Creating feature flags and free form configuration data in AWS AppConfig - AWS AppConfig

Creating feature flags and free form configuration data in AWS AppConfig

The topics in this section help you complete the following tasks in AWS AppConfig. These tasks create important artifacts for deploying configuration data.

1. Create an application namespace

To create an application namespace, you create an AWS AppConfig artifact called an application. An application is simply an organizational construct like a folder.

2. Create environments

For each AWS AppConfig application, you define one or more environments. An environment is a logical deployment group of AWS AppConfig targets, such as applications in a Beta or Production environment. You can also define environments for application subcomponents, such as AWS Lambda functions, Containers, Web, Mobile, and Back-end.

You can configure Amazon CloudWatch alarms for each environment to automatically rollback problematic configuration changes. The system monitors alarms during a configuration deployment. If an alarm is triggered, the system rolls back the configuration.

3. Create a configuration profile

A configuration profile includes, among other things, a URI that enables AWS AppConfig to locate your configuration data in its stored location and a profile type. AWS AppConfig supports two configuration profile types: feature flags and freeform configurations. Feature flag configuration profiles store their data in the AWS AppConfig hosted configuration store and the URI is simply hosted. For freeform configuration profiles, you can store your data in the AWS AppConfig hosted configuration store or another Systems Manager capability or AWS service that integrates with AWS AppConfig, as described in Creating a free form configuration profile in AWS AppConfig.

A configuration profile can also include optional validators to ensure your configuration data is syntactically and semantically correct. AWS AppConfig performs a check using the validators when you start a deployment. If any errors are detected, the deployment stops before making any changes to the targets of the configuration.

Note

Unless you have specific needs for storing secrets in AWS Secrets Manager or managing data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), we recommend hosting your configuration data in the AWS AppConfig hosted configuration store as it offers the most features and enhancements.

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