Dec 11, 2023

Blue/Green Deployments with Amazon ECS using Amazon CodeCatalyst

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Amazon CodeCatalyst is a modern software development service that empowers teams to deliver software on AWS easily and quickly. Amazon CodeCatalyst provides one place where you can plan, code, and build, test, and deploy your container applications with continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools.

In this post, we will walk-through how you can configure Blue/Green and canary deployments for your container workloads within Amazon CodeCatalyst.

Pre-requisites 

To follow along with the instructions, you’ll need:

Walkthrough 

Now that you have setup an Amazon ECS cluster and configured Amazon CodeCatalyst to perform deployments, you can configure Blue/Green deployment for your workload. Here are the high-level steps:

Step 1: Collect details from your ECS service and Amazon CodeCatalyst role

In this step, you will collect information from your prerequisites that will be used in the Blue/Green Amazon CodeCatalyst configuration further down this post.

If you followed the prerequisites tutorial, below are AWS CLI commands to extract values that are used in this post. You can run this on your local workstation or with AWS CloudShell in the same region you created your Amazon ECS cluster.

ECSCLUSTER='tutorial-bluegreen-cluster'
ECSSERVICE='service-bluegreen'

ECSCLUSTERARN=$(aws ecs describe-clusters --clusters $ECSCLUSTER --query 'clusters[*].clusterArn' --output text)
ECSSERVICENAME=$(aws ecs describe-services --services $ECSSERVICE --cluster $ECSCLUSTER  --query 'services[*].serviceName' --output text)
TASKDEFARN=$(aws ecs describe-services --services $ECSSERVICE --cluster $ECSCLUSTER  --query 'services[*].taskDefinition' --output text)
TASKROLE=$(aws ecs describe-task-definition --task-definition tutorial-task-def --query 'taskDefinition.executionRoleArn' --output text)
ACCOUNT=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query "Account" --output text)

echo Account_ID value: $ACCOUNT
echo EcsRegionName value: $AWS_DEFAULT_REGION
echo EcsClusterArn value: $ECSCLUSTERARN
echo EcsServiceName value: $ECSSERVICENAME
echo TaskDefinitionArn value: $TASKDEFARN
echo TaskExecutionRoleArn value: $TASKROLE

Note down the values of Account_ID, EcsRegionName, EcsClusterArn, EcsServiceName, TaskDefinitionArn and TaskExecutionRoleArn. You will need these values in later steps.

Step 2: Add Amazon IAM roles to Amazon CodeCatalyst

In this step, you will create a role called CodeCatalystWorkflowDevelopmentRole-spacename to provide Amazon CodeCatalyst service permissions to build and deploy applications. This role is only recommended for use with development accounts and uses the AdministratorAccess AWS managed policy, giving it full access to create new policies and resources in this AWS account.

Step 3: Create Amazon CodeCatalyst source repository

In this step, you will create a source repository in CodeCatalyst. This repository stores the tutorial’s source files, such as the task definition file.

codecatalyst-advanced-deployment

Step 4: Create Amazon CodeCatalyst Dev Environment

In this step, you will create a Amazon CodeCatalyst Dev environment to work on the sample application code and configuration in the codecatalyst-advanced-deployment repository. Learn more about Amazon CodeCatalyst dev environments in Amazon CodeCatalyst user guide.

Create Dev Environment in Amazon CodeCatalyst

Figure 1: Create Dev Environment in Amazon CodeCatalyst

AWS Cloud9 IDE opens on a new browser tab. Stay in AWS Cloud9 window to continue with Step 5.

Step 5: Add Source files to Amazon CodeCatalyst source repository

In this step, you will add source files from a sample application from GitHub to Amazon CodeCatalyst repository. You will be using this application to configure and test blue-green deployments.

cd codecatalyst-advanced-deployment
wget -O SampleApp.zip https://github.com/build-on-aws/automate-web-app-amazon-ecs-cdk-codecatalyst/zipball/main/
unzip SampleApp.zip
mv build-on-aws-automate-web-app-amazon-ecs-cdk-codecatalyst-*/SampleApp/* .
rm -rf build-on-aws-automate-web-app-amazon-ecs-cdk-codecatalyst-*
rm SampleApp.zip

version: 0.0
Resources:
  - TargetService:
      Type: AWS::ECS::Service
      Properties:
        TaskDefinition: "<TaskDefinitionArn>"
        LoadBalancerInfo:
          ContainerName: "MyContainer"
          ContainerPort: 80
        PlatformVersion: "LATEST"

git config user.email "<your_email>"
git config user.name "<your_name>"
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push

Step 6: Create Amazon CodeCatalyst Workflow

In this step, you will create the Amazon CodeCatalyst workflow which will automatically build your source code when changes are made. A workflow is an automated procedure that describes how to build, test, and deploy your code as part of a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) system. A workflow defines a series of steps, or actions, to take during a workflow run.

Name: BuildAndDeployToECS
SchemaVersion: "1.0"

Set automatic triggers on code push.


