Please note that this post, first published over a year ago, may now be out of date.
For those already using Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Elastic Beanstalk has been a popular choice, providing an easy-to-use platform for deploying and managing applications. However, as business needs evolve, it’s crucial to explore newer technologies that offer enhanced benefits. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the advantages of migrating from AWS Elastic Beanstalk to AWS Fargate – a serverless container service that can unlock a whole new realm of possibilities for your applications.
Containerise your applications. Photo by Timelab
Understanding the current scenario
As your business expands and application workloads become more dynamic, managing infrastructure and optimising resources on AWS Elastic Beanstalk poses challenges. Ensuring efficient resource utilisation, scaling capabilities, and controlling costs become critical considerations to maintain competitive advantages. Whether you’re using Elastic Beanstalk to run a traditional workload, or one that already uses containers, there are benefits to be had.
The gateway to greater efficiency: AWS Fargate
Serverless container management
AWS Fargate’s serverless container management allows your development teams to focus on building and deploying applications without the burden of managing underlying EC2 instances. This shift in focus accelerates your time-to-market for new features and updates.
Cost optimisation and resource efficiency
By adopting Fargate’s pay-as-you-go pricing model, you pay only for the resources consumed by your containers, making it more cost-effective, especially during periods of lower application demand.
Simplified deployment process
AWS Fargate simplifies the deployment process by abstracting away the underlying infrastructure management. You don’t need to worry about provisioning or managing EC2 instances as part of the deployment process. Fargate automatically takes care of scaling up and down resources as an application is updated. This means that developers don’t need to concern themselves with the intricacies of infrastructure provisioning, networking, and scaling. As a result, the deployment process is more straightforward and streamlined, reducing the potential for errors and making it easier to deploy new versions of applications swiftly.
Isolation and security
Fargate provides a higher level of container isolation, bolstering security and minimising the risk of container-level vulnerabilities. This significantly enhances the overall security posture of your applications. Without a fleet of EC2 instances to run you have fewer resources to worry about keeping patched, updated, and your surface area for a security attack is significantly reduced.
Integration with other AWS services
Fargate seamlessly integrates with other AWS services like AWS Batch, and AWS Step Functions. This creates opportunities for innovation, enabling the creation of more sophisticated and scalable applications.
How to get started?
Calculate the cost savings
Conducting a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis will demonstrate the potential cost savings achieved through Fargate’s pay-as-you-go pricing model and improved resource utilisation efficiency.
Start with a pilot
To ensure a smooth transition, we recommend a phased migration approach, beginning with a pilot project. This pilot will help validate the benefits of Fargate and allow you to fine-tune the migration process, whether you’re migrating existing containers or non-containerised workloads. Based on the pilot’s success, you can gradually migrate additional applications to Fargate, ensuring minimal disruption to your business operations.
Migrating from AWS Elastic Beanstalk to AWS Fargate is a strategic move that promises greater resource efficiency, reduced costs, enhanced security, and streamlined deployment processes. Embracing Fargate’s serverless container management will position your business for continued growth and success in an ever-evolving market.
Want an easier route to running your workload in containers, with security, build automation, and scalability designed in? We offer a number of packaged container platforms that provide exactly that.
This blog is written exclusively by The Scale Factory team. We do not accept external contributions.
