CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesaws-sdk
Sheel Pancholi
Sheel Pancholi

Reputation: 693

Use cases for AWS SDK for EC2, EMR, Redshift, RDS

I am familiar with AWS SDKs (Python/Java) and the need for the same for a lot of services like S3, DDB, KMS etc.

Are there any valid use cases for using the AWS Java SDK e.g. to programmatically spin off an EC2 instance or an EMR cluster or Redshift cluster or RDS instance or for that matter any resource that requires setting up of an infrastructure/cluster?

If AWS console is not an option, and programmatic access is all we have then, don't we always end up using AWS CLI for corresponding services or CloudFormation or Terraform for that matter?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 163

Answers (2)

Mark B
Mark B

Reputation: 200562

The AWS CLI is built using the AWS SDK for Python. Terraform is built using the AWS SDK for GoLang. You may want to stick with higher level infrastructure-as-code tools, but those tools wouldn't exist without the SDKs, and if you wanted to build a tool like that you would most likely build it on top of one of the SDKs.

There are also quite a few use-cases I've seen discussed here on StackOverflow for performing infrastructure automation through AWS Lambda, for example periodically stopping and starting RDS instances, where using one of the AWS SDKs in the Lambda code would likely be much easier than trying to get Terraform to run inside a Lambda function.

Upvotes: 1

Chris Williams
Chris Williams

Reputation: 35188

Generally its best practice to manage any infrastructure/service deployments by using an infrastructure as code solutions such as CloudFormation, CDK (which generates CloudFormation stacks under the hood) or Terraform.

Whilst you could use the SDK to create this services (and create a solution that is similar to the solutions above) you will be building a lot of functionality that other services have already created which would put more ownership on you to fix it if you want to support another service etc.

The SDKs simply provide every AWS API interaction in a programmatic way, even under the hood CloudFormation and Terraform will likely be using the SDKs to programmatically create the resources (although I am speculating) but would then add additional functionality such as state management and drift detection on top of this.

I only have seen services being created via the SDKs when that service is not available in the selected tool, and even then it would generally be wrapped within that tool (such as custom resources for CloudFormation).

In summary, yes you could use the SDK to generate these but unless there is a specific usecase to use the SDK I would advise using a tool that already manages this so you can focus more on your infrastructure/applications.

Upvotes: 2

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