Triggers:


    

  • Type: Push
Branches:

      

    • main
      • 

    

    • 



Actions:
Build_application:
Identifier: aws/build@v1
Inputs:
Sources:
- WorkflowSource
Variables:
- Name: region
Value: <EcsRegionName>
- Name: registry
Value: <Account_ID>.dkr.ecr.<EcsRegionName>.amazonaws.com
- Name: image
Value: codecatalyst-ecs-image-repo
Outputs:
AutoDiscoverReports:
Enabled: false
Variables:
- IMAGE
Compute:
Type: EC2
Environment:
Connections:
- Role: <CodeCatalystPreviewDevelopmentAdministrator role>
Name: "<Account_ID>"
Name: codecatalyst-ecs-environment
Configuration:
Steps:
- Run: export account=aws sts get-caller-identity --output text | awk '{ print $1 }'
- Run: aws ecr get-login-password --region ${region} | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin ${registry}
- Run: docker build -t appimage .
- Run: docker tag appimage ${registry}/${image}:${WorkflowSource.CommitId}
- Run: docker push --all-tags ${registry}/${image}
- Run: export IMAGE=${registry}/${image}:${WorkflowSource.CommitId}
RenderAmazonECStaskdefinition:
Identifier: aws/ecs-render-task-definition@v1
Configuration:
image: ${Build_application.IMAGE}
container-name: MyContainer
task-definition: task.json
Outputs:
Artifacts:
- Name: TaskDefinition
Files:
- task-definition*
DependsOn:
- Build_application
Inputs:
Sources:
- WorkflowSource
DeploytoAmazonECS:
Identifier: aws/ecs-deploy@v1
Configuration:
task-definition: /artifacts/DeploytoAmazonECS/TaskDefinition/${RenderAmazonECStaskdefinition.task-definition}
service: <EcsServiceName>
cluster: <EcsClusterArn>
region: <EcsRegionName>
codedeploy-appspec: appspec.yaml
codedeploy-application: tutorial-bluegreen-app
codedeploy-deployment-group: tutorial-bluegreen-dg
codedeploy-deployment-description: "Blue-green deployment for sample app"
Compute:
Type: EC2
Fleet: Linux.x86-64.Large
Environment:
Connections:
- Role: <CodeCatalyst-Dev-Admin-Role>
# Add account id within quotes. Eg: "12345678"
Name: "<Account_ID>"
Name: codecatalyst-ecs-environment
DependsOn:
- RenderAmazonECStaskdefinition
Inputs:
Artifacts:
- TaskDefinition
Sources:
- WorkflowSource

The workflow above does the following:

To confirm everything was configured correctly, choose the Validate button. It should add a green banner with The workflow definition is valid at the top.

Select Commit to add the workflow to the repository (Figure 3)

Commit Workflow page in Amazon CodeCatalyst
Figure 3: Commit workflow page in Amazon CodeCatalyst

The workflow file is stored in a ~/.codecatalyst/workflows/ folder in the root of your source repository. The file can have a .yml or .yaml extension.

Let’s review our work, using the load balancer’s URL that you created during prerequisites, paste it into your browser. Your page should look similar to (Figure 4).

Sample Application (Blue Version)
Figure 4: Sample Application (Blue version)

Step 7: Validate the setup

To validate the setup, you will make a small change to the sample application.

git pull

git add .
git commit -m "Updating the city to New York"
git push

After the change is committed, the workflow should start running automatically. You can monitor of the workflow run in Amazon CodeCatalyst console (Figure 5)
Blue/Green Deployment Progress on Amazon CodeCatalyst

Figure 5: Blue/Green Deployment Progress on Amazon CodeCatalyst

You can also see the deployment status on the AWS CodeDeploy deployment page (Figure 6)

Blue/Green Deployment Progress on AWS CodeDeploy
Figure 6: Blue/Green Deployment Progress on AWS CodeDeploy

Let’s review our update, using the load balancer’s URL that you created during pre-requisites, paste it into your browser. Your page should look similar to (Figure 7).
Sample Application (Green version)

Figure 7: Sample Application (Green version)

Cleanup

If you have been following along with this workflow, you should delete the resources you deployed so you do not continue to incur charges.

Conclusion

In this post, we demonstrated how you can configure Blue/Green deployments for your container workloads using Amazon CodeCatalyst workflows. The same approach can be used to configure Canary deployments as well. Learn more about AWS CodeDeploy configuration for advanced container deployments in AWS CodeDeploy user guide.

William Cardoso

William Cardoso is a Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services based in South Florida area. He has 20+ years of experience in designing and developing enterprise systems. He leverages his real world experience in IT operations to work with AWS customers providing architectural and best practice recommendations for new and existing solutions. Outside of work, William enjoys woodworking, walking and cooking for friends and family.

Piyush Mattoo

Piyush Mattoo is a Solution Architect for enterprises at Amazon Web Services. He is a software technology leader with over 15 years of experience building scalable and distributed software systems that require a combination of broad T-shaped skills across multiple technologies. He has an educational background in Computer Science with a Masters degree in Computer and Information Science from University of Massachusetts. He is based out of Southern California and current interests include outdoor camping and nature walks.