AWS CodeDeploy

Introduction:

AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that automates software deployments to a variety of computing services such as Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, and Lambda functions.

CodeDeploy allows developers to deploy new features, updates, and bug fixes quickly, safely, and consistently. It automates the deployment process, reducing the risk of errors and the time it takes to complete the deployment. CodeDeploy can deploy applications from Amazon S3 buckets, GitHub repositories, or other sources, and it supports various deployment types, including in-place deployments, blue/green deployments, and canary deployments.

With CodeDeploy, developers can define deployment configurations that control the deployment process, including deployment type, deployment group, deployment environment, and rollback options. CodeDeploy also provides visibility into the deployment process with detailed logs and metrics, allowing developers to quickly diagnose and resolve issues.

Overall, AWS CodeDeploy is a powerful tool for automating and managing software deployments and can help organizations reduce the time and effort involved in deploying applications while improving the overall reliability of their deployments.

This article focuses on the following pointers:

• What is AWS CodeDeploy
• Benefits of AWS CodeDeploy
• AWS CodeDeploy Platforms
• How does it work

What is AWS CodeDeploy?

AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that automates software deployments to a variety of computing services such as Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, and Lambda functions. It simplifies the process of releasing new features, updates, and bug fixes to your applications by automating the deployment process, reducing the risk of errors and the time it takes to complete the deployment.

AWS CodeDeploy works by using a set of deployment configurations to control the deployment process, including defining the deployment type, deployment group, deployment environment, and rollback options. It supports various deployment types, including in-place deployments, blue/green deployments, and canary deployments.

CodeDeploy can deploy applications from various sources, including Amazon S3 buckets, GitHub repositories, or other sources, making it easy to integrate with your existing development workflows. It also provides detailed logs and metrics to monitor the deployment process and quickly diagnose and resolve issues.

Overall, AWS CodeDeploy is a powerful tool that can help organizations automate and manage their software deployments and reduce the time and effort involved in deploying applications, while improving the reliability of their deployments.

AWS CodeDeploy is a deployment service that automates application deployments to Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises instances, serverless Lambda functions, or Amazon ECS services.

You can deploy a nearly unlimited variety of application content, including:

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

CodeDeploy can deploy application content that runs on a server and is stored in Amazon S3 buckets, GitHub repositories, or Bitbucket repositories. CodeDeploy can also deploy a serverless Lambda function. You do not need to make changes to your existing code before you can use CodeDeploy.

CodeDeploy makes it easier for you to:

• Rapidly release new features.
• Update AWS Lambda function versions.
• Avoid downtime during application deployment.
• Handle the complexity of updating your applications, without many of the risks associated with error-prone manual deployments.

The service scales with your infrastructure so you can easily deploy to one instance or thousands.

Content that can be deployed are-

• Code and AWS Lambda functions.
• Web applications and configuration files.
• Scripts and executable files.
• Packages and multimedia files.

The platforms where it can be deployed are-

• Amazon EC2
• AWS Fargate,
• AWS Lambda
• On-premises Servers

Benefits of AWS CodeDeploy

CodeDeploy offers these benefits:

• Server, serverless, and container applications. CodeDeploy lets you deploy both traditional applications on servers and applications that deploy a serverless AWS Lambda function version or an Amazon ECS application.
• Automated deployments. CodeDeploy fully automates your application deployments across your development, test, and production environments. CodeDeploy scales with your infrastructure so that you can deploy to one instance or thousands.
• Minimize downtime. If your application uses the EC2/On-Premises compute platform, CodeDeploy helps maximize your application availability. During an in-place deployment, CodeDeploy performs a rolling update across Amazon EC2 instances. You can specify the number of instances to be taken offline at a time for updates. During a blue/green deployment, the latest application revision is installed on replacement instances. Traffic is rerouted to these instances when you choose, either immediately or as soon as you are done testing the new environment. For both deployment types, CodeDeploy tracks application health according to rules you configure.
• Stop and roll back. You can automatically or manually stop and roll back deployments if there are errors.
• Centralized control. You can launch and track the status of your deployments through the CodeDeploy console or the AWS CLI. You receive a report that lists when each application revision was deployed and to which Amazon EC2 instances.
• Easy to adopt. CodeDeploy is platform-agnostic and works with any application. You can easily reuse your setup code. CodeDeploy can also integrate with your software release process or continuous delivery toolchain.
• Concurrent deployments. If you have more than one application that uses the EC2/On-Premises compute platform, CodeDeploy can deploy them concurrently to the same set of instances.

AWS CodeDeploy Platforms

CodeDeploy is able to deploy applications to three compute platforms:

• EC2/On-Premises: Describes instances of physical servers that can be Amazon EC2 cloud instances, on-premises servers, or both. Applications created using the EC2/On-Premises compute platform can be composed of executable files, configuration files, images, and more.
• Deployments that use the EC2/On-Premises compute platform manage the way in which traffic is directed to instances by using an in-place or blue/green deployment type. For more information, see Overview of CodeDeploy deployment types.
• AWS Lambda: Used to deploy applications that consist of an updated version of a Lambda function. AWS Lambda manages the Lambda function in a serverless compute environment made up of a high-availability compute structure. All administration of the compute resources is performed by AWS Lambda. For more information, see Serverless Computing and Applications. For more information about AWS Lambda and Lambda functions, see AWS Lambda.
• You can manage the way in which traffic is shifted to the updated Lambda function versions during a deployment by choosing a canary, linear, or all-at-once configuration.
• Amazon ECS: Used to deploy an Amazon ECS containerized application as a task set. CodeDeploy performs a blue/green deployment by installing an updated version of the application as a new replacement task set. CodeDeploy reroutes production traffic from the original application task set to the replacement task set. The original task set is terminated after a successful deployment. For more information about Amazon ECS, see Amazon Elastic Container Service.
• You can manage the way in which traffic is shifted to the updated task set during a deployment by choosing a canary, linear, or all-at-once configuration.

Note: Amazon ECS blue/green deployments are supported using both CodeDeploy and AWS CloudFormation. Details for these deployments are described in subsequent sections.

How does it work?

After going through the advantages of AWS CodeDeploy now let us dive into it’s working. How does it manage to automate the complex processes? We can divide the methodology into three parts. Have a look at the detailed explanation of all these stages as per SNDK Corp.

Application-

The application means the code that needs to be deployed. It can be source codes or revision files uploaded on a Github repository or an AWS S3 bucket. Revision files are different versions of your application.

AppSpec File-

It is a simple configuration file with the extension .yml. Also, it is a blueprint of your deployment process. Moreover, it contains the details of your version, the source files, and the destination environment.

Deployment Group-

The set of instances that are associated with the deployment process comprises the deployment group. This is basically where we need to deploy our application.

Use Cases

1. A large Number of Deployments- In case of large number deployments a day, AWS CodeDeploy can come to our rescue. With continuous automated deployment and reduction in downtime, this service can prove to be a boon for the developers.
2. Multiple features deployment- CodeDeploy is used by SmartNews to support a software delivery pipeline consisting of a number of microservices such as a news crawler, image analysis engine, and content creator. In other cases where there are a number of features to be deployed, AWS CodeDeploy can be used to automate the process and integrate all the microservices.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, cases where large scale deployments are necessary for a live application, AWS CodeDeploy can be used. The reduction in downtime is an added bonus to its uses. Even for small scale applications, CodeDeploy can scale itself according to the resources. Although the process is automated, still we can have control over the process and terminate it anytime. Overall, AWS CodeDeploy is a must-have service for your application