Jenkins and AWS

Learn the concepts, configuration, commands, and practical workflow required to integrate Jenkins with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a real cloud environment.

What is Jenkins and AWS Integration?

Integrating Jenkins with Amazon Web Services (AWS) transitions your CI/CD setup from static local builds into an automated, highly available, and auto-scaling cloud environment.

By combining the two platforms, Jenkins acts as the orchestration brain that securely provisions cloud infrastructure via code, triggers deployment pipelines, and manages ephemeral worker nodes directly inside your AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

Key Concepts

Practical Jenkins Example

The following production Declarative Pipeline demonstrates secure cloud authentication using the withAWS wrapper to build a container, push it to **Amazon ECR**, and update a running service on **Amazon ECS**:

pipeline {
    agent any
























































    environment {
        AWS_REGION     = 'us-east-1'
        AWS_CREDS_ID   = 'aws-jenkins-service-account' // Defined securely in Jenkins Credentials Locker
        ECR_REGISTRY   = '://amazonaws.com'
        IMAGE_NAME     = 'production-web-app'
        IMAGE_TAG      = "${BUILD_NUMBER}"
        ECS_CLUSTER    = 'production-core-cluster'
        ECS_SERVICE    = 'web-app-service'
    }

    stages {
        stage('Checkout Source') {
            steps {
                checkout scm
            }
        }

        stage('AWS ECR Authenticate & Push') {
            steps {
                // withAWS abstracts away complex underlying AWS CLI configuration blocks safely
                withAWS(region: "${AWS_REGION}", credentials: "${AWS_CREDS_ID}") {
                    script {
                        echo "Authenticating against Amazon ECR Registry..."
                        sh "aws ecr get-login-password --region ${AWS_REGION} | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin ${ECR_REGISTRY}"
                        
                        echo "Compiling cloud production build: ${IMAGE_NAME}:${IMAGE_TAG}"
                        sh "docker build -t ${ECR_REGISTRY}/${IMAGE_NAME}:${IMAGE_TAG} ."
                        sh "docker push ${ECR_REGISTRY}/${IMAGE_NAME}:${IMAGE_TAG}"
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        stage('Trigger ECS Deployment') {
            steps {
                withAWS(region: "${AWS_REGION}", credentials: "${AWS_CREDS_ID}") {
                    script {
                        echo "Forcing a clean rolling deployment refresh across the cluster tasks..."
                        sh "aws ecs update-service --cluster ${ECS_CLUSTER} --service ${ECS_SERVICE} --force-new-deployment"
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }

    post {
        always {
            script {
                echo "Wiping local pipeline runner workspace paths..."
                cleanWs()
            }
        }
    }
}

Practice Exercise

1. Log into your AWS Management Console, navigate to IAM, and create a service account policy granting limited permissions to access your targeted ECR and ECS instances.
2. Open Jenkins and go to Manage Jenkins > Credentials to map your access secrets to a `Username with password` or `Secret text` profile named aws-jenkins-service-account.
3. Commit the sample Jenkinsfile pipeline into your repository and trigger a manual Build Now orchestration pass.
4. Inspect the Console Output logs to confirm successful authorization tokens were returned, and verify your new build number image is sitting inside your AWS ECR console dashboard.