false
verbosity	Log verbosity level (info, debug, trace)	String	-

---

Probe definition

You can define this probe in your chaos experiment as follows:

Single service check

probe:
  - name: "ecs-service-health-check"
    type: "cmdProbe"
    mode: "Continuous"
    cmdProbe/inputs:
      command: "healthchecks -name aws-ecs"
      comparator:
        type: "string"
        criteria: "contains"
        value: "[Pass]"
      env:
        - name: CLUSTER_NAME
          value: "production-cluster"
        - name: SERVICE_NAMES
          value: "web-service"
        - name: REGION
          value: "us-east-1"
        - name: STATUS_CHECK_TIMEOUT
          value: "180"
        - name: STATUS_CHECK_DELAY
          value: "2"
    runProperties:
      timeout: 300s
      interval: 10s
      attempt: 1
      stopOnFailure: false

Multiple services check

probe:
  - name: "ecs-multi-service-check"
    type: "cmdProbe"
    mode: "Edge"
    cmdProbe/inputs:
      command: "healthchecks -name aws-ecs"
      comparator:
        type: "string"
        criteria: "contains"
        value: "[Pass]"
      env:
        - name: CLUSTER_NAME
          value: "production-cluster"
        - name: SERVICE_NAMES
          value: "web-service,api-service,worker-service"
        - name: REGION
          value: "ap-south-1"
        - name: STATUS_CHECK_TIMEOUT
          value: "300"
        - name: STATUS_CHECK_DELAY
          value: "5"
    runProperties:
      timeout: 400s
      interval: 15s
      attempt: 3
      pollingInterval: 5s