Features in AWS services that perform application deployment

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a variety of services that simplify application deployment for developers, which is an important aspect covered in the AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02) examination. Below are the key features of some prominent AWS services used for deploying applications.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Simplified Deployment: AWS Elastic Beanstalk provides an easy-to-use interface for deploying and scaling web applications and services. Developers merely upload their code, and Elastic Beanstalk handles the deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling to application health monitoring.

Support for Multiple Languages: Elastic Beanstalk supports several programming languages such as Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker.

Environment Configuration: It allows developers to select the appropriate instance type and define the environment variables that are required.

Integrated with AWS Services: It integrates with RDS, S3, Simple Notification Service (SNS), CloudWatch, and more for additional functionality.

Rollback and Versioning: Elastic Beanstalk stores application versions so you can deploy any previous version at any time.

AWS CodeDeploy

Automated Deployments: AWS CodeDeploy automates code deployments to any instance, including Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, and instances running on-premises.

Centralized Control: It synchronizes application deployment across multiple environments, handling the complexity of updating applications.

Stop and Rollback: AWS CodeDeploy features automatic rollbacks upon deployment failure, ensuring high availability and rapid recovery.

Scalability: It can deploy applications to one instance or thousands, facilitating scalability.

Deployment Configurations: CodeDeploy supports multiple deployment strategies such as in-place deployments and blue/green deployments.

AWS CodePipeline

Continuous Delivery: AWS CodePipeline is a continuous integration and continuous delivery service that automates the build, test, and deploy phases of your release process every time there is a code change, based on the release model defined.

Integrations: CodePipeline integrates with GitHub, AWS CodeCommit, and Amazon S3, allowing for various sources for code retrieval and deployment.

Customizable Stages: You can define multiple stages of the deployment process, like Build, Test, and Deploy, and add manual approval steps if necessary.

AWS CodeBuild

Build and Test Code: AWS CodeBuild compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy.

Automatic Scaling: The service scales continuously and processes multiple builds concurrently, so your builds are not left waiting in a queue.

Integration with other AWS Services: CodeBuild integrates with AWS CodePipeline, S3, CodeCommit, and other services to streamline the CI/CD pipeline.

AWS CloudFormation

Infrastructure as Code: With AWS CloudFormation, you can model your entire infrastructure in a text file. This infrastructure code can be versioned, reused, and shared among members of your team.

Automated Provisioning: CloudFormation automatically provisions the stack (all the resources your application needs) based on your template.

Rollback and Update: If deployment fails, CloudFormation can roll back to the last known good state, and you can also update existing stacks.

Amazon EC2

Full Control: This provides complete control of your computing resources along with a notional geographic area (region) for deployment.

Multiple Instance Types: You can choose from a wide array of instance types that are optimized for different workloads and performance requirements.

Scalability: Auto Scaling helps you maintain application availability by allowing you to scale EC2 instances up or down automatically.

Amazon Lightsail

Simple Deployment: Lightsail is the easiest way to launch and manage a virtual private server with AWS. It includes everything you need to get started quickly – a virtual machine, SSD-based storage, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP.

AWS Fargate

Serverless Compute for Containers: With AWS Fargate, you don’t need to provision or manage servers, and you only pay for resources that your containers use.

Integration with Amazon ECS and EKS: Fargate can be used with both Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

Security: Each task or pod runs in its own isolated environment without sharing resources with other tasks or pods.

By understanding the capabilities of these AWS services, candidates preparing for the AWS Certified Developer – Associate (DVA-C02) exam can effectively deploy, manage, and scale their applications on the AWS platform. While these services cover a broad range of functionality, AWS continually updates and adds services, so it’s also crucial for candidates to keep up with the latest AWS developments for application deployment.