🚀 SmartDeploy: Jenkins-Driven CI/CD with GitHub and AWS CodeDeploy

SmartDeploy is a scalable, four-stage CI/CD pipeline that automates the journey from source code to a live staging environment. Designed to bridge modern code repositories, proven build tools, and robust cloud deployment, it orchestrates the full software delivery cycle—triggering builds from GitHub, compiling via Jenkins, and deploying seamlessly with AWS CodeDeploy.

🎯 Project Objective

To streamline the software development lifecycle through an efficient, automated delivery pipeline tailored for:

• Fast iteration
• Consistent deployments
• Scalable testing environments

This project eliminates manual steps, reduces deployment errors, and allows developers to focus on building, testing, and delivering features with confidence.

⚙️ Architecture Overview

[GitHub] → [Jenkins Build Server] → [Artifact Output] → [AWS S3 (optional)] → [AWS CodeDeploy] → [Staging EC2 Server]

• GitHub (Source Control): Developers push code to a main branch, triggering a Jenkins build via webhook.
• Jenkins (Build Automation): Pulls latest code, runs tests, builds/archives the application.
• AWS CodeDeploy (Deployment Automation): Pulls artifacts from Jenkins and deploys to EC2 using lifecycle hooks.
• Staging EC2 Server: Target environment for deployment with CodeDeploy agents and IAM roles.

🧩 Key Features

• Four-Stage Automation — Source → Build → Deploy → Validate
• Jenkins Integration — Customizable build steps, plugin support, centralized control
• AWS Native Deployment — Uses CodeDeploy for scalable deployments
• Staging Isolation — QA, testing, and preview safe zone
• Modular Scripts — Easily extend pipeline logic
• Production-Ready — Staging structure mimics production

📐 Use Cases

• Agile Development Teams using trunk-based workflows
• Startups that prefer open build tools with AWS delivery
• Projects needing frequent automated testing and deployment
• Teams needing QA/demo/UAT environments

🔨 Step-by-Step Pipeline Implementation

Step 1: GitHub — Version Control and Webhook Trigger

• Create a repository and commit your app code.
• Add a webhook in GitHub that points to your Jenkins server endpoint: http://<jenkins-server>:8080/github-webhook/

Step 2: Jenkins — Configure Build Job

• Install Git and CodeDeploy plugins on Jenkins.
• Create a Freestyle Project or Pipeline Job in Jenkins.
• Add build steps:
  • Pull latest code from GitHub.
  • Run unit/integration tests.
  • Build and package the application (e.g., ZIP, JAR, Docker image).
  • Include script.sh for post-deployment steps.
  • Generate and prepare appspec.yml.

📝 You can use build.sh to automate packaging:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Running build tasks..."
npm install
npm run build
zip -r my-app.zip .

Step 3: AWS CodeDeploy — Deployment Configuration

• Set up a CodeDeploy Application and Deployment Group for your staging environment.
• Define:
  • EC2 instance tags
  • Deployment strategy (e.g., in-place)
  • Lifecycle hooks using appspec.yml

version: 0.0
os: linux
files:
  - source: /
    destination: /home/ec2-user/app

hooks:
  AfterInstall:
    - location: script.sh
      timeout: 300
      runas: ec2-user

Step 4: Jenkins — Push to CodeDeploy

From Jenkins, use the AWS CLI or plugin to push the build to CodeDeploy:

aws deploy push \
  --application-name SmartDeployApp \
  --s3-location s3://my-deploy-bucket/my-app.zip \
  --source .

Trigger the deployment from Jenkins or using AWS CLI:

aws deploy create-deployment \
  --application-name SmartDeployApp \
  --deployment-group-name StagingGroup \
  --s3-location bucket=my-deploy-bucket,key=my-app.zip,bundleType=zip \
  --file-exists-behavior OVERWRITE

🧪 Testing and Validation

• Jenkins build logs will confirm build success or failure.
• CodeDeploy logs on EC2 instance (/opt/codedeploy-agent/deployment-root/) will show deployment progress.
• SSH into staging servers and validate the new version is deployed and running.

📈 Future Upgrade Path

• Adding a production deployment stage after staging approval.
• Integrating Amazon CodePipeline or GitHub Actions for tighter AWS-native CI/CD.
• Using Amazon CloudWatch or Datadog for deployment monitoring.
• Supporting Blue/Green or Canary deployments via CodeDeploy.

✅ Final Notes

SmartDeploy demonstrates a powerful and flexible integration of open-source and AWS tools to deliver reliable CI/CD pipelines. It is designed to empower fast-paced development teams while maintaining operational consistency and deployment confidence.