ECS Agent doesn't start on latest Windows Core AMI

[JonCubed]

I fired up the latest Windows Core With Containers AMI (image name: Windows_Server-2016-English-Core-ContainersLatest-2017.08.09, Ami Id: ami-4a16f432) today to find the ecs agent wouldn't start with the following:

2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [INFO] Starting Agent: Amazon ECS Agent - v1.14.3 (15de319)
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [INFO] Loading configuration
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [DEBUG] Environment variable empty: ECS_CONTAINER_STOP_TIMEOUT
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [DEBUG] Environment variable empty: ECS_ENGINE_TASK_CLEANUP_WAIT_DURATION
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [DEBUG] Environment variable empty: ECS_IMAGE_MINIMUM_CLEANUP_AGE
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [DEBUG] Environment variable empty: ECS_IMAGE_CLEANUP_INTERVAL
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [ERROR] Unable to connect to docker daemon. Ensure docker is running. module="TaskEngine" err="API error (400): client version 1.17 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.24, please upgrade your client to a newer version
"
2017-08-24T06:04:06Z [CRITICAL] Error creating Docker client: API error (400): client version 1.17 is too old. Minimum supported API version is 1.24, please upgrade your client to a newer version

I did manage to get ecs agent working with the previous image.
image name: Windows_Server-2016-English-Core-Containers-2017.08.09
Ami Id: ami-ad1afad5

[richardpen]

@JonCubed Thanks for reporting this to us, the agent won't work for docker version newer than 1.12 on windows, due to docker removed support for old APIs in moby/moby#27908. We are tracking this in #729. But the agent can still work with docker < 1.13 in previous image. I'm going to close this issue for now, please comments on the issue #729 instead.

Thanks,
Peng

[JonCubed]

@richardpen thanks for the explanation and reference.