Amazon Web Services is a hub of services for programmers and developers. With hundreds of cloud-based services available on the platform, choosing a reliable configuration management service is a bit difficult. In this article, we have compared these two services and enlisted their differences so that you can figure out which service is suitable for you.

What is AWS OpsWorks?

AWS OpsWorks is a fully managed configuration service for app developers. The service is designed to work with Chef Automate, a suite of automation tools to help developers scale, manage and deploy packages to the main server.

What is AWS OpsWorks

What is AWS OpsWorks

OpsWorks service helps developers model up the application’s development process in different layers for better scalability and easy deployment of the packages. Developers can take full control of each component’s deployment and automation tasks.

What are the Key Features of AWS OpsWorks?

What are the Key Features of AWS OpsWorks

What are the Key Features of AWS OpsWorks

  • AWS OpsWorks provides better scalability to deploy packages on the main server for easy development of an application. The service is used to model different components in layers within the selected architecture.
  • Everything is accessible from one single place. You can view the available and used resources as well as the status of each component with no additional tool.
  • AWS OpsWorks lets you create a separate template to deploy resources and configuration of the process that mimics the actual source code of the app. The newly created template allows you to maintain the source code and the deployment and configuration process simultaneously with no extra effort.
  • With the help of advanced deployment tools, the service lets users configure the entire system with step by step configuration process. Developers can choose the automatic option to deploy different components on the primary server.
  • The service also offers partial deployment, automatic scaling of instances, patch management, auto-healing, and more.

What is AWS Cloudformation?

AWS Cloudformation is the service that lets you create multiple AWS resources. The same service allows you to manage those resources.

What is AWS Cloudformation

What is AWS Cloudformation

The AWS Cloudformation can be used with AWS OpsWorks to streamline the application development process. Users can create separate templates to describe the resources used.

Besides this, the same templates may contain the information and the runtime parameters for those resources for the development of an app. The JSON templates make it easier for the users while deploy the source codes.

What is AWS Cloudformation service

What is AWS Cloudformation service?

Being the latest and high-in-demand service, the AWS Clouformation offers several useful features. Let’s check out the list of its key features now!

What are the Key Features of AWS Cloudformation?

  • The AWS Cloudformation service comes with several ready-to-use templates based on different platforms.
  • The Cloudformation offers sample templates created on Drupal, WordPress, Track, Joomla, Redmine, and more. All of these sample templates are easy to read and can be used by users anytime.
  • The ready-to-use templates are in text files and formatted in JSON. Developers can use these text files under the same mechanism as the source codes without external tools.
  • The JSON formatted templates can be stored privately or publicly as AWS S3. Moreover, they can be shared via Email with a quick-share function.
  • The templates can be used by the users multiple times without reinventing them. By creating identical copies automatically, users don’t need to waste their time reinventing the same format again and again.

When to use Cloudformation with AWS OpsWorks?

Simple shell scripting is a bit lengthy process and nobody wants to deploy their source codes of the application with this time-consuming method. With the help of the easy integration of these services, IT professionals can integrate Cloudformation service with AWS OpsWorks.

When to use Cloudformation with AWS OpsWorks

When to use Cloudformation with AWS OpsWorks

The combination of Cloudformation and AWS OpsWorks is used to configure the newly created EC2 instances. Most IT professionals use Puppet and Chef for creating new EC2 instances. The combination of these services can be used in these instances.

IT Professionals use the Cloudformation service for the deployment of AWS resources for ongoing application development. At the same time, they use the AWS OpsWorks service to configure the application on different operating systems and infrastructures.

When you change the AWS resources, you also need to change the configuration process through AWS OpsWorks. These two services work simultaneously when the IT professional use them for deployment and configuration.

See Also

AWS OpsWorks Pricing

AWS Status


AUTHOR

Steve is a product-marketer and Engineer at Cloudysave who works with Cloud Management and Adoption team. Over the past years, he has collaborated with multiple teams to provide a robust and cost-effective architecture patterns to influence business and engineering decisions. His key areas of interests include Cloud Costs Management, Security and DevOps Best-Practices.