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📍 Milestone: GitHub Actions and the simple CI/CD pipeline

CI/CD (Continuous integration and continuous deployment) is a methodology which automates the deployment process of software project. We'll spend fairly amount of time to discuss this topic. But for now we want to achieve a simple outcome:

When you make changes to your code locally, commit, and push them, a new automated pipeline connects to an EC2 instance, and deploys the new version of the app.

No need to manually connect to your EC2, no need manually install dependencies, stop the running server, pulls the new code version, and launch the server - everything from code changes to deployment is seamlessly done by an automatic process. This is why it is called Continuous Deployment, because on every code change, a new version of the app is being deployed automatically.

To achieve that, we will use a platform which is part of GitHub, called GitHub Actions.

  1. First, get yourself familiar with how GitHub Actions works: https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/understanding-github-actions.

  2. The GitHub Actions Workflow skeleton is already written for you and available under .github/workflows/service-deploy.yaml in the NetflixMovieCatalog repo. Carefully review it, and feel free to customize it according to your specific requirements.

    Note that in order to automate the deployment process of the app, the workflow should have an SSH private key that authorized to connect to your instance. Since we NEVER store secrets in a git repo, you should configure a Secret in GitHub Actions and provide it to the workflow as an environment variable, as follows:

    • Go to your project repository on GitHub, navigate to Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions.
    • Click on New repository secret.
    • Define a secret named SSH_PRIVATE_KEY with the private key value to connect to your EC2.
    • Take a look how this secret is being used in the workflow service-deploy.yaml YAML.

  3. Make some changes to your app, then commit and push it. Notice how the Netflix Movie Catalog Service Deployment workflow automatically kicked in. Once the workflow completes successfully, your new application version should be automatically deployed in your EC2 instance. Make sure the service is working properly and reflects the code changes you've made.

Note: Your EC2 instances should be running while the workflow is running. Don't forget to turn off the machines when you're done.