Free-Tier AWS native CI/CD pipeline for dev using Docker on EC2.

NOTE: Please note that pricing changes, over the years, have made the following information unnecessary. Services such as ECS and ECR now provide compute services and image storage with triggers included. Depending on your runtime and resource requirements, Lambda containers are also an option to consider.

Lack and constraint of resources is a wonderful thing. It creates a need to make things possible by leveraging limited options; Especially when dealing with startups who want to leverage cloud platforms such as AWS or companies who want to dip their toes in AWS (cloud in general) before considering their options.

Over the weekend I was approached by a family member who was interested in developing a very cool app using AWS as the cloud choice. However, there were no funds and it needed to be hands-off — of course, we know that hands-off really means higher costs unless you leverage open-source tools with a pinch of automation scripting. Lucky for him I had a working concept in my personal environment.

The pipeline is fairly simple and falls within the Free-Tier offered by AWS — Perfect for a DEV environment. Of course, this is considering the usage limit imposed by this tier. Keep in mind that for this scenario, I decided to skip Jenkins or Travis to keep the majority of the workflow in favor of AWS native resources.

• AWS IAM handles repo access (From the dev user and also from the designated serv account used by the EC2 instance — As of 12/20, CodeCommit does not allow API calls to clone/pull based on Role)
• Code repository: handled by AWS CodeCommit
• Push/Merge actions trigger an AWS Lambda function (AWS CodeBuild runs on $).

Note: Here you can include additional testing and observability

• The AWS Lambda function parses the information and passes the parameters to AWS Systems Manager (SSM)
• SSM does a run command (Shell Script) call to an active t2.nano EC2 amz2 Linux (Docker host)

Note: Here you can include additional testing and observability

• Script cleans local files and processes, pulls repo, and builds a new Docker image which then replaces the old container.

Again, this is a very basic example that jumps through hoops to keep things within the AWS Free Tier. This example is a quick and easy way to set up a CI/CD pipeline for personal/small development projects. I do not recommend doing this architecture for team projects.