AWS CodeDeploy vs. AWS CodePipeline

For greenfield projects built on AWS there are very few reasons why not to choose AWS CodeDeploy. It works out of the box and integrates seamlessly into your cloud environment. If you plan to migrate your existing legacy builds away e.g. from Jenkins, you may need to reserve a substantial amount of time for that and the benefits gained may not be worth the effort.

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

• Automate to deploy to AWS cloud environments
• Maximize application availability during product deployment
• AWS CodeDeploy provides CLI or web management console which can be viewed or edited at any environment

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

• When deploying a branch, sometimes the repository won't auto-populate, and you have to add the source manually

Incentivized

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

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

Jenkins supports a lot of plugings. Also with Jenkins, it is possible to manage everything through our own server. Those are 2 points where I rate Jenkins as one of the best DevOps Tool

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

• 1-2 months per year of working time was saved from administration compared to on-prem legacy solution.
• Teams can trust more on the CI/CD pipeline and the deployments are faster, so the teams can deploy 10-15% more often compared to on-prem legacy solutions.
• Developers tend to desire more bells and whistles than CodeDeploy can offer, there has been some critique but this can be seen also as "editor war" (everyone has their opinion).

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