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Amazon EC2 vs Envoyer: What are the differences?
## Introduction
Amazon EC2 and Envoyer are both cloud-based services that offer different capabilities for developers and businesses. In this comparison, we will outline the key differences between Amazon EC2 and Envoyer.
1. **Pricing Model**: Amazon EC2 operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model where you are charged based on the resources you use. In contrast, Envoyer has a fixed monthly pricing plan, providing predictability in costs for the users.
2. **Deployment Automation**: Envoyer specializes in deployment automation, making it easy for developers to deploy and manage applications seamlessly. On the other hand, Amazon EC2 focuses on providing scalable compute capacity in the cloud.
3. **Managed Services**: Amazon EC2 is a part of the diverse AWS ecosystem, offering a wide range of services for various cloud computing needs. Whereas, Envoyer concentrates solely on application deployment and monitoring services, providing a simpler and more focused solution.
4. **Elasticity and Scalability**: Amazon EC2 allows users to adjust the capacity according to their needs through the scalable infrastructure. Envoyer, on the other hand, is more focused on providing a hassle-free deployment process rather than emphasizing on elastic scaling.
5. **Service Level Agreements (SLAs)**: Amazon EC2 provides SLAs for uptime and performance guarantees, ensuring reliable service availability for users. Envoyer, being a deployment tool, may not offer the same level of SLA consistency as Amazon EC2 due to its different focus and scope.
6. **Technical Support**: Amazon EC2 offers comprehensive technical support options through AWS Support Plans, catering to different levels of assistance based on user requirements. Envoyer may not have the same extensive support options as it is more geared towards deployment practices rather than overall infrastructure management.
In Summary, Amazon EC2 and Envoyer differ in pricing models, deployment automation focus, managed services offerings, elasticity/scalability emphasis, SLA provisions, and technical support availability.
DigitalOcean was where I began; its USD5/month is extremely competitive and the overall experience as highly user-friendly.
However, their offerings were lacking and integrating with other resources I had on AWS was getting more costly (due to transfer costs on AWS). Eventually I moved the entire project off DO's Droplets and onto AWS's EC2.
One may initially find the cost (w/o free tier) and interface of AWS daunting however with good planning you can achieve highly cost-efficient systems with savings plans, spot instances, etcetera.
Do not dive into AWS head-first! Seriously, don't. Stand back and read pricing documentation thoroughly. You can, not to the fault of AWS, easily go way overbudget. Your first action upon getting your AWS account should be to set up billing alarms for estimated and current bill totals.
We first selected Google Cloud Platform about five years ago, because HIPAA compliance was significantly cheaper and easier on Google compared to AWS. We have stayed with Google Cloud because it provides an excellent command line tool for managing resources, and every resource has a well-designed, well-documented API. SDKs for most of these APIs are available for many popular languages. I have never worked with a cloud platform that's so amenable to automation. Google is also ahead of its competitors in Kubernetes support.
GCE is much more user friendly than EC2, though Amazon has come a very long way since the early days (pre-2010's). This can be seen in how easy it is to edit the storage attached to an instance in GCE: it's under the instance details and is edited inline. In AWS you have to click the instance > click the storage block device (new screen) > click the edit option (new modal) > resize the volume > confirm (new model) then wait a very long time. Google's is nearly instant.
- In both cases, the instance much be shut down.
There also the preference between "user burden-of-security" and automatic security: AWS goes for the former, GCE the latter.
Most bioinformatics shops nowadays are hosting on AWS or Azure, since they have HIPAA tiers and offer enterprise SLA contracts. Meanwhile Heroku hasn't historically supported HIPAA. Rackspace and Google Cloud would be other hosting providers we would consider, but we just don't get requests for them. So, we mostly focus on AWS and Azure support.
Pros of Amazon EC2
- Quick and reliable cloud servers647
- Scalability515
- Easy management393
- Low cost277
- Auto-scaling271
- Market leader89
- Backed by amazon80
- Reliable79
- Free tier67
- Easy management, scalability58
- Flexible13
- Easy to Start10
- Widely used9
- Web-scale9
- Elastic9
- Node.js API7
- Industry Standard5
- Lots of configuration options4
- GPU instances2
- Simpler to understand and learn1
- Extremely simple to use1
- Amazing for individuals1
- All the Open Source CLI tools you could want.1
Pros of Envoyer
- Easy to use3
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Cons of Amazon EC2
- Ui could use a lot of work14
- High learning curve when compared to PaaS6
- Extremely poor CPU performance3