AWS CodeDeploy is a fully managed deployment service that automates software deployments to a variety of compute services such as Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, and on-premises servers. AWS CodeDeploy aims to make it easier for users to rapidly release new features, avoid downtime during application deployment, and handle the complexity of updating applications.
$0.02
per on-premises instance
SmartDeploy
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
SmartDeploy, now from PDQ.com (acquired January 2022), provides a software deployment solution supporting computer imaging, app deployment, driver management, and Windows migration.
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.
Well suited scenarios : One of the situations SmartDeploy helped immensly was in application deployment and management for our projects , making it and instant favorite for the deployment process. Also in one situation where we had a high flying app development which did'nt had much time to develop, deployment thorugh smart deploy made it quick and less involvement. Easier to understand major functionalities and onboard new projects. Less appropriate scenarios: We faced issues while utilising by DevOps team for monitoring every system for issue resolving in linux update on every employees system. This created alot of delay in every employees work front as systems were not working as expected
Remote monitoring is useful but has some lagging and functionalities are not upfront to use , making it complicated for new users to be aware just by using the application
Windows migration was quite difficult in terms of updates of softwares to be migrated to new system
Integration with client systems can be tough as major usage of other softwares is done in most of client systems causing us difficulties to integrate with smart deploy on the same platform
SmartDeploy customer support has been very good. Although we do not always get a super-fast response (though always within the time stated). The tech support folks at SmartDeploy always go the extra mile to see that our immediate issues are taken care of in as timely a manner as possible. They have always been attentive to our needs and frustrations.
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
SmartDeploy has a fantastic deployment process management with detailed and configurable aspects. Even though it has detailed configuration it still somehow makes it easy to understand and implement compared to other services which need special learning and courses to understand them completelya and use them efficiently. This is one quality highly appreciated and stacks up against any other services I have used for deployment
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).
Very fast as an image deployment solution for new PCs. We do not have to create a completely new image when new hardware comes out. This is an amazing time-saver on its own.
With offline deployment and some workarounds, this is allowing us to migrate many Windows 7 units, rather than having to upgrade each one or load from scratch or replace it with new hardware.
