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  5. AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs AWS Lambda

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs AWS Lambda

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Stacks2.1K
Followers1.8K
Votes241
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Stacks26.0K
Followers18.8K
Votes432

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs AWS Lambda: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS Lambda, two popular services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for deploying applications.

  1. Lifecycle Management: AWS Elastic Beanstalk is designed to handle the complete lifecycle of applications. It provides capabilities for deploying, scaling, and managing applications, including automatic capacity provisioning, load balancing, and application health monitoring. On the other hand, AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that allows you to run your code without thinking about servers. It focuses on executing individual functions in response to events, with automatic scaling and high availability built-in.

  2. Deployment Model: Elastic Beanstalk uses a more traditional deployment model where the application is packaged and deployed on instances managed by Elastic Beanstalk. You have control over the underlying infrastructure, including the operating system and runtime environment. In contrast, Lambda is based on the serverless architecture model, where you simply upload your code and AWS takes care of the rest. You don't have to manage any servers or infrastructure.

  3. Granularity of Execution: Elastic Beanstalk deploys and manages applications as a whole, meaning the entire application is deployed and scaled together. It is suitable for applications that need to be deployed as a complete unit. On the other hand, Lambda allows you to execute functions individually, which can be more granular and flexible. Each function can be independently triggered and scaled, allowing for more fine-grained control over application components.

  4. Cost Model: Elastic Beanstalk pricing is based on the underlying infrastructure resources that your application utilizes, such as EC2 instances, load balancers, and outbound data transfer. You pay for the resources provisioned and used. In contrast, Lambda pricing is based on the number of requests and the duration of the function execution. You only pay for the actual compute time consumed by the functions, which can result in a more cost-efficient model for applications with sporadic usage patterns.

  5. Flexibility: Elastic Beanstalk provides flexibility in terms of the operating system, runtime environment, and configuration choices. You can customize the underlying infrastructure and stack to meet specific requirements. Lambda, on the other hand, provides less flexibility in terms of customizing the runtime environment or underlying infrastructure as it abstracts away those details. It is focused on providing a simplified and managed environment for executing code.

  6. Supported Use Cases: Elastic Beanstalk is well-suited for scenarios where you need control over the underlying infrastructure, want to deploy and manage complex applications, and require a high level of customization. It is often used for web application hosting or deploying multi-tiered applications. Lambda, on the other hand, is ideal for event-driven architectures, microservices, or on-demand execution of functions without worrying about server management.

In Summary, Elastic Beanstalk is a platform for deploying and managing applications, offering control over infrastructure and customization options, while Lambda is a serverless compute service that executes functions individually based on events, providing automatic scaling and abstraction from underlying infrastructure.

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Advice on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda

Tim
Tim

CTO at Checkly Inc.

Sep 18, 2019

Needs adviceonHerokuHerokuAWS LambdaAWS Lambda

When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:

  • Developer Experience trumps everything.
  • AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
  • If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.

The setup

Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:

  • Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
  • Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
  • Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
  • Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
  • Heroku
  • Lambda

It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?

I chopped that question up into the following categories:

  • Developer Experience / DX 🤓
  • Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
  • Cost 💵
  • Lock in 🔐

Read the full post linked below for all details

357k views357k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Elastic Beanstalk is built using familiar software stacks such as the Apache HTTP Server for Node.js, PHP and Python, Passenger for Ruby, IIS 7.5 for .NET, and Apache Tomcat for Java;There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk - you pay only for the AWS resources needed to store and run your applications.;Easy to begin – Elastic Beanstalk is a quick and simple way to deploy your application to AWS. You simply use the AWS Management Console, Git deployment, or an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Eclipse or Visual Studio to upload your application;Impossible to outgrow – Elastic Beanstalk automatically scales your application up and down based on default Auto Scaling settings;Complete control – Elastic Beanstalk lets you "open the hood" and retain full control over the AWS resources powering your application;Flexible – You have the freedom to select the Amazon EC2 instance type that is optimal for your application based on CPU and memory requirements, and can choose from several available database options;Reliable – Elastic Beanstalk runs within Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters, and provides an environment where developers can run applications requiring high durability and availability.
Extend other AWS services with custom logic;Build custom back-end services;Completely Automated Administration;Built-in Fault Tolerance;Automatic Scaling;Integrated Security Model;Bring Your Own Code;Pay Per Use;Flexible Resource Model
Statistics
Stacks
2.1K
Stacks
26.0K
Followers
1.8K
Followers
18.8K
Votes
241
Votes
432
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 77
    Integrates with other aws services
  • 65
    Simple deployment
  • 44
    Fast
  • 28
    Painless
  • 16
    Free
Cons
  • 2
    Charges appear automatically after exceeding free quota
  • 1
    Lots of moving parts and config
  • 0
    Slow deployments
Pros
  • 129
    No infrastructure
  • 83
    Cheap
  • 70
    Quick
  • 59
    Stateless
  • 47
    No deploy, no server, great sleep
Cons
  • 7
    Cant execute ruby or go
  • 3
    Compute time limited
  • 1
    Can't execute PHP w/o significant effort
Integrations
Docker
Docker
Papertrail
Papertrail
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda?

Heroku

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Google App Engine

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

Render

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Hasura

Hasura

An open source GraphQL engine that deploys instant, realtime GraphQL APIs on any Postgres database.

Cloud 66

Cloud 66

Cloud 66 gives you everything you need to build, deploy and maintain your applications on any cloud, without the headache of dealing with "server stuff". Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Jamstack, Laravel, GoLang, and more.

Jelastic

Jelastic

Jelastic is a Multi-Cloud DevOps PaaS for ISVs, telcos, service providers and enterprises needing to speed up development, reduce cost of IT infrastructure, improve uptime and security.

Dokku

Dokku

It is an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server of your choice. It helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications from building to scaling.

PythonAnywhere

PythonAnywhere

It's somewhat unique. A small PaaS that supports web apps (Python only) as well as scheduled jobs with shell access. It is an expensive way to tinker and run several small apps.

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