AWS DevOps: 20 Automation Best Practices

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3 min read

AWS DevOps: 20 Automation Best Practices

Diving deeper into the realm of DevOps on AWS, the importance of automation becomes increasingly evident. The automation of tasks, ranging from security testing to deployment strategies, can significantly enhance efficiency, reduce errors, and optimize costs. In this segment, we delve into advanced automation best practices in AWS.

  1. Automated Security Testing: Integrate automated security testing tools into your pipeline to regularly detect potential vulnerabilities.

  2. Artifact Management Automation: Utilize AWS CodeArtifact, a fully managed artifact repository that's compatible with popular package management systems.

  3. Automated Canaries: Use AWS CloudWatch Synthetics to create canaries for your endpoints and APIs, monitoring their availability and latency.

  4. Immutable Infrastructure: Adopt an immutable infrastructure strategy where live instances are not directly updated; instead, new instances are created from a base image and configuration.

  5. Automated Code Reviews: Implement tools like SonarQube to automatically analyze and review the code to identify bugs, code smells, and security vulnerabilities.

  6. Automated Deployment Strategies: Deploy automated deployment strategies, like blue/green deployments or canary releases, with AWS CodeDeploy.

  7. Automated Cost Optimization: Leverage AWS Cost Explorer's recommendations to right-size your resources and reduce unnecessary costs.

  8. Automate AWS Well-Architected Review: Utilize the AWS Well-Architected Tool to review and improve your workloads, automating the process with the AWS WAR API.

  9. Automated Compliance Auditing: Employ AWS Audit Manager to continuously audit your AWS usage, simplifying your compliance auditing process.

  10. Automated Performance Testing: Integrate performance testing into your pipeline to identify any performance-related issues before they reach production.

  11. AWS Step Functions for Serverless Workflows: Coordinate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows, thereby automating your application processes.

  12. AWS CloudFormation StackSets for Multi-Account Deployment: Automate the deployment of resources across multiple accounts and regions using AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

  13. AWS OpsWorks for Configuration Management: Utilize OpsWorks to automate server setup, application deployment, and other tasks.

  14. AWS Proton for Application Deployment: Simplify and automate the deployment of container and serverless applications with AWS Proton.

  15. AWS CodeStar for SDLC Automation: Use CodeStar to develop, build, and deploy applications on AWS, automating the entire software delivery process.

  16. AWS Service Catalog for Service Deployment: Use AWS Service Catalog to create, manage, and distribute portfolios of approved services.

  17. Automate Data Backups: Leverage AWS Backup or custom scripts to automate backups of your data across various AWS services.

  18. Automate Infrastructure Health Checks: Implement Amazon CloudWatch or third-party solutions to automate health checks and generate alerts for any issues.

  19. AWS Lambda for Event-Driven Automation: Utilize Lambda functions to automate tasks based on specific events or triggers in your AWS environment.

  20. AWS Systems Manager for Resource Automation: Use AWS Systems Manager to automate operational tasks, like patch compliance scanning and instance configuration.

Automation is a critical component of advanced DevOps practices on AWS. Using the above automation best practices you can significantly enhance efficiency, improve accuracy, and reduce operational costs, leading to optimized deployments and more reliable operations.