AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that allows deploying code and applications to EC2 instances and on-premise servers. It is technology agnostic and supports deploying from Amazon S3 buckets or GitHub repositories. The document provides an overview of CodeDeploy, including how to get started, the execution flow using appspec.yml files, deployment configurations and groups, and considerations for using CodeDeploy.

1. AWS CodeDeploy
By Anton Babenko, May 2016

2. Hi!
Anton Babenko
I enjoy AWS, DevOps and web-development.
I am AWS Certified Solution Architect, SysOps and DevOps.
I work as DevOps engineer at Your.MD.
I am one of organizers of AWS User Group Norway meetups
( Next meetup - “Big data experience at Schibsted”, 30th of May, 17:30 at MESH )
github.com/antonbabenko linkedin.com/in/antonbabenko
anton@antonbabenko.com

3. What is AWS CodeDeploy?
Fully managed service which allows deployment to Amazon EC2 and on-premise instances
Requires no modifications to existing code and is technology agnostic
Can deploy from Amazon S3 buckets and Github repos
Free

4. Getting started
Install codedeploy agent
Prepare your application (add appspec.yml)
Create archive and register application revision
Create archive, upload it to S3 and register application revision:
aws deploy push
Register application revision (can be combined with ghr):
aws deploy register-application-revision
Configure target environment (“deployment group”)

5. Deploy
Deploy application revision (myapp-v1.0.zip) to deployment group (myapp-prod) according to deployment
configuration (CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime):
aws deploy create-deployment
--application-name myapp
--deployment-config-name CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime
--deployment-group-name myapp-prod
--description "My app v1.0 deployment to production"
--s3-location bucket=myapp-archives,bundleType=zip,key=myapp-v1.0.zip

6. Execution flow

7. appspec.yml
version: 0.0
os: linux
files:
- source: Config/config.txt
destination: webapps/Config
- source: source
destination: /webapps/myApp
# permissions: # skipped on this example
hooks:
ApplicationStop:
- location: codedeploy/playbooks/application_stop.yml
BeforeInstall:
- location: codedeploy/playbooks/before_install.yml
- location: Scripts/UnzipDataBundle.sh
AfterInstall:
- location: codedeploy/playbooks/after_install.yml
ApplicationStart:
- location: codedeploy/playbooks/application_start.yml
timeout: 3600
ValidateService:
- location: Scripts/MonitorService.sh
timeout: 3600
runas: codedeployuser

8. codedeploy/playbooks/application_stop.yml
#!/usr/bin/env ansible-playbook
---
- hosts: localhost
gather_facts: false
become: true
tasks:
- name: Stop supervisor service
ignore_errors: yes
supervisorctl:
name: "search"
state: stopped

9. Deployment configuration
One at a time
Half at a time
All at once
Custom

10. Deployment group
Options:
One per environment (development-site, staging-site, production-site)
Blue-green fashion:
production-site-blue + application revision v1.0
production-site-green + application revision v1.1

11. Integrations
Github webhooks
S3 + AWS Lambda
CircleCI, CodeShip, Jenkins, etc
AWS
Auto-scaling
ELB
SNS
Cloudwatch
Cloudtrail
Terraform

12. Considerations
S3 bucket and CodeDeploy application should be in the same AWS region
S3 cross-region replication does not work for private files
Solution: Register application revision for each region/bucket individually
Take care of created files not managed by CodeDeploy yourself
Solution: Use BeforeInstall hook
No control of what revision to deploy during ASG scaling activity
No straightforward solutions I know, only hacks (wrapper-application, triggers to SNS)
Watch out for infinite EC2 restarts during ASG scaling activity
Solution: Use ValidateService hook wisely
Hint: Test deployments on both running and newly created instances

13. Thank you!
Questions ?