A DevOps engineer designs a CI/CD pipeline that will be utilized for repeatable deployment of application products. The pipeline includes a standardized set of stages needed to source, build, test, and deploy the application product and is parameterized to allow for optional configurations of the pipeline. The defined pipeline stack and its configuration are codified in the form of a CloudFormation template as a ‘Pipeline Product’ and is stored in CodeCommit for version control.

With a defined Pipeline Product template now in version control, Pipeline Factory can ‘pull’ the template and begin the validation and publishing process. With each iteration or change to the Pipeline Product, the pipeline will automatically process the new template, automating updates to Pipeline Product, and making the latest versions available for consumption by product and development teams.

Pipeline Factory then validates the Pipeline Product by conducting static analysis of the template. Utilizing Mphasis Stelligent’s cfn_nag tool and AWS CloudFormation Guard, enterprises can validate that pipelines are enforcing security and governance controls as well as meeting enterprise standards for build, test, and deploy stages. Pipeline Factory also validates that all required testing suites are included in the pipeline ensuring that enterprise-quality standards are enforced.

Pipeline Factory then extends validation by executing an Operational Validation stage. In this stage, the Pipeline Product is deployed into an isolated test AWS environment. Utilizing AWS Config, you can ensure that the operation state of the Pipeline Product is compliant with the security, governance, and quality standards your enterprise has set. Finally, with a validated template and operational environment, Pipeline Factory will publish the CloudFormation template to AWS Service Catalog as a Pipeline Product for consumption by product and development teams.