🐍 AWS DevOps Snakes: CI/CD Pipeline Edition

Welcome to the Snakes Web Application! 🎬🐍 This project demonstrates a production-grade CI/CD Pipeline on AWS, deploying a Java Web App to a raw EC2 instance without using managed services like Elastic Beanstalk.

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🚀 Purpose

The goal of this project is to showcase DevOps best practices by building a fully automated deployment pipeline. Problem Solved: Manual deployments are slow and error-prone. This project automates the journey from "Code Commit" to "Live Server" in minutes.

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🛠️ Tools & Technologies Used

Category	Tool	Purpose
Compute	Amazon EC2 (Ubuntu)	Hosting the Tomcat Web Server
Web Server	Apache Tomcat 10	Serving the Java .war application
Orchestration	AWS CodePipeline	Managing the CI/CD workflow
Build	AWS CodeBuild	Compiling Java code & packaging artifacts
Deploy	AWS CodeDeploy	Automating deployment to EC2 instances
Scripting	Bash Shell	Lifecycle hooks (stop_server, start_server)
Language	Java 11	Backend application logic

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🏗️ The Architecture

We moved away from "ClickOps" to a structured pipeline:

graph LR
    A[ Developer ] -->|Push Code| B( AWS CodeCommit / GitHub )
    B -->|Trigger| C{ AWS CodePipeline }
    C -->|Fetch| D[ AWS CodeBuild ]
    D -->|Compile & Package| E[ Artifact: app.war ]
    E -->|Deploy| F[ AWS CodeDeploy ]
    F -->|Install & Restart| G[ EC2: Tomcat Server ]
    style C fill:#FF9900,stroke:#232F3E,stroke-width:2px
    style G fill:#E95420,stroke:#333,stroke-width:2px,color:white

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🚦 Step-by-Step Deployment Approach

Most of the hard work is scripted. Here is how the magic happens:

1. Source Phase 📝

You push code to your repository. The buildspec.yml file tells CodeBuild exactly what to do.

2. Build Phase (CodeBuild) 📦

• Provision an Ubuntu build environment.
• Fix Line Endings: Runs dos2unix to ensure Windows-edited scripts work on Linux.
• Compile: Runs build.sh to compile Java classes.
• Package: Renames ROOT.war to app.war.

3. Deploy Phase (CodeDeploy) 🚀

CodeDeploy grabs the artifact and talks to the CodeDeploy Agent running on your EC2.

• ApplicationStop: Stops Tomcat service.
• Install: Drops app.war into /opt/tomcat/webapps/.
• Permissions: Sets owner to tomcat:tomcat.
• ApplicationStart: Starts Tomcat service.

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📂 Project Structure

• rules/: Custom scripts used by CodeDeploy.
  • stop_server.sh: Safely stops the service.
  • start_server.sh: Brings the app back to life.
• buildspec.yml: The brain of the Build phase.
• appspec.yml: The blueprint for the Deployment phase.
• deployment_guide.md: [READ THIS FIRST!] A full manual on setting up the EC2 server and Pipeline.

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🏃‍♂️ How to Run

Prerequisite: Setup Your Server

Follow the detailed steps in deployment_guide.md to:

1. Install Java 21 & Tomcat 10 on Ubuntu.
2. Install CodeDeploy Agent.
3. Configure IAM Roles.

Trigger Deployment

Simply commit a change!

git add .
git commit -m "New feature: Super fast snakes! 🐍"
git push origin master

Go to the AWS CodePipeline Console and watch it turn green! ✅

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✨ Authors

Built with ❤️ during the DevOps Masterclass.