Service Catalog and Python Automation: WAF Deployment (Strategies and Best Practices for the Modern Enterprise).
Tags: aws, servicecatalog, cloud, cloudnative
Published: 2023-02-21 17:44:25


> AWS Service Catalog is a powerful tool for managing and deploying IT services on AWS. It allows organizations to create and manage catalogues of IT services that are approved for use on their AWS infrastructure. These catalogs can include AWS resources such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, and S3 buckets, as well as third-party software products.

## AWS Service Catalog offers a number of benefits to organizations, including:

**Consistency**: By defining a catalog of approved products, organizations can achieve greater consistency in their AWS infrastructure. This helps to reduce errors and increase productivity.

**Governance**: AWS Service Catalog provides granular access controls, allowing organizations to control who has access to what resources. This helps to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

**Automation**: AWS Service Catalog integrates with other AWS services such as CloudFormation and AWS Config, allowing organizations to automate the deployment and management of their IT services.

**Cost Efficiency**: By standardizing on approved products and automating deployments, organizations can achieve greater cost efficiency in their AWS infrastructure.

### 
AWS Service Catalog can be used for a variety of use cases, including:

- **Consistent deployments**: AWS Service Catalog provides a standardized way to deploy products across your organization. By defining a catalog of approved products, you can ensure that all deployments are consistent and adhere to your organization's governance policies.

- **Multi-account and multi-region deployments**: Organizations with multiple AWS accounts and regions can use AWS Service Catalog to deploy products consistently across all accounts and regions. This can help organizations ensure consistent governance and compliance across their entire infrastructure.

- **Custom approval workflows**: AWS Service Catalog provides the ability to define custom approval workflows for product launches. This can be used to enforce governance policies and ensure that only authorized users can launch products.

### Now that we've covered the benefits and use cases of AWS Service Catalog, let's take a look at some best practices for using it:

- **Start small**: Start with a small catalog of approved products and gradually expand it over time. This helps to ensure that the catalog remains manageable and that IT teams are able to keep up with demand.

- **Use versioning**: Use versioning to manage changes to your products over time. This helps to ensure that users are always using the latest version of a product and that changes are properly documented.

- **Use tagging**: Use tagging to organize your products and make it easier to search and filter them.

- **Use automation**: Use automation tools such as AWS CloudFormation and AWS Config to automate the deployment and management of your products. This helps to reduce errors and increase productivity.

- **Test your products**: Test your products thoroughly before adding them to the catalog. This helps to ensure that they are reliable and performant.

Now let's take a look at how you can automate the deployment of AWS Service Catalog products using Python.

- Python can be used to create and manage Service Catalog products and launch them with specific parameters. 

## 
Here's an example script to create a new Service Catalog product:

---

```
import boto3

client = boto3.client('servicecatalog')

# Replace the value with the actual URL of your CloudFormation template
template_url = 'https://s3.amazonaws.com/solutions-reference/aws-waf-security-automations/latest/aws-waf-security-automations.template'

# Define the product parameters
product_params = [
    {
        'Key': 'param1',
        'Value': 'value1'
    },
    {
        'Key': 'param2',
        'Value': 'value2'
    },
]

# Create the product
response = client.create_product(
    Name='WebApplicationFirewall',
    Owner='AxcessIO',
    Description='This is a Firewall Solution Provided by AWS',
    Distributor='AWS',
    SupportDescription='AWS Support',
    SupportEmail='support@axcess.io',
    SupportUrl='https://axcess.io/support',
    Tags=[
        {
            'Key': 'Solution',
            'Value': 'WAF Solution'
        },
    ],
    ProvisioningArtifactParameters=[
        {
            'Info': {
                'LoadTemplateFromURL': template_url
            },
            'Name': 'v1',
            'Description': 'Version 1'
        },
    ]
)

# Launch the product
provisioning_params = [
    {
        'Key': 'param1',
        'Value': 'value1'
    },
    {
        'Key': 'param2',
        'Value': 'value2'
    },
]

response = client.provision_product(
    ProductId=response['ProductViewDetail']['ProductViewSummary']['ProductId'],
    ProvisionedProductName='WebApplicationFirewall',
    ProvisioningParameters=provisioning_params,
)

print(response)

---

```
This script creates a new Service Catalog product with the specified properties.

Here's an example of how to use the script to launch a Service Catalog product:

---

```

import boto3

client = boto3.client('servicecatalog')

response = client.provision_product(
    ProductId='my-product-id',
    ProvisionedProductName='WebApplicationFirewall',
    ProvisioningParameters=[
        {
            'Key': 'param1',
            'Value': 'value1'
        },
        {
            'Key': 'param2',
            'Value': 'value2'
        },
    ],
)

print(response)


```

---

This script launches a Service Catalog product with the specified parameters.

### Some additional best practices for using AWS Service Catalog:

**Use AWS CloudFormation templates**: AWS CloudFormation is a powerful tool for managing and deploying AWS resources. By using CloudFormation templates with Service Catalog, you can ensure that your deployments are consistent and repeatable.

**Define product portfolios**: Product portfolios allow you to group related products together for easier management. For example, you might have a portfolio for networking products, a portfolio for database products, and so on.

**Use AWS Organizations**: AWS Organizations allows you to manage multiple AWS accounts from a single master account. By using AWS Organizations with Service Catalog, you can ensure consistent governance and compliance across all your accounts.

**Monitor your deployments**: Use AWS CloudWatch to monitor your Service Catalog deployments and receive alerts when there are issues. This can help you proactively identify and address problems before they become serious.

**, In conclusion,**, AWS Service Catalog is a powerful tool for managing and deploying IT services on AWS. It offers a number of benefits, including consistency, governance, automation, and cost efficiency. By following best practices and using automation tools such as Python, organizations can maximize the benefits of AWS Service Catalog and achieve greater efficiency and control over their IT infrastructure.

For more information and reference architectures on AWS Service Catalog, check out the AWS Service Catalog documentation and the AWS Service Catalog reference architectures page.