When utilizing services like Chef and Puppet to automate server setup and management, AWS OpsWorks has proven to be an indispensable tool. But as of May 26, 2024, AWS OpsWorks Stacks is no longer supported, therefore users will need to move their workloads elsewhere.
This post will walk you through the main features of AWS OpsWorks and show You how to switch to AWS Systems Manager, which is the suggested successor. The Systems Manager provides improved current infrastructure management capabilities. We’ll also go over how to make the migration process easier using AWS’s tools. We are here to help if You need assistance with the transition!
To begin, let’s explain what AWS OpsWorks is. AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that helps automate the configuration, deployment, and administration of servers throughout Your infrastructure by offering managed instances of well-known configuration management tools like Chef and Puppet. It allows users to specify the architecture of their application, which software packages to install, how each software component should be deployed, and how to scale resources automatically according to the application’s requirements.
The key components of AWS OpsWorks are:
- OpsWorks Stacks – model to manage and configure resources, such as EC2 instances, ELBs (Elastic Load Balancers), RDS instances, and EBS volumes.
- OpsWorks for Chef Automate – fully managed Chef server that automates server configurations using Chef cookbooks and recipes.
- OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise – fully managed Puppet master that helps automate infrastructure management using Puppet manifests.
On May 26, 2024 the AWS OpsWorks Stacks service reached the end of life and has been disabled for both new and existing customers, who won’t be able to use the OpsWorks console, API, CLI, and CloudFormation resources. AWS strongly recommends customers to migrate their workloads to AWS Systems Manager as soon as possible.
AWS Systems Manager is the operations hub for AWS applications and resources and a secure end-to-end management solution for hybrid and multi-cloud environments that enables secure operations at scale. Migrating to AWS Systems Manager allows users to take advantage of the following features:
- Modern Chef versions
- SSM Agent
- Application Load Balancers
- Enhanced scaling features via Auto Scaling groups
- Ability to define desired host characteristics using EC2 launch templates
- Newer instance types
- Newer EBS volume types
You can use a CloudFormation template and a script provided by AWS OpsWorks to migrate Your AWS OpsWorks Stacks applications to Systems Manager Application Manager. Depending on the value of the script’s –provision-application parameter, the script gathers data about an already-existing OpsWorks layer and either provisions a copy of Your application or gives You a beginning CloudFormation template that You may customize with AWS CloudFormation.
If You struggle with migrating Your AWS services, do not hesitate to contact us!
