AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that helps to configure and operate applications in a cloud enterprise by using Chef.

OpsWorks Stacks and AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate allows using Chef cookbooks and solutions for configuration management.

Although, Opsworks is deployment management service that helps you deploy applications with Chef recipes, but it is not primarily meant to manage the scaling of the application out of the box, and needs to be handled explicitly .

AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet.

OpsWorks Stacks provides a simple and flexible way to create and manage stacks, groups of AWS resources like load balancers, web, application and database servers, and application deployed on them

OpsWorks Stacks helps deploy and monitor applications in the stacks.

Unlike OpsWorks for Chef Automate, OpsWorks Stacks does not require or create Chef servers; and performs some of the work of a Chef server itself.

OpsWorks Stacks monitors instance health, and provisions new instances, when necessary, by using Auto Healing and Auto Scaling.

OpsWorks Stacks integrates with IAM to control how users can interact with stacks, what stacks can do on the users behalf, what AWS resources an app can access etc

OpsWorks Stacks integrates with CloudWatch and CloudTrail to enable monitoring and logging.

OpsWorks Stacks can be accessed globally and can be used to create and manage instances globally.

Stacks

Cookbooks are created using Ruby language and Domain Specific languages are used for specific resources.

A cookbook contains recipes which specify resources to be used and in which order it is to be used.

The cookbook contains all the details regarding the work and it changes the configuration of the Chef-Node.

Attributes are used for overriding default setting in a node.

Files are for transferring files from sub directory to a specific path in chef-client.

Libraries are written in Ruby and it’s used for configuring custom resources and recipes.

Metadata contains information for deploying the cookbooks to each node.

Recipes are a configuration element that is stored in a cookbook.

Recipes can also be included in other recipes and executed based on the run list. Recipes are created using Ruby language.

Specify resources to be used and in which order it is to be used to manage our applications.

Stacks help manage cloud resources in specialized groups called layers.

A layer represents a set of EC2 instances that serve a particular purpose, such as serving applications or hosting a database server.

Layers depend on Chef recipes to handle tasks such as installing packages on instances, deploying apps, and running scripts.

Custom recipes and related files is packaged in one or more cookbooks and stored in a cookbook repository such S3 or Git.

Layers depend on Chef recipes to handle tasks such as installing packages on instances, deploying apps, running scripts, and so on.

OpsWorks Stacks runs the recipes for each layer, even if the instance belongs to multiple layers for e.g. instance hosting both the application and the mysql server

AWS OpsWorks Stacks features is a set of lifecycle events – Setup, Configure, Deploy, Undeploy, and Shutdown – which automatically runs specified set of recipes at the appropriate time on each instance

1. Setup

   1. Once a new instance has booted, OpsWorks triggers the Setup event, which runs recipes to set up the instance according to the layer configuration for e.g. installation of apache, PHP packages

   2. Once setup is complete, AWS OpsWorks triggers a Deploy event, which runs recipes to deploy your application to the new instance.

2. Configure

   1. Whenever an instance enters or leaves the online state, AWS OpsWorks triggers a Configure event on all instances in the stack.

   2. Event runs each layer’s configure recipes to update configuration to reflect the current set of online instances for e.g. the HAProxy layer’s Configure recipes can modify the load balancer configuration to reflect any added or removed application server instances.

3. Deploy

   1. OpsWorks triggers a Deploy event when the Deploy command is executed, to deploy the application to a set of application servers.

   2. Event runs recipes on the application servers to deploy application and any related files from its repository to the layer’s instances.

4. Undeploy

   1. OpsWorks triggers an Undeploy event when an app is deleted or Undeploy command is executed to remove an app from a set of application servers.

   2. Event runs recipes to remove all application versions and perform any additional cleanup tasks.

5. Shutdown

   1. OpsWorks triggers a Shutdown event when an instance is being shut down, but before the underlying EC2 instance is actually terminated.

   2. Event runs recipes to perform cleanup tasks such as shutting down services.

   3. OpsWorks allows Shutdown recipes a configurable amount of time to perform their tasks, and then terminates the instance.

An instance represents a single computing resource for e.g. EC2 instance and it defines resource’s basic configuration, such as OS and size.

OpsWorks Stacks create instances and adds them to a layer.

When the instance is started, OpsWorks Stacks launches an EC2 instance using the configuration settings specified by the instance and its layer.

After the EC2 instance has finished booting, OpsWorks Stacks installs an agent that handles communication between the instance and the service and runs the appropriate recipes in response to lifecycle events.

OpsWorks Stacks supports instance auto-healing, whereby if an agent stops communicating with the service, OpsWorks Stacks automatically stops and restarts the instance.

OpsWorks Stacks supports the following instance types

1. 24/7 instances – launched and stopped manually

2. Time based instances – run on scheduled time

3. Load based instances – automatically started and stopped based on configurable load metrics

Linux based computing resources created outside of the OpsWorks stacks for e.g. console or CLI can be added, incorporated and controlled through OpsWorks.

An AWS OpsWorks Stacks app represents code that you want to run on an application server residing in the app repository like S3.

App contains the information required to deploy the code to the appropriate application server instances.

When you deploy an app, AWS OpsWorks Stacks triggers a Deploy event, which runs the Deploy recipes on the stack’s instances.

OpsWorks supports the ability to deploy multiple apps per stack and per layer.

Chef Server: Chef server contains all configuration data and it stores cookbooks, recipes, and metadata that describe each node in the Chef-Client. Configuration details are given to node through Chef-Client. Any changes made must pass through the Chef server to be deployed.

Workstation: The workstation is used to interact with Chef-server and also to interact with Chef-nodes. It is also used to create Cookbooks. Workstation is a place where all the interaction takes place where Cookbooks are created, tested and deployed, and in workstation, codes are tested.

Cookbooks: Cookbooks are created using Ruby language and Domain Specific languages are used for specific resources. A cookbook contains recipes which specify resources to be used and in which order it is to be used. The cookbook contains all the details regarding the work and it changes the configuration of the Chef-Node.

Nodes: Nodes are managed by Chef and each node is configured by installing Chef-Client on it. Chef-Nodes are a machine such as physical, virtual cloud etc.

Combine the two deployment options by using CloudFormation to build infrastructure and OpsWorks to deploy the application layer .

You can create OpsWorks stacks with CloudFormation.

OpsWorks ( except Opsworks-chef automate ) and CloudFormation templates and stacks themselves do not bring cost.

Understand if the team prefers to have deeper control of infrastructure setup. If yes, CloudFormation may be a better choice. Otherwise, OpsWorks can take care of some basic configurations automatically.

If the timeline is not under pressure, the team can still choose to learn new skills such as Chef for OpsWorks or JSON scripting for CloudFormation.

OpsWorks simple example with PHP