AWS CodeBuild vs. AWS CodePipeline

I enjoy it - very cool service. I would say give it a try.

Incentivized

I think AWS CodePipeline is a great tool for anyone wanted automated deployments in a multi-server/container AWS environment. AWS also offers services like Elastic Beanstalk that provide a more managed hosting & deployment experience. CodePipeline is a good middle ground with solid, built-in automation with enough customizability to not lock people into one deployment or architecture philosophy.

Incentivized

• Customization
• Do code builds within a schedule or when the source code changes
• Only pay for the build time used

Incentivized

• It is reliable and works without errors
• It integrates well with our repository and all other AWS functions as well as our end database

Incentivized

• It was difficult to create a branching strategy with GitHub. We had everything running from main, but in a true devops environment, we would like to incorporate a true branching strategy.
• I would like to share build projects with each AWS account we utilize versus creating a build project in each account. It will allow us consistent deployments across the board.
• The error logs are natively in AWS, but when developers do not have access, there is no way for them to view error logs for maintenance other than an admin who has access to share the error logs.

Incentivized

• Ease of use - things like CircleCI or other tools are a bit easier to learn.
• Ability to build from more sources.

Incentivized

It is a highly usable, well integrated CI/CD service, patricularly for AWS-centric organizations. It is a strong balance between simplicity and flexibility. Security was integrated with AWS Secrets Manager allowing secrets to be retrieved dynamically - a huge usability win for us. I did not enjoy the manual build for each environment

Incentivized

Overall, I give AWS Codepipeline a 9 because it gets the job done and I can't complain much about the web interface as much of the action is taking place behind the scenes on the terminal locally or via Amazon's infrastructure anyway. It would be nicer to have a better flowing and visualizable web interface, however.

Incentivized

Our pipeline takes about 30 minutes to run through. Although this time depends on the applications you are using on either end, I feel that it is a reasonable time to make upgrades and updates to our system as it is not an every day push.

Incentivized

We didn't need a lot of support with AWS CodePipeline as it was pretty straightforward to configure and use, but where we ran into problems, the AWS community was able to help. AWS support agents were also helpful in resolving some of the minor issues we encountered, which we could not find a solution elsewhere.

Incentivized

AWS CodeBuild provides the option to fully implement the build in the cloud without wasting your local resources (computer and network) providing independence to developers to invest those resources in other processes. It also provides a robust platform with a lot of customizations or just a script for each language.

Incentivized

CodeCommit and CodeDeploy can be used with CodePipeline so it’s not really fair to stack them against each other as they can be quite the compliment. The same goes for Beanstalk, which is often used as a deployment target in relation to CodePipeline.

CodePipeline fulfills the CI/CD duty, where the other services do not focus on that specific function. They are supplements, not replacements. CodePipeline will detect the updated code and handle deploying it to the actual instance via Beanstalk.

Jenkins is open source and not a native AWS service, that is its primary differentiator. Jenkins can also be used as a supplement to CodePipeline.

Incentivized

• It has a positive ROI

Incentivized

• CodePipeline has reduced ongoing devops costs for my clients, especially around deployment & testing.
• CodePipeline has sped up development workflow by making the deployment process automated off git pushes. Deployment takes very little coordination as the system will just trigger based on what is the latest commit in a branch.
• CodePipeline offered a lot of out-of-the-box functionality that was much simpler to setup than a dedicated CI server. It allowed the deployment process to built and put into production with much less and effort and cost compared to rolling the functionality manually.

Incentivized