Amazon AppConfig User Guide document history - Amazon AppConfig
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Amazon AppConfig User Guide document history

The following table describes the important changes to the documentation since the last release of Amazon AppConfig.

Current API version: 2019-10-09

ChangeDescriptionDate

New version of Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension

The agent has been updated to support feature flag targets, variants, and splits. To view the new Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) for the extension, see Available versions of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension.

July 23, 2024

New feature: Multi-variant feature flags

Multi-variant feature flags enable you to define a set of possible flag values to return for a request. You can also configure different statuses (enabled or disabled) for multi-variant flags. When requesting a flag configured with variants, your application provides context that Amazon AppConfig evaluates against a set of user-defined rules. Depending on the context specified in the request and the rules defined for the variant, Amazon AppConfig returns different flag values to the application. For more information, see Creating multi-variant feature flags.

July 23, 2024

New version of Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension

The agent has been updated with minor enhancements and bug fixes. To view the new Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) for the extension, see Available versions of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension.

February 28, 2024

Amazon AppConfig custom extension samples

The Walkthrough: Creating custom Amazon AppConfig extensions topic now includes links to the following sample extensions on GitHub:

February 28, 2024

New topic: Logging Amazon AppConfig API calls using Amazon CloudTrail

Amazon AppConfig is integrated with Amazon CloudTrail, a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an Amazon service in Amazon AppConfig. CloudTrail captures all API calls for Amazon AppConfig as events. This new topic provides Amazon AppConfig-specific content rather than linking to the corresponding content in the Amazon Systems Manager User Guide. For more information, see Logging Amazon AppConfig API calls using Amazon CloudTrail.

January 18, 2024

Amazon AppConfig now supports Amazon PrivateLink

You can use Amazon PrivateLink to create a private connection between your VPC and Amazon AppConfig. You can access Amazon AppConfig as if it were in your VPC, without the use of an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or Amazon Direct Connect connection. Instances in your VPC don't need public IP addresses to access Amazon AppConfig. For more information, see Access Amazon AppConfig using an interface endpoint (Amazon PrivateLink).

December 6, 2023

Additional Amazon AppConfig Agent retrieval features and a new local development mode

Amazon AppConfig Agent offers the following additional features to help you retrieve configurations for your applications.

Additional retrieval features

  • Multi-account retrieval: Use Amazon AppConfig Agent from a primary or retrieval Amazon Web Services account to retrieve configuration data from multiple vendor accounts.

  • Write configuration copy to disk: Use Amazon AppConfig Agent to write configuration data to disk. This feature enables customers with applications that read configuration data from disk to integrate with Amazon AppConfig.

Note

Write configuration to disk is not designed as a configuration backup feature. Amazon AppConfig Agent doesn't read from the configuration files copied to disk. If you want to back up configurations to disk, see the BACKUP_DIRECTORY and PRELOAD_BACKUP environment variables for Using Amazon AppConfig Agent with Amazon EC2 or Using Amazon AppConfig Agent with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

Local development mode

Amazon AppConfig Agent supports a local development mode. If you enable local development mode, the agent reads configuration data from a specified directory on disk. It doesn't retrieve configuration data from Amazon AppConfig. You can simulate configuration deployments by updating files in the specified directory. We recommend local development mode for the following use cases:

  • Test different configuration versions before deploying them using Amazon AppConfig.

  • Test different configuration options for a new feature before commiting changes to your code repository.

  • Test different configuration scenarios to verify they work as expected.

December 1, 2023

New code samples topic

Added a new code samples topic to this guide. The topic includes examples in Java, Python, and JavaScript for programmatically performing six common Amazon AppConfig actions.

November 17, 2023

Revised table of contents to better reflect Amazon AppConfig workflow

Content in this user guide is now grouped under the headings Creating, Deploying, Retrieving, and Extending workflows. This organization better reflects the workflow for using Amazon AppConfig and aims to help make content more discoverable.

November 7, 2023

Payload reference added

The Creating a Lambda function for a custom Amazon AppConfig extension topic now includes a request and response payload reference.

