Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) are essential for modern software development, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a wide range of services and features that can help you implement CI/CD in your organisation.
CodeCommit
CodeCommit is a fully managed source control service that allows teams to host and manage their Git repositories on AWS. It supports centralised and distributed version control systems and integrates with AWS services such as CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy.
CodeBuild
CodeBuild is a fully managed build service for compiling, testing, and packaging code. It supports multiple languages and can be integrated with CodeCommit, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy. It also allows for easy scaling and handling of large projects.
CodePipeline
CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that can automate your software release process. It integrates with CodeCommit, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy and automates your code’s build, test, and deployment. It also allows for rollbacks and manual approvals.
CodeDeploy
CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that can deploy your code to various environments, including EC2 instances, on-premises servers, and Lambda functions. It also supports blue/green deployments, which makes it easy to roll out new versions of your application without impacting your users.
CodeStar
CodeStar is a fully managed service that makes it easy to develop, build, and deploy applications on AWS. It provides a web-based interface for creating, managing, and deploying applications, and it integrates with CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy.
CodeGuru
CodeGuru is a machine learning-powered service that provides automated code review and recommendations to improve code quality and performance. It can be integrated with CodeCommit and CodeBuild and can be used to identify potential issues in your code before they are deployed.
Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
These services provide a way to run and scale containerised applications and seamless integration with CodeDeploy and CodePipeline to deploy and manage containerised applications.
Lambda
Lambda is a serverless computing service that runs code without provisioning or managing servers. It supports multiple languages and integrates with AWS services such as CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy.
As such, AWS provides comprehensive services and features for implementing CI/CD. From source control with CodeCommit to building and testing with CodeBuild, automated deployment with CodeDeploy and CodePipeline, and code quality check with CodeGuru.
AWS also offers container orchestration services ECS and EKS, which integrate seamlessly with these CI/CD services. This allows you to run your applications on a fully managed infrastructure. You can also leverage the power of serverless computing through Lambda. All these services are fully managed and scalable and can be integrated to provide a streamlined and automated software release process.
A Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline
The diagram visually represents a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline using AWS services. Here’s a step-by-step explanation in the context of AWS CI/CD:
- Developers: The process starts with developers who are responsible for writing and committing code.
- AWS CodeCommit: The developers push their code changes to repositories in AWS CodeCommit. This service is a secure, scalable, and managed source control service that hosts Git repositories.
- Repositories:
- Application Repository: Contains the source code for the application.
- k8o Infrastructure Repository: Contains the infrastructure as code (IaC) definitions for the Kubernetes environment.
- Trigger: Committing code to the AWS CodeCommit repository triggers AWS CodePipeline, which automates the build, test, and deploy phases of the release process.
- AWS CodePipeline: This is a continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application updates. It integrates with other AWS services and third-party tools to orchestrate the various stages of the pipeline.
- AWS CodeBuild: This service compiles the source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to be deployed. CodeBuild is a fully managed build service that scales continuously and processes multiple builds concurrently.
- Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry): The built and tested Docker images are stored in Amazon ECR. This fully managed container registry makes it easy to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images.
- Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): The Kubernetes cluster on which the application will be deployed. EKS is a managed Kubernetes service that simplifies running Kubernetes on AWS without installing and operating your own Kubernetes control plane or nodes.
- FluxCD: An open-source tool that automates the process of deploying applications to Kubernetes. FluxCD pulls the latest Docker images from Amazon ECR and ensures that the Kubernetes cluster is always running the desired version of the application as defined in the k8o Infrastructure Repository.
- Node Worker Group: These are the worker nodes in the Kubernetes cluster managed by Amazon EKS that run the containerized applications.
Process Flow Summary:
- Developers commit code to AWS CodeCommit repositories.
- CodePipeline is triggered to start the CI/CD process.
- CodeBuild compiles and tests the code, builds Docker images and pushes them to Amazon ECR.
- FluxCD continuously monitors the Kubernetes infrastructure and application repositories. Upon detecting changes, it pulls the updated Docker images from Amazon ECR and updates the Kubernetes cluster managed by Amazon EKS.
This setup ensures a seamless and automated CI/CD pipeline, leveraging AWS services to maintain and deploy applications efficiently in a scalable and reliable manner.
