Accelerate Development with an AWS CI/CD Pipeline: Benefits and Strategies

Quick Summary: CI/CD pipelines have emerged as one of the greatest DevOps innovations, and with a wide range of cutting-edge tools and services, the AWS platform has taken this development practice to the next level. This blog breaks down the tech talk so you can master the art of building robust CI/CD pipelines by making the most of these powerful tools.

Before CI/CD, publishing code on the production server would eat up most of the time of developers. They had to either manually upload the code on the EC2 server or use other deployment methods.

A CI/CD pipeline turned this upside down by automating the entire process of build, test, and deployment. It automatically executes any change we make in the Git repository.

However, if you have been in the development industry for quite a time, you’re likely to be well aware of the nuisance of CI/CD. For example, as the application grows, the more complex it becomes to manage and maintain the pipeline’s scripts, configuration, and infrastructure.

Shouldn’t we have already figured out a way to make code building and deployment easier by now?

Enters AWS, with its wealth of cutting-edge DevOps CI/CD services and tools.

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How has AWS CI/CD nailed it down?

We've spilled the beans in this blog for potential and existing users of AWS, including developers, architects, and DevOps engineers who want to implement the CI/CD model on AWS for application development and deployment. This guide highlights the AWS features and services you can leverage to implement continuous integration and continuous delivery, how to do so, its benefits, and more.

Alright, let’s begin!

What is AWS CI/CD?

AWS CI/CD refers to a set of tools provided by the cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) to manage, automate, and streamline the software development and deployment cycle.

For clarity, the phrase CI/CD represents:

Continuous Integration: It’s a development practice that helps developers frequently push code changes into GitHub and any other central repositories. Each update triggers automatic builds and tests on the codebase so that any integration or functional issue comes to the surface.

Continuous Delivery: It’s the following stage of CI in which developers deploy artifacts and code changes to a production environment, testing environment, or staging environment. The goal is to create deployment-ready software packages that have gone through the testing procedures.

Top AWS CI/CD Tools and Services

AWS provides a range of tools and functionalities to set up a robust CI/CD pipeline. Take a look at the core automation components of an AWS CI/CD pipeline:

AWS CodeCommit

This highly scalable, secure, and fully managed source control service allows development teams to host private Git repositories along with different managed assets like documents, binary files, and source code. Moreover, you don’t need to manage the infrastructure or handle the scaling complexities of source control systems as this service does it all.

AWS CodeBuild

You can build services, merge source code, perform unit tests, and create ready-to-deploy artifacts in the cloud with this continuous integration service. It comes with built-in development environments and has automatic scaling capabilities to meet heavy demands. Developers can also use their existing build tools and customize the environments using modern tools like Eclipse and Apache Tomcat.

AWS CodePipeline

AWS CodePipeline is the integral service of CI/CD in AWS. It offers seamless compilation, building, testing, and deployment of your codebase based on predetermined release process models. The benefits are accelerated with reliable delivery updates.

Additionally, it has a wide array of plugins for third-party tools and services. Developers can also integrate customized plugins into any stage of the release process. This service is very useful for disaster recovery testing, performance testing, and functional testing.

AWS CodeDeploy

This is one of the best CI/CD tools for AWS to automate the end-to-end app deployment process to various computing services like Amazon ECS, AWD Lambda, Amazon EC2, or even on-premises. If you want to release new features quickly and efficiently without the complexity of manual upgradation or hassles of downtime, this is the best tool for you.

Amazon Elastic Container Registry

Amazon ECR is a fully managed container registry on the cloud. You can host your containers in a secure location and reliably deploy your app artifacts and images.

Whether it's OCI-compatible items, Open Container Initiative (OCI) images, or Docker images, you can use this service to smoothly pull, push, and manage them using your preferred CLI. In addition, you can identify and fix software vulnerabilities, manage image lifecycle policies, and integrate your self-managed environments.

AWS CodeStar

CodeStar is a game-changing component of a CI/CD pipeline in AWS. It offers a unified user interface and project management dashboard to help developers manage all the deployment workflows from a single point. You have to add viewers, contributors, and owners to respective projects and manage their access as well.

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Benefits of Creating an AWS CI/CD Pipeline

Streamlining development workflows and creating a well-connected deployment process is a priority for every team. Thankfully, every tool offered by the Amazon CI/CD platform supports developers in each step of the automation journey.

Following are some of the glaring benefits:

• Fast Delivery of Updates

AWS CI/CD supports rapid application development and launch. Since you always have secure, ready-to-deploy environments and build artifacts, you can deliver frequent and quick updates to users and keep pace with the market demand.

