AWS CodeDeploy: How To Automate Code Deployment?

Trends have shown an accent in the popularity of DevOps. AWS being a popular cloud vendor, many wondered if AWS could incorporate DevOps approach. So, AWS responded with several services that catered the mentioned requirement and also launched an AWS DevOps Certification Course in support. In this article, we would be discussing a popular service for DevOps on AWS known as AWS CodeDeploy.

This article would precisely focus on the following pointers:

1. Why AWS DevOps?
2. What is AWS CodeDeploy?
3. AWS CodeDeploy Platforms
4. Working of AWS CodeDeploy

Let us get started then.

Why AWS DevOps?

AWS is one of the best cloud service providers and DevOps, on the other hand, is the ‘need of the hour’implementation of software development life-cycle.

Following reasons make AWS DevOps a highly popular amalgamation:

1. AWS CloudFormation

DevOps teams are required to create and release cloud instances and services more frequently than traditional development teams. AWS CloudFormation enables you to do just that. ‘Templates’ of AWS resources like EC2 instances, ECS containers, and S3 storage buckets let you set up the entire stack without you having to bring everything together by yourself.

2. AWS EC2

AWS EC2 speaks for itself. You can run containers inside EC2 instances. Hence you can leverage the AWS Security and management features. Another reason why AWS DevOps is a lethal combo.

3. AWS CloudWatch

AWS CloudWatch lets you track every resource that AWS has to offer. Plus it makes it very easy to use third-party tools for monitoring Sumo Logic, Botmetric, AppDynamics, etc

4. AWS CodePipeline

AWS CodePipeline is one popular feature from AWS which highly simplifies the way you manage your CI/CD toolset. It lets you integrate with tools like GitHub, Jenkins, and CodeDeploy enabling you to visually control the flow of app updates from build to production. 

5. Instances In AWS

AWS frequently creates and adds new instances to their list and the level of customization with these instances allow you to make it easy to use AWS DevOps together.

All these reasons make AWS one of the best platforms for DevOps.

What Is AWS CodeDeploy?

This is what the definition says,

• Code
• Serverless AWS Lambda functions
• Web and configuration files
• Executables
• Packages
• Scripts
• Multimedia files

Here are some of the benefits of using AWS CodeDeploy:

• Lets you deploy server, serverless, and container applications
• You can automate deployments
• Minimize downtime
• Stop and rollback
• Get centralized control
• It is easy to adopt
• Supports concurrent deployments

AWS CodeDeploy Platforms

With AWS CodeDeploy, you can deploy code to three different platforms:

1. EC2/On-Premise

Think of it as an instance or virtual machine of Physical server which can be on-premises or on AWS. The applications composed on top of it can be executable files or configuration files. It supports both types for managing traffic that is ‘In-Place’ or ‘Blue Green deployment’.

2. AWS Lambda Functions

If your applications have updated version of Lambda Function, you can deploy those in a serverless environment using AWS Lambda Functions and AWS CodeDeploy. This arrangement gives you a highly available compute structure.

3. Amazon ECS:

If you wish to deploy containers, you can perform Blue/Green deployment with AWS ECS and AWS CodeDeploy.

Now let us go ahead and understand how AWS CodeDeploy actually works:

Working of AWS CodeDeploy

So let us try and understand how AWS Codeploy works with the help of the image below:

In order to deploy applications, we need to create or have applications in first place. These applications consist of revisions which can be source codes or executable files that can be uploaded to Github repository or AWS S3 bucket.

Then you have a deployment group, which can be a set of instances associated with the application to be deployed. These instances can be added by using a tag or can be added by using AWS Autoscaling group.

Finally, the deployment configuration which holds AppSpec files that give CodeDeploy, the specifications on what to deploy and where to deploy applications. These configuration files (AppSpec) come with .yml extension.

If I were to put all the blocks above in order, they would answer three questions:

1. What to deploy?
2. How to deploy?
3. Where to deploy?

This was about the conceptual knowledge that concerns this topic. In case if you wish to explore the actual working of AWS CodeDeploy service, then checkout the video below:

So this is it folks. This brings us to the end of this article on ‘AWS CodeDeploy’. If you are looking for a structured training approach then check out our certification program for AWS Training Course which comes with instructor-led live training and real-life project experience. This training will help you understand AWS Fundamentals in depth and help you master various concepts that are a must for a successful AWS Career.

Check out our AWS Certification Training in Top Cities

I hope you had something new to learn. Got a question on this topic, mention it in the comments section.