ELASTIC BEANSTALK
Cloud Computing has enabled companies to implement applications that would be impossible to develop on traditional infrastructure. A lot of this success is owed to an exponential increase in cloud computing services offered by major tech companies like Amazon Web Services.
In this blog, we have a look at AWS Elastic Beanstalk, offered as a Platform as a Service, understanding its features and functions, and how it can benefit your firm.
So, what is AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
Offered as a compute service, AWS Elastic Beanstalk makes it easier for developer to quickly deploy and manage applications that are uploaded to AWS' cloud.
The service automatically handles the provisioning of services and configuration for the application uploaded by developers. The application can be provided with a range of performance enhancing services like Load Balancing, Capacity Provision, Auto Scaling, etc. With AWS Elastic Beanstalk, a developer can deploy an application without provisioning the underlying infrastructure while maintaining high availability
Beanstalk is also provided with an open architecture feature, which means that even application not written for the web can be deployed on it. Amazon doesn’t charge additionally for the Elastic Beanstalk, consumers will just have to pay for the resources used to run and store their apps.
What are the Features of AWS Elastic Beanstalk?
Application Support: Amazon Elastic Beanstalk offers you support for a wide range of application environments. It supports a lot of container and coding platforms including Ruby, Python, Node.js, PHP, .NET, JAVA, and Docker.
AWS Integration: Elastic Beanstalk comes with the availability of native and deep integration with the rest of the Amazon Web Services. It means that you are allowed to configure your application according to your requirements, also ensuring you do not pay more than you ask for.
Scalability (and auto-scaling): Enables you to start small and scale it up to desired heights. Amazon gives you the power to create 75 apps on the Elastic Beanstalk, with 1000 versions of each one of them.
Provisioning: It comes with the ability to provision your application with all the load balancers, necessary instances, and additional resources that your application requires. Furthermore, you don’t even have to specify anything related to the type and size of these resources.
CloudWatch: With the help of Elastic Beanstalk, you also get access to the Amazon CloudWatch. This enables you to monitor the system environment via set metrics such as CPU usage, inbound/outbound network traffic, and request count. It will provide you with the exact measurement of your application’s health status.
Notifications: If you are using the AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you will get notifications automatically whenever improvement events and activities take place for your application. For example, you will get notified when new deployments occur, new servers are launched, or your predefined threshold is suppressed.
Components & Key Concepts of AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Application: An application in Elastic Beanstalk is conceptually similar to a folder. An application is a collection of components including environments, versions and environment configuration.
Application Version: An application version refers to a specific, labelled iteration of deployable code for a web application. An application version points to an Amazon S3 object that contains the deployable code such as a Java WAR file.
Environment: Environments within Elastic Beanstalk Application is where the current version of the application will be active. Each environment runs only a single application version at a time. But it is possible to run the same or different versions of an application in many environments at the same time.
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Environment Tier: Based on the developer's requirement, beanstalk offers two different environment tiers:
a) Web Server Environment: Handles HTTP requests from clients
b) Worker Environment: Processes background tasks which are resource consuming and time intensive
Compatibility and Accessibility
To use the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Service, a local application on any platform has to be created first. Examples being- developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker on familiar servers such as Apache, Nginx, Passenger, and IIS- offering a wide range. Post this, an application has to be created in Elastic Beanstalk- with an environment where the local application (application version) can be uploaded. It is then deployed and launched using the URL provided for it.
There are no costs applied for Elastic Beanstalk in AWS separately. Users only pay for the resources used to run the application- for example, if your application requires secure storage- then Amazon S3 is deployed and the user pays only for that. The cost is not fixed either, varying with the number of EC2 instances, size of the S3 bucket, and the configuration of the database instances- making it an easy to use service.
Use Cases & Examples of Elastic Beanstalk
Benefits:
Examples
Samsung: Samsung Electronic Printing decided to deploy its new Samsung Printing Apps Center app store on AWS instead of using a traditional IT environment, enabling mobile users anywhere to download apps that help them print remotely from their devices. By using AWS Beanstalk, the division was able to deploy services that enabled its Printing Apps Center launch on time and has the scalability to handle periods when downloads cause traffic spikes.
Rachio: The software provider and creator of the Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller, uses AWS Elastic Beanstalk to deploy and manage its website, web apps, and API infrastructure. Because of the vast array of metrics involved like weather forecasts, watering time and volume, different irrigation set-ups, etc. Elastic Beanstalk helps them maintain features and solve issues- especially on the client end.
Jelly Button Games: They develop and publish free-to-play, interactive mobile and web games. Jelly Button Games was quickly able to develop a proof-of-concept environment using AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Once the service receives an application uploaded by a user, along with some additional information, AWS Elastic Beanstalk automatically provisions a hosting environment with the correct services configured to run it- ranging from Amazon EC2 to Amazon RDS.
How can Ataloud help?
Connect with an Ataloud consultant today (business@ataloud.com) for a seamless experience for your business' transition to the cloud. We can analyze, discuss and help validate your AWS billing and usage patterns, perform routine audits, perform log analysis, analyze and monitor performances- on top of the other managed services that we offer.