• Improved Productivity

CI/CD reduces day-to-day manual tasks and empowers developers to focus on strategic work. The best part about it is that the end product gets fewer bugs and delivers a smooth user experience.

• Easy Integration

AWS CI/CD services give you the freedom and flexibility to integrate and work alongside a range of third-party tools and plugins, such as Jenkins, GitHub, Bamboo, etc. This helps you meet your tailored requirements without investing in other resources.

• Better Code Quality

With a functional CI/CD in place, you can find bugs and other prevailing issues early on. With real-time feedback and fixes, AWS allows you to build products that align with the highest level of code quality and coding standards.

How to Create a CI/CD Pipeline in AWS

Now, let us walk you through the step-by-step process of implementing the workflow of an Amazon CI/CD pipeline.

Note that since you’ll be using AWS resources from your own AWS account, the charges will be on you according to the standard hourly rates. Considering that, we’ve designed the stages and templates with minimum conditions to optimize costs.

To proceed, follow the below steps:

Step 1

The very first step would be setting up an Application Load Balancer to ensure availability and scalability. You can give it a name of your choice for configuration purposes.

Select the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and availability zones you want to use.

Step 2

Next, you have to create a new Security Group and name a Target Group along with an IP address. Review the entire page and then proceed to create them. Remember to make a note of the DNS.

Step 3

It’s time to go to the Amazon ECS, find Task Definitions, and generate a FarGate service. Opt for the existing Task definition, select Actions, and then click on Create Service.

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Step 4

Go to Launch Type and choose FarGate while keeping the Deployment type unchanged. Move forward and pick the already configured subnets in the Load Balancer.

For the required type, select Application Load Balancer and add it. Then, configure the Load Balancer security group.

To check the application's status, go to any browser and simply search the DNS name of the Load Balancer. A fully functional application indicates you're all set to create the CI/CD pipeline on AWS.

Step 5

At this stage, you need to create a CodeCommit repo. Look for it in the AWS Console, give it a name, and set the repository up. Once done, ensure you provide Git credentials and grant the necessary permission to access the repo.

Step 6

You have successfully created a CodeCommit repository, it’ll look like this:

Step 7

Now let’s move on to the most critical step - continuous integration. For this, we'll be using AWS CodeBuild. Here, a crucial requirement is a buildspec.yml file. You can compile, test, and finalize the code with all the commands and instructions this file contains.

Step 8

With the code up and running, CodePipeline automatically builds and deploys the application to control code changes.

To start, navigate to the CodePipeline console and follow the configuration process. Choose GitHub, CodeCommit, or any other repo based on your preference and select the repository and branch to complete the setup.

After completing this step, you need to set up a new build project, manage access control, add environment variables, introduce deploy stages, and ultimately, build the CI/CD pipeline.

The pipeline will trigger the launch of a new container as a service, once it’s up and running.

Now, simply push it to the CodeCommit repo to initiate continuous integration and continuous deployment. As a result, it’ll deploy a fresh FarGate Service.

And if you have to check the deployment and changes, access the DNS using any browser.

And there you have it! This is how you can leverage AWS tools and services to build a robust CI/CD pipeline.

Best Practices for CI/CD in AWS

To take your deployment and delivery projects to the next level, you may hire AWS programmers that follow the below tried-and-true practices and the scope of automation that comes with them.

1. Implement high-end security measures for reliable continuous integration and continuous deployment workflows, such as encryption and authentication for source repos, installing Jenkins on EC2 build, and using Secrets Manager for credentials.
2. Regularly monitor the AWS CI/CD pipeline to debug complex errors and make the system responsive, efficient, and easily accessible. Some of the top monitoring tools are Datadog, Tekton, and Splunk.
3. Keep your AWS resources in a unified toolchain by using AWS CodeStar. With CodePipeline, it provides developers with a software management UI or dashboard to automatically source code, create pipelines, manage repositories, etc.
4. Install Amazon VPC to use AWS tools and services within your private virtual network. This way, you’ll have full control of your IP address, subnets, and other settings.

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Master AWS CI/CD with RadixwebAchieving automation and efficiency shouldn’t be a tough nut to crack. Since 2000, we’ve made this our vision and dedicated ourselves to helping aspiring developers and enterprises accelerate the pace of innovation.As one of the leading pioneers of AWS DevOps services, Radixweb has extensive experience in delivering top-notch DevOps solutions on the cloud. This includes setting up CI/CD pipelines and IaC, integrating cloud-native tools for agile workflows, embracing serverless containerization approaches, fostering microservices-centric architectural development, and more.So, if you're aiming to harness the power of CI/CD on AWS for optimal efficiency gains, reach out to us!