AWS OpsWorks is a configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet to automate your application management operations. 

The main building blocks of OpsWorks include:

• stacks: Top-level building blocks. Used to model your applications with the help of layers.
• layers: Separate levels of a stack to separate the concerns of your application. Layers can be categorized by responsibility such as web, application, and database layers
• instances: EC2 instances that are associated with your stack layers to perform the necessary tasks at each level of your application
• apps: Code that you want to be deployed and ran on your instances in a layer. 

In this lab, you will utilize these building blocks to create and deploy a simple PHP application using AWS OpsWorks.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Create an AWS OpsWorks stack
• Learn how to use AWS OpsWorks components
• Deploy a PHP web application

Intended Audience

• DevOps Engineers
• Candidates for the AWS DevOps Professional Exam

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the following will be beneficial but is not required:

• AWS OpsWorks

Updates

March 12th, 2023 - Resolved an issue that caused the lab to fail to set up on rare occasions

September 2nd, 2021 - Updated ec2 instance role name in the instructions

August 24th, 2021 - Recovered the ability to create stacks after AWS resolved the OpsWorks console validation issue

June 22th, 2021 - Incorporate updated lab format and revamp lab steps to match the current AWS console