Deploy gRPC supporting application on AWS using ALB

Question

I have two microservices communicating using gRPC.Both are docker applications deployed on ECS. How do I configure them to use AWS ALB?In documentation it says ALB supports HTTP/2, however I can only see HTTP1 settings. My application has one gRPC port and one health check API at 8080.How do I configure that on ALB?

Answer 1

I don't believe you can.

ALBs "support" HTTP2 but only in so far as they can accept HTTP2 and de-multiplex it before forwarding on HTTP1.

You can use AWS's newer "NLB" though that has other wrinkles. More details of doing this https://blog.prefab.cloud/blog/grpc-aws-some-gotchas

Answer 2

As of 30th October 2020, it is now possible to do this, as end-to-end support for HTTP/2 has finally been added to ALBs.

Annoucement about this: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/10/application-load-balancers-enable-grpc-workloads-end-to-end-http-2-support/

Check these blog posts to understand how to set it up on ECS:

1. Using Fargate Launch type: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/containerize-and-deploy-a-grpc-application-on-aws-fargate/
2. Using EC2 Launch type: https://dev.to/chaitan94/deploying-a-grpc-service-in-ecs-with-the-ec2-launch-type-2aa