1. DMG301 – AWS Elastic Beanstalk Under the Hood
Chris Whitaker, Amazon Web Services
November 14, 2013
© 2013 Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. May not be copied, modified, or distributed in whole or in part without the express consent of Amazon.com, Inc.

2. Featuring
Sudhindra R Rao and Pengchao Wang,
ThoughtWorks

3. Have you ever wanted to…
• Control the lifetime of your AWS resources
separately from your application code?
• Extend or add more AWS resources to your
Elastic Beanstalk environment?
• Control traffic to your application as you deploy?
You have come to the right place!

4. Under the Hood Series
•
•
•
•
Elastic Beanstalk experience assumed
Practical tips and tricks
Real stories, real advice, from real customers
Q&A!

5. Flow
AWS
ThoughtWorks
Q&A
(25m)
(25m)
(10m)

6. Controlling the Lifetime
• Out-of-the-box Elastic Beanstalk supports
– Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
• Tied to the lifetime of your environment
– Terminating or rebuilding your environment removes or replaces
your database
• Use AWS CloudFormation to manage resource
lifetimes independently

7. Resource Lifetime
http://www.your-app.com
ELB
Alert
Log
App
Terminate
environment
AZ
Mon

8. Resource Lifetime
http://www.your-app.com
ELB
Alert
Log
App
Terminate
environment
AZ
Mon

9. A CloudFormation Template
• Demo

10. Extending Your Configuration
• Elastic Beanstalk gives you the following:
– Load balanced, auto scaling; single instance
– Amazon RDS database
• What if your application needs other resources
– Amazon ElastiCache cache cluster, Amazon DynamoDB table,
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, Amazon CloudWatch alarms…
• Two options
– Elastic Beanstalk extensions (resources with lifetime tied to the code or
instance)
– AWS CloudFormation templates (resources with independent lifetime)

11. Adding Resources Using EBExtensions
http://www.your-app.com
ELB
Alert
App
Log
Mon
EBSAZ
EBS

12. Adding Resources using CloudFormation
option_settings:
"aws:autoscaling:launchconfiguation":
InstanceType: "m1.large"
BlockDeviceMappings: "/dev/sdj:100"
http://www.your-app.com
Alert
ELB
create_resources.config
Resources:
AlarmTopic:
Type: AWS::SNS::Topic
Properties: …
App
CpuAlarm:
Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
Properties…
Log
Mon
EBSAZ
EBS

13. Extending Your Configuration
• Attach an EBS-optimized volume
• Supported directly by Elastic Beanstalk
option_settings:
"aws:autoscaling:launchconfiguation":
InstanceType: "m1.large"
BlockDeviceMappings: "/dev/sdj:100"

14. Extending Your Configuration
• Adding additional resources (Alarm and Topic)
AlarmTopic:
Type: AWS::SNS::Topic
Properties:
Subscription:
- Endpoint:
Fn::GetOptionSetting:
OptionName: AlarmEmail
DefaultValue: "nobody@amazon.com"
Protocol: email
CpuAlarm:
Type: AWS::CloudWatch::Alarm
Properties:
AlarmDescription: "Alarm if CPU grows beyond 90%"
Namespace: "AWS/EC2"
MetricName: CPUUtilization
Dimensions:
- Name: AutoScalingGroupName
Value : { "Ref" : "AWSEBAutoScalingGroup" }
Statistic: Average
Period: 300
EvaluationPeriods: 1
Threshold: 90
ComparisonOperator: GreaterThanThreshold
AlarmActions:
- Ref: AlarmTopic

15. Built-in Resources
Resource Name
Description
AWSEBAutoScalingGroup
The name of the Auto Scaling group that Elastic Beanstalk uses
when it launches Amazon EC2 instances.
AWSEBAutoScalingLaunchConfiguration
The name for the launch configuration settings that Elastic
Beanstalk uses when it launches EC2 instances.
AWSEBEnvironmentName
The name of the Elastic Beanstalk environment.
AWSEBLoadBalancer
The name of the elastic load balancer used in the Elastic Beanstalk
environment.
AWSEBRDSDatabase
The name of the Amazon RDS database.
AWSEBSecurityGroup
The name for the EC2 security group that Elastic Beanstalk uses
when it launches EC2 instances.

