Creating feature flags and free form configuration data in Amazon AppConfig

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

For each Amazon AppConfig application, you define one or more environments. An environment is a logical deployment group of Amazon AppConfig targets, such as applications in a Beta or Production environment. You can also define environments for application subcomponents, such as Amazon 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.

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

A configuration profile can also include optional validators to ensure your configuration data is syntactically and semantically correct. Amazon 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.