Imagine two cases:
I have web server running in an EC2 instance and it is connected to the database in the RDS, the managed database service.
I have web server and database running in the same EC2 instance.
Is my database in RDS going to be slower to access because it's not in the same machine?
How many milliseconds, approximately, does it add to your latency between the two?
Does this become bottleneck?
What about other managed database services like Azure, GCP, Digital Ocean, etc?
Do they behave the same?
Yes, it will be slower to RDS instances from your Webserver than a database on the same host, because you need to go over the network and that adds latency.
The drawback of running the DB on the same server is that you can't use a managed service to take care of your database and you're mixing largely stateless components (webserver) with stateful components (database). This solution is typically not scalable either. If you add more webservers, things get messy.
Don't know about Azure, GCP or Digital Ocean, but I'd be very surprised if things are different there. There's good reasons to separate these components.
What are the exact differences between EC2, Beanstalk and LightSail in AWS?
What are good real time scenarios in which I should use these services?
They are all based on EC2, the compute service from AWS allowing you to create EC2 instances (virtual machines in the cloud).
Lightsail is packaged in a similar way than Virtual Private Server, making it easy for anyone to start with their own server. It has a simplified management console and many options are tuned with default values that maximize availability and security.
Elastic Beanstalk is a service for application developers that provisions an EC2 instance and a load balancer automatically. It creates the EC2 instance, it installs an execution environment on these machines and will deploy your application for you (Elastic Beanstalk support Java, Node, Python, Docker and many others)
Behind the scenes, Elastic Beanstalk creates regular EC2 instances that you will see in your AWS Console.
And EC2 is the bare service that allows the other to be possible. If you choose to create an EC2 instance, you will have to choose your operating system, manage your ssh key, install your application runtime and configure security settings by yourself. You have full control of that virtual machine.
In simple terms:
EC2 - virtual host or an image. which you can use it to install apps and have a machine to do whatever you like.
Lightsail - is similar but more user friendly management option and good for small applications.
Beanstalk - an orchestration tool, which does all the work to create an EC2, install application, software and give you freedom from manual tasks in creating an environment.
More details at - https://stackshare.io/stackups/amazon-ec2-vs-amazon-lightsail-vs-aws-elastic-beanstalk
I don't know if my scenario is typical in any way, but here are the differences that were critical for me. I'm happier EC2 than EB:
EC2:
just a remote linux machine with shell (command line) access
tracable application-level errors, easy to see what is wrong with your application
you can use AWS web console panel or AWS command line tool to manage
you will need repeated steps if you want to reproduce same environment
some effort to get proper shell access (eg fix security rule to your IP only)
no load balancer provided by default
Elastic Beanstalk
a service that creates a EC2 instance with a programming language of your choice (eg Python, PHP, etc)
runs one application on that machine (for python - application.py)
upload applications as .zip file, extra effort needed to use your git source
need to get used to environment vs applications mental model
application level errors hidden deep in the server logs, logs downloaded in separate menu
can be managed by web console, but also needs another CLI tool in addition to AWS CLI (you end up installing two CLI tools)
provides load balancer and other server-level services, takes away the manual setup part
great for scaling stable appications, not so much for trial-and-see experimentaion
probably more expensive than just an EC2 instance
Amazon EC2 is a virtual host, in other words, it is a server where you can SSH configure your application, install dependencies and so on, like in your local machine. EC2 has a dozen of AMI (Amazon Machine Image: it is some kind of operating system of your EC2 server, for instance, you can have EC2 running on Linux based OS or in windows OS). To summarize, it is a great idea if you need a machine in your hands.
Amazon Lightsail is a simple tool that you can deploy and manage application with small management of servers. You can find it very practical if your application is small, For instance, it will perfectly fit your application if you use Wordpress or other CMS.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is an orchestration tool. You can manage your application within that service, it is more elevated then AWS Light Sail.
If you still do not understand the differences, you can take a look at each service overview.
