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AWS Cloud DevOps Setup

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Before You Start

  • Windows DevOps environment set up (PowerShell Core, Node.js installed)
  • AWS account with IAM user credentials (Access Key ID + Secret Access Key)
  • Docker Desktop running

Success Criteria

You’ve completed this tutorial when:

  • aws --version returns a version string
  • aws sts get-caller-identity returns your AWS account ID (proves credentials work)
  • sam --version returns a version string
  • cdk --version returns a version string

This is a hands-on setup guide for engineers building AWS serverless infrastructure on Windows. It walks through the CLI tooling, a consistent repository layout, and a first CDK stack plus a TypeScript Lambda you can run locally with SAM. The scripts below set up a code repository that follows DevOps principles for deploying a software application to the cloud.

A couple of choices you’ll make along the way. For packaging TypeScript cloud objects you can use webpack (popular, more configuration) or esbuild (newer, much faster) — I default to esbuild here. For testing, write your specs in Gherkin syntax to support Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) and keep test results readable by non-engineers.

Prerequisite Software

Windows 11 Prerequisite installation

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winget install -e --id Microsoft.PowerShell
winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudioCode
winget install -e --id OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS
winget install -e --id Amazon.AWSCLI
winget install -e --id Amazon.SAM-CLI
winget install -e --id Docker.DockerDesktop

Create a Code Repository

These steps install the global tooling you’ll reuse every time you spin up a new repository, then configure npm or Yarn defaults so you don’t re-type author and licence details on every init. Pick npm or Yarn — you don’t need both.

Npm instructions

# Npm configuration
npm --version
npm install -g aws-cdk esbuild cypress gitignore jest lerna typescript webpack webpack-cli yarn 
npm config ls -l
npm config set init-author-name "{The org you work for}" -g 
npm config set init-author-email "suppor@{yourOrg}.io" -g 
npm config set init-author-url "https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_git/" -g 
# https://opensource.org/license/rpl-1-5/
npm config set init-license "RPL-1.5" -g

Yarn instructions

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# Yarn Configuration
yarn --version
yarn global add aws-cdk cypress esbuild gitignore jest lerna readme-md-generator typescript webpack webpack-cli
yarn config list
yarn config set init-author-name "{The org you work for}" -g 
yarn config set init-author-email "suppor@{yourOrg}.io" -g
yarn config set init-author-url ""https://dev.azure.com/{org}/{project}/_git/" -g
# https://opensource.org/license/rpl-1-5/
yarn config set init-license "RPL-1.5" -g

Create Software Code Repository

This script lays down a standard folder structure so every repository looks the same. A few things to know before you run it:

  • It assumes a Git repository and the Visual Studio / VS Code IDE.
  • It configures Lerna for a monorepo, so multiple components can be built, tested, or deployed in parallel.
  • It adds a README, a licence, and an init.ps1 script that engineers run to configure everything before working in the repo.
  • The build and pipeline folders represent your DevOps CI/CD configuration as code. I’d merge them; they overlap more than they don’t.
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# TODO: Change your default code repository location
cd ~\source\repos\
ls
md vip-software-flavour
cd vip-software-flavour

# Create repository folders
md docs,infrastructure\cdk,infrastructure\terraform,pipeline,src\functions,src\website,src\endpoint,src\api

# Create standard repository files.
yarn init -p
yarn add -D gitignore readme-md-generator lerna 
npx lerna init --packages="infrastructure/cdk/*" --packages="src/*" --independent
npx gitignore VisualStudio
npx readme-md-generator
"" > LICENSE.md
"" > init.ps1

Configure Package Repositories and Cloud accounts and Git Remote repositories

TODO: Add instructions for Artifact repositories and cloud vendors here.

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 git init
 git commit
 #git remote add origin https://github.com/{Org}/{repo}.git
 #git remote add origin https://dev.azure.com/{Org}/{Project}/_git/{repo}
 git pull
 git push

Create an AWS CDK deployment stack

This creates a simple AWS CDK stack, which synthesises to a CloudFormation stack you can deploy to your AWS account directly or through a pipeline.

For local development and debugging, pick either the AWS SAM CLI or the Serverless framework CLI. The commands below use SAM.

The generated project uses Jest TypeScript tests to confirm the infrastructure-as-code behaves as expected. In an ideal world I’d test this BDD-style with cypress.io, but Jest is what the CDK template ships with.

⚠️ FACT-CHECK: This guide targets the nodejs18.x Lambda runtime and Node.js 18. AWS has since deprecated the Node.js 18 Lambda runtime — verify the current supported runtime before deploying.

AWS CDK Yarn instructions

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cd infrastructure\cdk
cdk init app --language typescript
yarn init -p
yarn add -D @types/jest @types/node jest jest-junit ts-jest ts-node typescript
sam init --app-template hello-world-typescript --name sam-app --package-type Zip --runtime nodejs18.x

Create a Typescript AWS Lambda function

This creates a Lambda function with TypeScript and Node.js and sets up Cypress BDD tests. It pulls in Powertools for AWS Lambda (TypeScript) and bundles with esbuild rather than webpack. You can do parts of this from VS Code with the AWS Toolkit plugin instead of the command line.

Heads up: the block below builds the SAM app, then runs it locally. Docker Desktop has to be running before sam local will work, and sam local start-api / start-lambda stay in the foreground until you stop them with Ctrl+C.

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# Add Aws Lambda typescript
cd .\src\functions\
md get-hello-world-text
cd get-hello-world-text
tsc -v
# ES2018 support inferred from AWS Github lambda examples. 
# https://github.com/aws-samples/serverless-typescript-demo/blob/main/tsconfig.json
tsc --init --target ES2018 --strictPropertyInitialization false
yarn init -p
yarn add -D @aws-lambda-powertools/logger  @aws-lambda-powertools/metrics @aws-lambda-powertools/tracer @aws-sdk/client-lambda @types/aws-lambda @types/node aws-cdk esbuild
# Use AWS Sam to create 
sam init --app-template hello-world-typescript --name sam-app --package-type Zip --runtime nodejs18.x
cd sam-app
sam build

# Start Docker desktop, for Aws SAM CLI
docker -v
docker container ls

# AWS CLI authenticate.

# Run Lambda once with a set event
sam local invoke HelloWorldFunction --event events/event.json

# Run Lambda behind API Gateway 
sam local start-api
#sam local start-api --debug-port 5858

# Run Lambda by iteself
sam local start-lambda
#sam local start-lambda --debug-port 5858
#Ctrl+C to stop the local service.

# Test the Lambda locally and send the response to a json file.
cd ~\
aws lambda invoke --function-name HelloWorldFunction --endpoint "http://127.0.0.1:3001" AppData/Local/Temp/lambda-response.json
code ~/AppData/Local/Temp/lambda-response.json

References

Next Steps

Tutorial, DevOps
devops cloud
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.