AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK)

March 28, 2025

Define your cloud infrastructure using a familiar language:
- JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Java and .NET
The code is "compiled" into a CloudFormation template (JSON/YAML)
You can therefore deploy infrastructure and application runtime code together
- Great for Lambda functions
- Great for Docker containers in EC2 / EKS

Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk is a developer centric view of deploying an application on AWS
It uses all the component's we've seen before:
- EC2, ASG, ELB, RDS, etc...
But it's all in one view that's easy to make sense of!
We still have full control over the configuration
Beanstalk = Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Beanstalk is free but you pay for the underlying instances
Manage services
- Instance configuration / OS is handle by Beanstalk
- Deployment strategy is configurable but performed by Elastic Beanstalk
- Capability provisioning
- Load balancing & auto-scaling
- Application health-monitoring & responsiveness
Just the application code is the responsibility of the developer
Three architecture models:
- Single Instance deployment: good for dev
- LB + ASG: great for production or pre-production web applications
- ASG only: great for non-web apps in production (workers, etc...)
Support for many platforms: Go, Java SE, Java with Tomcat...
Health agent pushes metrics to CloudWatch
Checks for app health,
publishes health events

We want to deploy our application automatically
Works with EC2 Instances
Works with On-Premises Servers
Hybrid service
Servers / Instances must be provisioned and configured ahead of time with the CodeDeploy Agent

Code building service in the cloud
Compiles source code, run tests, and produces packages that are ready to deployed (by CodeDeploy for example)
Benefits:
- Fully managed, serverless
- Continuously scalable & highly available
- Secure
- Pay-as-you-go pricing - only pay for the build time

Orchestrate the different steps to have the code automatically pushed to production
- Code -> Build -> Test -> Provision -> Deploy
- Basis for CICD (Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery)
Benefits:
- Fully managed, compatible with CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, Elastic Beanstalk, CloudFormation, GitHub, 3rd-party services & custom plugins...
- Fast delivery & rapid updates

Software packages depend on each other to be built ( also called code dependencies), and new ones are created.
Storing and retrieving these dependencies is called artifact management
Traditionally you need to setup your own artifact management system
CodeArtifact is a secure, scalable, and cost-effective artifact management for software development
Works with common dependency management tools such as Maven, Gradle, npm, yarn, twine, pip and NuGet
Developers and CodeBuild can then retrieve dependencies straight from CodeArtifact

Helps you manage your EC2 and On-Premises systems at scale
Another Hybrid AWS service
Get operational insights about the state of your infrastructure
Suite of 10+ products
Most important features are:
- Patching automation for enhanced compliance
- Run commands across an entire fleet of servers
- Store parameter configuration with the SSM Parameter Store
Works for Linux, Windows, MacOS, and Raspberry Pi OS ( Raspbian)