There is also an answer in Quora
I have spent only 10 mins on these technologies but here is my first take.
EC2 - a baremetal service. It gives you a server with an OS. That is it. There is nothing else installed on it. So if you need a webserver (nginx) or python, you'll need to do it yourself.
Beanstalk - helps you deploy your applications. Say you have a python/flask application which you want to run on a server. Traditionally you'll have to build the app, move the deployable package to another machine where a web server should be installed, then move the package into some directory in the web server. Beanstalk does all this for you automatically.
LightSail - I haven't tried it but it seem to be an even simpler option to create a server with pre-installed os/software.
In summary, these seem to make application deployment more easier by pre-configuring the server/EC2s with the required software packages and security policies (eg. port nos. etc.).
I am not an expert so I could be wrong.
I am trying to set up an Amazon Server to host a dynamic website I'm currently creating. I have the domain bought on GoDaddy.com, and I believe that what I've done so far has linked the domain to my Amazon account.
I followed this tutorial : http://www.mycowsworld.com/blog/2013/07/29/setting-up-a-godaddy-domain-name-with-amazon-web-services/
In short, this walked me through setting up and Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Amazon Route 53. I then configured the DNS Servers, and my website now launches properly on the domain.
I'm not sure on the next step from here, but I would like to set up:
-A database server
-Anything else that might be necessary to run a dynamic website.
I am very new to hosting websites, and semi-new to web development in general, so the more in depth the better.
Thanks a lot
You have two options on AWS. Run an EC2 server and setup your application or continue to use the AWS managed services like S3.
Flask apps can be hosted on Elastic Beanstalk and
your database can be hosted on RDS (Relational Database Service). Then the two can be integrated.
Otherwise, spin up your own t2.micro instance in EC2. Log in via ssh and set up the database server and application like you have locally. This server could also host the (currently S3 hosted) static files too.
I have no idea what your requirements are, personally I would start with setting up the EC2 instance and go from there as integrating AWS services is without knowing what you need is probably not the easiest first step.
Heroku might be another option. They host their services on AWS and give you an end to end solution for deploying and running your python code without getting your hands dirty setting up servers.
I am new to Amazon Web Services. I was reading about Amazon ElastiCache and wanted to clarify if it is like (may be more than that) using RAM filesystem in Linux where we use a portion of system memory as a file system. As I referred AWS documentation it says ElastiCache is a web service. Is it like an EC2 instance with few memory modules attached? I really want to understand how it exactly works.
Our company has decided to migrate our physical servers into AWS cloud. We use Apache web server and MySQL Database running in Linux. We provide a SaaS platform for e-mail marketing and event scheduling for our customers. There is usually a high web traffic to our website during 9am-5pm on weekdays. I would like to understand if we want to use ElastiCache service, how it will be configured in AWS.? We have planned two EC2 instances for our web server and an RDS instance for the database.
Thanks.
Elastic cache is simply managed Redis or Memcached. Depending which one you choose, you would use the client for the cache with your application.
How you would implement it depends on what kind of caching you are trying to accomplish.
I installed a LAMP stack in my AWS EC2 instances so that I can use the MySQL server. Somebody recommended using RDS. But RDS is not free and also a MySQL server. My question is what makes RDS so special comparing with my MySQL server in EC2 instances?
Thanks. By the way, I'm quite new to AWS.
RDS is a managed solution. Which means, AWS staff will take care of:
Patches
Backups
Maintenance
Making sure it's alive
Hosting your database in a second EC2 instance means that:
You have to manage everything of the above
Using a LAMP stack and co-hosting Apache and MySQL is the cheapest, but:
You have to manage everything of the above
You're probably hosting a database on an instance exposed to the internet
That said, if you're planning to host a production website / service that's more than a personal website / blog / experiment you'll probably need to host webserver and database in different instances. Picking RDS is less of a headache.
For anything thats not that important, a LAMP stack makes more sense. Less scalability, potentially less security but also less administrative overhead and costs.