consul/website/content/docs/ecs/get-started/requirements.mdx

---
layout: docs
page_title: Requirements - AWS ECS
description: >-
  Requirements for Consul Service Mesh on AWS ECS (Elastic Container Service).
---

# Requirements

The following requirements must be met in order to install Consul on ECS:

1. **Terraform:** The tasks that you want to add to the service mesh must first be modeled in Terraform.
1. **Launch Type:** Fargate and EC2 launch types are supported.
1. **Subnets:** ECS Tasks can run in private or public subnets. Tasks must have [network access](https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ecs-pull-container-api-error-ecr/) to Amazon ECR or other public container registries to pull images.
1. **Consul Servers:** You can use your own Consul servers running on virtual machines or use [HashiCorp Cloud Platform Consul](https://www.hashicorp.com/cloud-platform) to host the servers for you. For development purposes or testing, you may use the `dev-server` [Terraform module](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-aws-consul-ecs/tree/main) that runs the Consul server as an ECS task. The `dev-server` does not support persistent storage.
1. **ACL Controller:** If you are running a secure Consul installation with ACLs enabled, configure the ACL controller.