AWS OpsWorks – A fully managed Chef Service

June 11, 2020 / Nirav Shah

AWS OpsWorks – Create A New Stack In AWS Console

In this blog post, we’re going to show you what is AWS Opsworks and explain to you about the feature, and how to implement it in the AWS console.

Let’s get started…

What is an OpsWorks stack?

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

• Stack
• Layer
• Instances
• Monitoring
• Permission

Opsworks stacks vs Opsworks layer

Before we implement in AWS console we have to understand the difference between

“Opsworks stacks vs Opsworks layer”

Opsworks stacks

It provides a simple and flexible way to create and manage stacks and applications. AWS OpsWorks Stacks and deploy and monitor applications in your stacks. You can create stacks that help you manage cloud resources in specialized groups called layers.

• A stack is a container for AWS resources like EC2, RDS instances, etc that have a common purpose and should be logically managed togethe
• OpsWorks Stacks monitors instance health, and provisions new instances, when necessary, by using Auto Healing and Auto Scaling
• 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

Opsworks layer

Every stack contains one or more layers, each of which represents a stack component, such as a load balancer or a set of application servers.

• 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 as S3 or Git

Create a New Stack – AWS OpsWorks

Step 1

login to console and Click on Go to OpsWorks stacks

Step 2

Click on ‘Add your first stack’

Step 3

Choose the sample stack, choose the operating system you desired and click on ‘Create stack’

Step 4

Click on ‘Explore the sample stack’ in the next screen.

You will then see the details of the stack in the next screen.

To start the instance for the stack, go to the Instances section.
For the nodejs-server1 , click on the start button to start the instance.

Once the instance is online, you should be able to see the status of the server in the online state.

Now if you go to the Public IP, and open it in the web browser you should get the following page.

So this shows that you have deployed your first OpsWork stack.

Step 5

If you want to assign an Elastic IP to your stack, then go to the Layers section.

Click on the Network section.
You can turn on Elastic IP from here.

Well done.
Now let see the cost for the service,
The pricing for each on-premises server on which you install the OpsWorks Stacks agent is $0.02 per hour. There are no minimum fees and no upfront commitments.

Conclusion

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

Services: AWS managed Services

FAQs:

Q.1 What configuration management platforms does OpsWorks support?

Q. 2 What are the two key features of OpsWorks?