The document discusses infrastructure as code tools for defining cloud infrastructure programmatically. It covers existing tools like CloudFormation and Terraform, and then introduces AWS CDK. AWS CDK allows defining AWS infrastructure in code using TypeScript or other languages, reducing code size significantly compared to other tools. While AWS CDK is promising due to its language features and reuse capabilities, it currently has few examples and can be buggy when destroying stacks.

1. Adam Woods
CTO & Co-founder
Trabr
/in/woodsae
woodsae
@woodsae

2. AWS CDK
(Cloud Development Kit)
Infrastructure in TypeScript

3. Overview
● What is infrastructure as code?
● Existing tools
● Intro to AWS CDK

4. DISCLAIMER
I am not a DevOps expert

5. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

6. Infrastructure as Code
Came into existence in 2006 following the
launch of AWS

7. Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as code
!=
configuration management

8. Infrastructure as Code
Store in source control
Code reviews
Democratisation

9. Existing Tools

10. Cloudformation

11. Cloudformation
Created by Amazon in 2011
You write in YAML or JSON

13. Cloudformation
Designer

14. Cloudformation
● Lots of sample code
● State visualised in AWS
console
● Can be inlined with
serverless.yml
● Has a visual designer tool
● Verbose and hard to read
● No language features like loops
and math functions
● Importing files
● Not open-source
Pros: Cons:

15. Terraform

16. Terraform
Written in Go
You write in Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL)
(or optionally JSON)
Created by Hashicorp in 2014

17. Terraform

18. Terraform
● Industry standard
● Good documentation
● Plenty of examples
● Shows diff before applying
changes
● Can create other things like
Github repos
● Custom DSL from Hashicorp
● IDE autocomplete support is
poor (at least in VS Code)
● Sharing of state
Pros: Cons:

19. AWS CDK

20. AWS CDK
Built on top of Cloudformation
You write in TypeScript
(or C#, F#, Java, JS, Python)
Created by Amazon in 2019
(v1.0.0 GA was released on July 12)

21. AWS CDK
INFRASTRUCTURE
BACKEND
FRONTEND
“Fuller” Stack Developers

22. AWS CDK
INFRASTRUCTURE
BACKEND
FRONTEND
“Fuller” Stack Developers

23. AWS CDK

24. AWS CDK
● Sample code from previous slide creates 26 resources in AWS
○ VPC, Subnets, Route Tables, RDS DB, Secret, NAT Gateway, Internet Gateway, EIP
● Code Size:
○ Cloudformation - 414 lines
○ Terraform - 165 lines
○ AWS CDK - 21 lines (including imports)

25. AWS CDK
● Write in TypeScript
● Helpful defaults to reduce code
● Code reuse
● Few examples and articles
● A bit buggy with destroying
stacks
Pros: Cons:

26. AWS icon quiz here:
https://bit.ly/2mu9wAs

27. THE END

28. Adam Woods
CTO & Co-founder
Trabr
/in/woodsae
woodsae
@woodsae