This repository provides the infrastructure (as CDK) to run appium tests on aws bare metal spot instances with an autoscaling function so that a new instance is automatically setup whenever the current spot instance is taken away.

Requirements solved by this solution:

• Run appium tests in a cost efficient way on aws
• Have an instance available to run the tests most of the time

This post bases on the following resources

• https://medium.com/swlh/deploying-android-emulators-on-aws-ec2-3-3-autoscaling-bare-metal-instances-cost-optimizations-8fc4e636b81d
• https://github.com/appium/appium/tree/master/sample-code
• https://github.com/budtmo/docker-android

!!! THIS INFRASTRUCTURE WILL CREATE COSTS IN AWS EVEN IF YOU HAVE CREDITS !!!

Implementation:

• Infrastructure
  • Autoscaling group with one spot ec2 c5.metal instance with amazon-linux
  • A route53 entry in your configured hosted zone
  • The instance configuration:
    • installs docker, docker-compose, awscli
    • runs the selenium grid and an emulator with ci/appium/docker-compose.yaml
    • updates the route53 entry with the instance public dns name. This is important for the cases when the spot instance is turned off and recreated
  • An autoscaling policy to turn off the instance during the weekends
  • Security groups to ssh into the instance
  • Permissions for the instance to run
• run-grid.sh functionality:
  • Copies an apk into the instance with a hardcoded name. Beware of the volume mapping in the docker-compose. It is important if you want to modify the wdio.config
  • Opens a tunnel to the grid AND to the VNC
  • Runs the tests pointing to the selenium grid

• Modify ci/appium/lib/appium-stack.ts with:
  • your hosted zone name or remove the capability
  • your aws ssh key
• deploy infrastructure: cd ci/appium && npm i && cdk synth && cdk deploy
• run tests with node 10: npm i && ./run-grid.sh PATH_TO_MY_KEY INSTANCE_CNAME
• to see the grid, open chrome and localhost:4444
• to see the emulator, open chrome and localhost:8060

The run-grid.sh can be integrated into your CI of choice. To scale this solution is enough to remove the fix ports of the docker-compose and scale the app component. This way tests can be run in parallel.