AWS CodePipeline is a fully managed continuous delivery service that helps users automate release pipelines for fast, reliable application and infrastructure updates. CodePipeline automates the build, test, and deploy phases of the release process every time there is a code change, based on the release model a user defines. This is to enable rapid, reliable delivery of features and updates. Users can integrate AWS CodePipeline with third-party services such as GitHub or with a custom plugin. AWS…
$1
per active pipeline/per month
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform (acquired by Red Hat in 2015) is a foundation for building and operating automation across an organization. The platform includes tools needed to implement enterprise-wide automation, and can automate resource provisioning, and IT environments and configuration of systems and devices. It can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it.
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.
The thing I mentioned earlier where we're constantly dealing with federal regulations or new agents that they want us to install and deploy and just getting those out in a consistent manner in a canned installation via Playbook is ideal
Makes it easy to create and share automation in one central hub.
Ansible content collections give me the ability to reuse code, making it rapid to carry out complex IT processes.
Event-driven automation allows me to reduce manual tasks: it is rapid to know which action to take and respond automatically by receiving events from external apps automatically.
Workflows should have more flexible paths than just success or failure.
The upgrade process can be challenging with differences in security and environment.
There is an opportunity to add CICD functionality into the tool.
For development, it would be nice to have the option of editing a repo directly from AAP to allow quick tests/reruns. Then, allow it to push the updates back or create a new branch/PR in GitHub.
The RBAC is good but could use improvements. One example would be an option that allows admins to assume the access of another user to validate it works as expected.
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.
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.
Great in almost every way compared to any other configuration management software. The only thing I wish for is python3 support. Other than that, YAML is much improved compared to the Ruby of Chef. The agentless nature is incredibly convenient for managing systems quickly, and if a member of your term has no terminal experience whatsoever they can still use the UI.
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.
There is a lot of good documentation that Ansible and Red Hat provide which should help get someone started with making Ansible useful. But once you get to more complicated scenarios, you will benefit from learning from others. I have not used Red Hat support for work with Ansible, but many of the online resources are helpful.
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.
AAP doesn't truly stack up against any of the products mentioned except for Aria Automation. But, it is extensible and open and has a lower cost to entry.
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.