November 7, 2023

New Amazon predefined deployment strategy

Amazon AppConfig now offers and recommends the AppConfig.Linear20PercentEvery6Minutes predefined deployment strategy. For more information, see Predefined deployment strategies.

August 11, 2023

Amazon AppConfig integration with Amazon EC2

You can integrate Amazon AppConfig with applications running on your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux instances by using Amazon AppConfig Agent. The agent supports x86_64 and ARM64 architectures for Amazon EC2. For more information, see Amazon AppConfig integration with Amazon EC2.

July 20, 2023

Amazon CloudFormation support for new Amazon AppConfig resources and a feature flag example

Amazon CloudFormation now supports the AWS::AppConfig::Extension and AWS::AppConfig::ExtensionAssociation resources to help you get started with Amazon AppConfig extensions.

The AWS::AppConfig::ConfigurationProfile and AWS::AppConfig::HostedConfigurationVersion resources now include an example for creating a feature flag configuration profile in the Amazon AppConfig hosted configuration store.

April 12, 2023

Amazon AppConfig integration with Amazon Secrets Manager

Amazon AppConfig integrates with Amazon Secrets Manager. Secrets Manager helps you to securely encrypt, store, and retrieve credentials for your databases and other services. Instead of hardcoding credentials in your apps, you can make calls to Secrets Manager to retrieve your credentials whenever needed. Secrets Manager helps you protect access to your IT resources and data by enabling you to rotate and manage access to your secrets.

When you create a freeform configuration profile, you can choose Secrets Manager as the source of your configuration data. You must onboard with Secrets Manager and create a secret before you create the configuration profile. For more information about Secrets Manager, see What is Amazon Secrets Manager? in the Amazon Secrets Manager User Guide. For information about creating a configuration profile, see Creating a freeform configuration profile.

February 2, 2023

Amazon AppConfig integration with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS

You can integrate Amazon AppConfig with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) by using the Amazon AppConfig agent. The agent functions as a sidecar container running alongside your Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS container applications. The agent enhances containerized application processing and management in the following ways:

  • The agent calls Amazon AppConfig on your behalf by using an Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) role and managing a local cache of configuration data. By pulling configuration data from the local cache, your application requires fewer code updates to manage configuration data, retrieves configuration data in milliseconds, and isn't affected by network issues that can disrupt calls for such data.

  • The agent offers a native experience for retrieving and resolving Amazon AppConfig feature flags.

  • Out of the box, the agent provides best practices for caching strategies, polling intervals, and local configuration data availability while tracking the configuration tokens needed for subsequent service calls.

  • While running in the background, the agent periodically polls the Amazon AppConfig data plane for configuration data updates. Your containerized application can retrieve the data by connecting to localhost on port 2772 (a customizable default port value) and calling HTTP GET to retrieve the data.

  • The Amazon AppConfig agent updates configuration data in your containers without having to restart or recycle those containers.

For more information, see Amazon AppConfig integration with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

December 2, 2022

New extension: Amazon AppConfig extension for CloudWatch Evidently

You can use Amazon CloudWatch Evidently to safely validate new features by serving them to a specified percentage of your users while you roll out the feature. You can monitor the performance of the new feature to help you decide when to ramp up traffic to your users. This helps you reduce risk and identify unintended consequences before you fully launch the feature. You can also conduct A/B experiments to make feature design decisions based on evidence and data.

The Amazon AppConfig extension for CloudWatch Evidently allows your application to assign variations to user sessions locally instead of by calling the EvaluateFeature operation. A local session mitigates the latency and availability risks that come with an API call. For information about how to configure and use the extension, see Perform launches and A/B experiments with CloudWatch Evidently in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.

September 13, 2022

Deprecation of the GetConfiguration API action

On Nov 18, 2021, Amazon AppConfig released a new data plane service. This service replaces the previous process of retrieving configuration data by using the GetConfiguration API action. The data plane service uses two new API actions, StartConfigurationSession and GetLatestConfiguration. The data plane service also uses new endpoints.