16. Advanced Deployment Techniques
• Deploying to QA and Production using branches
– Use multiple Git branches deployed to multiple environments
• Zero downtime deployments using CNAME flip
– Deploy a new version even under heavy load
• Controlling traffic using Amazon Route 53
– Define how much traffic is directed to your new version

17. Using Branches
Git repository
V1
git commit
Users
V1
V2
V2
Branch1
Branch2

18. Deploying Using Multiple Branches
 git init
 eb init
 git add .
… edit your source
 git commit
 git aws.push
 git branch v1
 git checkout v1
 eb branch
 git aws.push
 git checkout master
… edit your source
 git aws.push
Test cycle deployed to test
Create a V1 branch and deploy
to production
Continue to develop and test

19. Zero Downtime Deployments
• Deploy new version with zero downtime and
ability to roll back (i.e., CNAME swap)

20. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1

21. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1

22. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2

23. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2

24. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2

25. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2

26. http://www.your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2

27. Controlling Traffic
• What if you want more control of the traffic when
you deploy a new version?
• Use Amazon Route 53 weighted resource
record sets
– Associate multiple Elastic Beanstalk environments with the
same DNS name
– Control traffic flow using weights

28. Controlling Traffic
http://your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2
Weight 100
Weight 0

29. Controlling Traffic
http://your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2
Weight 100
Weight 10

30. Controlling Traffic
http://your-app.com
V1
V1
V2
V2
Weight 0
Weight 100

31. Controlling Traffic
• Demo

32. Geographic Load Balancing
• Extend the Amazon Route53 idea to use latency
record sets
– Associate multiple Elastic Beanstalk environments in different
regions with the same DNS name
– Latency-based routing selects the “nearest” Elastic Beanstalk
environment

33. Call to Action
• Customize your infrastructure with
EBExtensions
• Use AWS CloudFormation in conjunction with
Elastic Beanstalk to control resources lifetime
• Deploy using multiple branches for development
and production
• Use CNAME flip or Amazon Route 53
configuration to manage your deployments

34. Other Resources
• DMG204 - Zero to Sixty: AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• DMG201 - Zero to Sixty: AWS CloudFormation
• DMG303 - AWS CloudFormation Under the Hood
Come find me in the developer resources booth

35. Sudhindra R Rao and Pengchao Wang

36. Blue-Green Deployments with AWS
Elastic Beanstalk

37. Elastic Beanstalk
I am so
beautiful
!

38. Elastic Beanstalk – Missing Parts?
Automated Blue-Green
Deployments

39. AWS Elastic Beanstalk blue-green deployment automation
http://thoughtworksstudios.github.io/eb_deployer

40. Blue Green Deployments on Elastic Beanstalk
version n
version n+1
terminate
testing

41. EbDeployer Automates Blue-Green Deployments

42. Deployment with EbDeployer
version n
scale down
version n+1
smoke tests

43. Package and Deploy

44. A Sample Smoke Test

45. Demo

46. EbDeployer Makes Shared Resource
Blue-Green Deployments Easier

47. Elastic Beanstalk Resource Management
version n
version n+1

48. Shared Resources
version n
version n+1

49. EbDeployer
Adding RDS to the Deployment

50. Add a CloudFormation Template for RDS

51. Add Resource Declaration

52. Demo

53. EbDeployer Provides Different
Deployment Flavors

54. Phoenix Server
• phoenix_mode: true

55. Deployment Strategy
• blue-green vs. inplace-update

56. EbDeployer in Our Pipeline

57. Continuous Delivery

58. EbDeployer

59. Have a Pull Request?
http://thoughtworksstudios.github.io/eb_deployer
wpc@thoughtworks.com
srao@thoughtworks.com
@alexhal9000
@sudhindraRao

60. Please give us your feedback on this
presentation
DMG301
As a thank you, we will select prize
winners daily for completed surveys!