Preface

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has revolutionized how we manage cloud resources, and AWS CDK represents a significant evolution in this space. While AWS CloudFormation has long been the foundational IaC service for AWS, it requires writing lengthy JSON or YAML templates that can be difficult to maintain and reason about. AWS CDK transforms this experience by allowing developers to use familiar programming languages to define their infrastructure.

Why AWS CDK?

AWS CDK isn’t just a new way to write CloudFormation - it’s a compelling improvement that brings several key advantages:

  • Familiar Programming Languages: Instead of learning yet another domain-specific language, you can use the programming language you’re already comfortable with. AWS CDK supports TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, C# (.NET), Java, and Go. In this book, we’ll focus on Python, one of the most popular choices among developers.

  • Abstraction with Purpose: AWS CDK provides high-level constructs that encapsulate AWS best practices. These constructs handle many of the underlying details automatically, making it easier to build secure, scalable infrastructure while reducing the amount of boilerplate code you need to write.

  • Full Programming Power: Unlike template-based approaches, you can use all the features of your chosen programming language - loops, conditions, functions, and classes - to create reusable infrastructure patterns and eliminate repetitive configurations.

What This Book Covers

This practical guide will take you through building real-world infrastructure using AWS CDK. We’ll start with the basics of setting up your development environment and progress through increasingly sophisticated infrastructure patterns:

  • Building and securing EC2 instances within VPCs
  • Creating container-based applications using Amazon ECS
  • Implementing proper testing strategies for infrastructure code
  • Integrating monitoring and working with third-party libraries

Each concept is presented with hands-on examples that you can follow along with, building actual infrastructure in your AWS account. The book provides examples in both TypeScript and Python, allowing you to choose the language that best suits your needs.

Who This Book Is For

This book is designed for developers and infrastructure engineers who want to manage their AWS infrastructure using modern development practices. While you’ll need some programming experience, you don’t need to be an expert. We assume you have:

  • Basic programming knowledge in Python
  • Access to an AWS account for practicing the examples
  • Familiarity with basic AWS concepts (though detailed AWS knowledge isn’t required)

How to Use This Book

The chapters are designed to build upon each other, introducing new concepts progressively. Each chapter includes practical examples that you can try yourself, along with explanations of why certain approaches are used. You’ll find complete code samples that you can adapt for your own needs.

The book is divided into language-specific parts, but the concepts and patterns remain the same regardless of which language you choose. Feel free to focus on either the TypeScript or Python examples based on your preference.

By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills and knowledge needed to build and maintain production-grade infrastructure using AWS CDK, following modern development practices and AWS best practices.

Let’s begin our journey into infrastructure as code with AWS CDK!