Level 1) you package your service into a zip/rpm/deb/etc and have an agent on the machine that periodically pulls
Level 2) you pack your software into an ami and use the update the asg config. You can periodically "drain" the asg of old instances
Level 3) you deploy your stack again with the new stack having the ami that you've build at level 2 referenced. You start shifting traffic between the old stack and the new stack. You monitor and rollback if something is wrong.
I find it's easier to use Ansible/Salt/Puppet Bolt and Packer to bake an AMI every night, update the launch template in a DB (which Terraform pulls the value from, thus there is no drift), and auto the ASG. Then you just force a drain.
Now you've got automatic, constantly updating VMs every night if you want them. And a new deployment is just commiting code to master and pushing and that whole pipeline triggers for you.
People like to overcomplicate things, Mirceal. You're on the right path :-)
I'll be honest I haven't fully explored AMIs as a solution but how do you run the AMI in your local dev environment? I can replicate the same K8s with docker images easily in local dev.
that's the crux of the problem. people no longer know, understand or want to know and understand what their software is vs what is around their software. they treat docker and k8s as a way of packaging software and just ignore all the lessons that generations of software engineers have learned when it comes to how to properly manage your dependencies and how to correctly pack your software so that it's resilient and runs anywhere.
we also live in a world that does not appreciate well crafted software and a lot of things are driven by the desire to build a resume. I've maintained code that was decades old and was amazing to work with and was still generating ridiculous amounts of money. I've also worked on code that was just written and used all the possible bells and whistles and development speed grinded to a halt once the it's been around for more than a couple of months.
My worst case scenario is having to work on code where the original developer didn't understand what they were doing and they just wanted to use X. Double the trouble if they didn't master X when the thing was put together.
