AWS lays CD web-dev bait with Amplify Console

AWS lays CD web-dev bait with Amplify Console

AWS has introduced Amplify Console – a continuous deployment and hosting service for web applications using serverless backends.

With use cases like the deployment of progressive or serverless web apps as well as static site generators for blogs or other static content, the service is clearly geared towards getting more web-developer types on board Jeff Bezos’ cloud.

Amplify Console, announced at re:Invent, is supposed to tackle the deployment issues raised by the widening spread of a web application’s functionality between front- and backend.

How does it work? Once a web app’s Git repository is connected to the Amplify Console, you should be able to deploy updates on every commit. The console will figure out build settings for the frontend framework as well as the backend resources configured with the Amplify CLI.

Once the build process starts, the console will create a temporary compute container, download the app’s source code, execute the project, deploy the generated artifact to a web hosting environment, and destroy the container again. The build output is streamed to the service console and CloudWatch.

If the build is successful, the app is hosted on an amplifyapp.com domain. Custom domains that are managed via Amazon’s Domain Name System web service Route53 can be set up, too, with Amplify generating the necessary DNS records and generating a HTTPS certificate. On top of that, the Console creates front- and backend environments for every connected feature branch and offers password protection to restrict access for feature branch deployments.

At time of writing, AWS Amplify Console supported all Single Page Application frameworks – popular choices such as Vue.js, React and Ionic included – as well as static-site generators like Hugo and Jekyll. Repositories that can be connected to the service include GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab and AWS CodeCommit. Private Git servers, however, aren’t yet supported.

Pricing is split into a build and deploy feature and one for hosting. New AWS customers have 12 months to test the offer for free, which includes 1,000 build minutes per month, as well as 5GB stored and 15GB served content per month. After that, it’s pay as you go: the build and deploy feature will set you back $0.01 per build minute, while hosting costs $0.15 per GB served and $0.23 per GB stored. Content is served by Amazon’s content delivery network.