1. Overview

Orchestrates Source → Build → Test → Deploy into an automated workflow. Artifacts via S3.

Core

CodePipeline connects Code* services. Stages run sequentially. Actions within stage: sequential or parallel. Manual Approval for human gates.

2. Action Types

3. Features

  1. Manual Approval: human gate, SNS notification, 7-day timeout
  2. Cross-Region: artifacts auto-replicated to target Regions
  3. Cross-Account: deploy from CI/CD account to workload accounts via IAM roles
  4. CloudFormation as deploy action: IaC through pipeline
  5. Triggers: source change (auto), manual, EventBridge schedule

4. When to use

Use CodePipeline when you need to automate and orchestrate the full CI/CD workflow — from source code change to production deployment.

Common scenarios:

  1. Automated release pipeline — Source → Build → Test → Deploy triggered on every code push.
  2. Orchestrate multiple AWS tools — Connect CodeCommit/GitHub → CodeBuild → CodeDeploy in one flow.
  3. Multi-stage deployments — Add manual approval gates before production.
  4. Cross-region / cross-account deploys — Deploy artifacts to multiple environments.
  5. Integrate third-party tools — Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Terraform, CloudFormation as pipeline stages.


Exam Tip
CodePipeline = orchestrator. Manual Approval for gates. CFN as a deploy action for IaC. Cross-Region + Cross-Account. Artifacts via S3.