For more information, see About the Amazon AppConfig data plane service.

September 13, 2022

New version of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension

Version 2.0.122 of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension is now available. The new extension uses different Amazon Resource Names (ARNs). For more information, see Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension release notes.

August 23, 2022

Launch of Amazon AppConfig extensions

An extension augments your ability to inject logic or behavior at different points during the Amazon AppConfig workflow of creating or deploying a configuration. You can use Amazon-authored extensions or create your own. For more information, see Working with Amazon AppConfig extensions.

July 12, 2022

New version of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension

Version 2.0.58 of the Amazon AppConfig Agent Lambda extension is now available. The new extension uses different Amazon Resource Names (ARNs). For more information, see Available versions of the Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension.

May 3, 2022

Amazon AppConfig integration with Atlassian Jira

Integrating with Atlassian Jira allows Amazon AppConfig to create and update issues in the Atlassian console whenever you make changes to a feature flag in your Amazon Web Services account for the specified Amazon Web Services Region. Each Jira issue includes the flag name, application ID, configuration profile ID, and flag values. After you update, save, and deploy your flag changes, Jira updates the existing issues with the details of the change. For more information, see Amazon AppConfig integration with Atlassian Jira.

April 7, 2022

General availability of feature flags and Lambda extension support for ARM64 (Graviton2) processors

With Amazon AppConfig feature flags, you can develop a new feature and deploy it to production while hiding the feature from users. You start by adding the flag to Amazon AppConfig as configuration data. Once the feature is ready to be released, you can update the flag configuration data without deploying any code. This feature improves the safety of your dev-ops environment because you don't need to deploy new code to release the feature. For more information, see Creating a feature flag configuration profile.

General availability of feature flags in Amazon AppConfig includes the following enhancements:

  • The console includes an option to designate a flag as a short term flag. You can filter and sort the list of flags on short-term flags.

  • For customers using feature flags in Amazon Lambda, the new Lambda extension allows you to call individual feature flags by using an HTTP endpoint. For more information, see see Retrieving one or more flags from a feature flag configuration.

This update also provides support for Amazon Lambda extensions developed for ARM64 (Graviton2) processors. For more information, see see Available versions of the Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension.

March 15, 2022

The GetConfiguration API action is deprecated

The GetConfiguration API action is deprecated. Calls to receive configuration data should use the StartConfigurationSession and GetLatestConfiguration APIs instead. For more information about these APIs and how to use them, see Retrieving the configuration.

January 28, 2022

New region ARN for Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension

Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension is available in the new Asia Pacific (Osaka) region. The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) is required to create a Lambda in the region. For more information about the Asia Pacific (Osaka) region ARN, see Adding the Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension.

March 4, 2021

Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension

If you use Amazon AppConfig to manage configurations for a Lambda function, then we recommend that you add the Amazon AppConfig Lambda extension. This extension includes best practices that simplify using Amazon AppConfig while reducing costs. Reduced costs result from fewer API calls to the Amazon AppConfig service and, separately, reduced costs from shorter Lambda function processing times. For more information, see Amazon AppConfig integration with Lambda extensions.

October 8, 2020

New section

Added a new section that provides instructions for setting up Amazon AppConfig. For more information, see Setting up Amazon AppConfig.

September 30, 2020

Added commandline procedures

Procedures in this user guide now include commandline steps for the Amazon Command Line Interface (Amazon CLI) and Tools for Windows PowerShell. For more information, see Working with Amazon AppConfig.

September 30, 2020

Launch of Amazon AppConfig user guide

Use Amazon AppConfig, a capability of Amazon Systems Manager, to create, manage, and quickly deploy application configurations. Amazon AppConfig supports controlled deployments to applications of any size and includes built-in validation checks and monitoring. You can use Amazon AppConfig with applications hosted on EC2 instances, Amazon Lambda, containers, mobile applications, or IoT devices.

July 31, 2020