Engineers at nClouds have vast expertise with AWS CloudFormation (CloudFormation) and creating infrastructure as code as a consequence of working on hundreds of projects (IaC). While CloudFormation is efficient, dependable, and effective, it is difficult to test and debug, and it is not readily scalable or reusable. AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) has quickly become an indispensable tool for our developer-centric DevOps teams. We feel that AWS CDK represents the start of a new era for IaC.
In this article, I’ll explain what the AWS CDK is and why your DevOps teams should use it.
What Exactly is AWS CDK?
The AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open-source software development platform that allows you to describe the resources of your cloud application using common programming languages. The AWS CDK Toolkit offers a command-line interface for CDK programs. It allows developers to create artifacts like AWS CloudFormation templates, deploy stacks to development AWS accounts, and diff against a deployed stack to determine the effect of a code change.
Stacks and constructs are two fundamental notions in AWS CDK.
Stacks
Stacks are compostable fundamental deployment components in AWS CDK. In a project, you may employ one or more stacks. By consuming resources from another stack, a stack may share values. AWS CDK leverages the CloudFormation import value to pass multiple CloudFormation stacks around behind the scenes.
Constructs
AWS CDK stacks, like CloudFormation stacks, comprise constructs that describe one or more AWS resources. Constructs provide everything CloudFormation needs to build a reusable cloud component. Find professional AWS developers by following this link: https://relevant.software/hire-aws-developers/.
Why is CDK Used?
The AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is a framework that enables engineers to design their infrastructure as code in a familiar programming language rather than managing it manually or writing raw CloudFormation.
I’m using CDK in TypeScript for my project, but it’s also accessible in Python and Java. Writing CloudFormation has always seemed tiresome and verbose to me, thus I’m glad I switched to CDK.
What is the Difference Between AWS CDK and SDK?
CDK stands for Infrastructure as Code, and it allows you to write code to generate AWS resources such as API Gateway, DynamoDB, and Lambda. SDK, on the other hand, allows you to interface with various AWS services, such as fetching objects from DynamoDB or listing the contents of an S3 bucket.
Benefits of AWS CDK
CDK has several benefits, making it one of the recommended options for programmatically controlling infrastructure.
Easier Cloud Adoption
CDK enables you to construct a cloud infrastructure using your own skills and technologies. To create a CDK app, developers may continue to utilize their favorite integrated development environment (IDE) and language. CDK also includes a number of high-level components that may be used to preconfigure cloud resources using tried-and-true defaults, allowing you to develop on AWS without being an expert.
More Rapid Development
The expressive capability of programming languages and features like objects, loops, and conditions may greatly speed up the development process. It is also feasible to write unit test cases for infrastructure components. The ability to unit test infrastructure code is really valuable, as it increases the developer’s confidence anytime they make changes.
Shareable and Customizable
CDK enables you to expand current components to develop bespoke components that fit the security, compliance, and governance needs of your company. These components are readily shared across your business, allowing you to quickly bootstrap new projects with best practices by default.
There is No Context Switching
You may use the same programming language to create runtime code and describe AWS resources, and you can continue to use the same IDE for runtime code and infrastructure development. You can also use the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code to see your CDK application stacks and resources. The toolkit offers a complete development experience for serverless apps, including a getting-started guide, step-by-step debugging, and deployment from the IDE.
Conclusion
AWS CDK is a code-first approach to cloud application infrastructure definition. Following the “release early, release frequently” mentality, more than 30 versions of AWS CDK have been launched since that time to bring new functionality as rapidly as feasible. As the AWS CDK grows in popularity, new features will be created swiftly and delivered often.