Amazon CloudFront Continuous Deployment CDK Pipeline Sample

Repository hosting sample AWS CDK Pipeline for deploying changes Amazon CloudFront Distribution using CloudFront continuous deployment

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Architecture Diagram

Continuous Delivery of CloudFront Distribution Configuration Changes

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Instructions to Use/Deploy this solution

Pre-requisites

1. Install NPM
2. Install CDK
3. AWS CodeBuild Repository

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Instructions

The following sections contain steps A through D with instructions to create a distribution, test distribution, and release distribution configuration changes using Amazon CloudFront Continuous deployment.

Step - A: Setup Repository and Deploy Pipeline

1. Clone this repository to make changes and commit to your code repository
2. Update the repository settings by editing lib/pipeline-input-variables.ts change the value of PIPELINE_CODE_REPO variable to point to your code repository name
3. Add environment (account and region) by editing bin/cf-cd-sample-app.ts follow comments in the file to uncomment and edit the right environment entry
4. Bootstrap CDK using command cdk bootstrap if not already done
5. Update/customize the other variables per applicable naming standards
6. Update the git remote to point to code repository by running git remote set-url origin <replace-with-your-repository-URL>
7. Commit your changes to code repository
8. Run command npm install to install dependencies
9. Run the command cdk deploy to deploy the pipeline

Executing instructions listed above creates a AWS CodePipeline and runs the pipeline. Running the pipeline will result in creating a Amazon CloudFront Distribution with S3 Origin.

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Step - B: Validate the Pipeline and Test Distribution

1. Open AWS Console and navigate to AWS CodePipeline and validate that the pipeline was successful
2. Locate the distribution with description as mydistribution in Amazon CloudFront console and copy the Distribution domain name
3. Test the distribution by opening distribution URL in a browser or using command curl <distribution URL>
4. Opening the URL should display content of index.html

Step - C: Change Distribution Configuration and Deploy

1. Make distribution configuration updates by editing lib/app-stacks/cf-distribution-config.ts file
2. Enable continuous deployment by edit pipeline-input-variables.ts file to update ENABLE_CONTINUOUS_DEPLOYMENT to true
3. commit code changes to repository

The above code commit will trigger the pipeline, which will result in deploying a staging distribution and deployment policy attached to the primary distribution created above in Step - B

Step - D: Test changes and Promote

Below steps assume that the SingleHeader traffic configuration is in place. Http header is not required to test SingleWeight traffic configuration

1. Validate that the pipeline is waiting for approval on Promote stage
2. Test the configuration changes by using command line curl -H "aws-cf-cd-test: blue" <distribution test URL> or through browser by adding additional http header aws-cf-cd-test: blue to the request
3. After completing testing, you can promote staging distribution configuration to primary distribution by approving the Promote stage step in the pipeline

Cleanup

Follow below instructions if you want to remove the Pipeline and stacks created by this sample. Please note that deleting a Pipeline doesn't remove the stacks created by pipeline and must be deleted using AWS CLI or AWS Console.

Please note that deleting stacks will remove the distribution. Do not run below steps on live distributions or distributions serving real users If you are running with ENABLE_CONTINUOUS_DEPLOYMENT set to true then follow steps Delete Deployment Policy and Delete Staging Distribution Stack before Delete Primary Distribution Stack

Delete Deployment Policy

1. Open CloudFront Console and locate the primary distribution. Click on Primary distribution and scroll down to Continuous deployment section.
2. Remove the deployment policy from primary distribution by clicking on Delete button

Delete Staging Distribution Stack

1. Once deployment policy is removed, we will need to deploy primary distribution before we can delete staging distribution stack by disabling continuous deployment and running the pipeline
2. Disable continuous deployment by editing pipeline-input-variables.ts and setting ENABLE_CONTINUOUS_DEPLOYMENT to false
3. Commit the change to repository
4. Commit to repository will trigger the pipeline to deploy latest changes to primary distribution
5. Once the primary distribution is deployed, you can delete the staging distribution stack by running below command in through AWS CLI or from CloudFormation console
   1. aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name StagingDistribution-Change-cf-distribution-stack

Delete Primary Distribution Stack

1. run the following commands to delete the primary distribution stack or from CloudFormation console
   1. aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name PrimaryDistribution-Change-cf-distribution-stack

Delete Pipeline Stack

1. run the following command from repository root directory or delete the pipeline stack from CloudFormation console
   1. cdk destroy

Cleanup S3 Buckets

1. Remove S3 Origin bucket and Site logs bucket using S3 Console

Pricing Calculations

Cost for running this solution consists of Code Repository cost, CI/CD Pipeline cost, and Amazon CloudFront Distribution cost

Assumptions

Assumption	Parameters
Region	us-east-1
AWS CodeCommit Repositories	1
Number of AWS CodePipeline pipelines per month	4
AWS CodeCommit Usage
Number of Active AWS CodeCommit Users per month	5
Pipeline Usage
Number of Continuous deployments to Amazon CloudFront Distribution per month	64
Amazon CloudFront Usage
CloudFront Data transfer out to internet per month	100 GB
CloudFront requests per month	1,000,000

Total Cost	$13.53
AWS CodePipeline	$4.00
AWS CodeCommit	$0.00
Amazon CloudFront	$9.50
StepFunctions	$0.025

AWS Service wise break up of calculations

AWS CodePipeline Pricing	$4.00
Number of active CodePipelines	4
Cost per active CodePipeline per month	$1.00
Total Pipeline cost	$4.00

StepFunctions Pricing	$0.028
Number of state transitions	1024
Cost per 1000 state transition	$0.025
Total Workflow cost	$0.0256

AWS CodeCommit Pricing	$0.00
Number of active users	5
Cost for First 5 active users	$0.00
Total CodeCommit cost	$0.00

Amazon CloudFront Pricing	$9.50
Total for data transfer out to internet per month	100 GB
Cost for data transfer out to internet for per GB	0.085
Total CloudFront data transfer out to internet	$8.50
Total number of CloudFront requests per month	1,000,000
Cost for 1,000,000 requests	$1.00
Total CloudFront requests cost	$1.00

Troubleshooting

1. If the pipeline fails during stack creation, then the stack must be manually deleted before retrying the pipeline steps
2. set account via CDK_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT for agnostic or explicitly set account number if you see error 'Pipeline stack which uses cross-environment actions must have an explicitly set account'

Security

See CONTRIBUTING for more information.

License

This library is licensed under the MIT-0 License. See the LICENSE file.