AWS Lambda vs Amazon ElastiCache

Overview

Amazon ElastiCache

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.0K

Votes151

AWS Lambda

Stacks26.0K

Followers18.8K

Votes432

AWS Lambda vs Amazon ElastiCache: What are the differences?

Introduction:

In comparing AWS Lambda and Amazon ElastiCache, it's essential to understand the key differences between the two services. These differences play a crucial role in determining the suitability of each service based on specific use cases and requirements.

Service Type: AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. On the other hand, Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store service that helps improve performance by caching data in memory.
Use Case: AWS Lambda is best suited for event-driven, serverless computing tasks such as data processing, real-time file processing, and backend tasks triggered by events. In contrast, Amazon ElastiCache is ideal for applications that require low-latency access to cached data, such as caching frequently accessed data from a database.
Scaling: When it comes to scaling, AWS Lambda automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests. The service can run multiple instances of the function in parallel to handle the workload. Amazon ElastiCache, on the other hand, allows you to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to your cluster to accommodate increasing data storage and performance needs.
Monitoring and Management: AWS Lambda provides robust monitoring and logging capabilities through Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to track performance metrics and troubleshoot issues. Amazon ElastiCache offers monitoring and management features through the AWS Management Console, providing insights into cache performance, usage, and health status.
Cost Model: AWS Lambda follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you only pay for the compute time consumed by your functions. In contrast, Amazon ElastiCache has a pricing structure based on the type and size of cache nodes deployed, along with any additional features such as encryption and AWS CloudFormation.
Data Storage: While AWS Lambda is designed for executing code without managing underlying infrastructure, Amazon ElastiCache focuses on enhancing performance through in-memory caching. This difference highlights the distinct purposes of each service in optimizing application performance and scalability.

In Summary, understanding the differences between AWS Lambda and Amazon ElastiCache helps in selecting the appropriate service based on the specific use case and requirements.

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Advice on Amazon ElastiCache, AWS Lambda

Tim

CTO at Checkly Inc.

Sep 18, 2019

Needs adviceon

Heroku

AWS 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

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon ElastiCache	AWS Lambda
ElastiCache improves the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from fast, managed, in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis.	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.
Support for two engines: Memcached and Redis;Ease of management via the AWS Management Console. With a few clicks you can configure and launch instances for the engine you wish to use.;Compatibility with the specific engine protocol. This means most of the client libraries will work with the respective engines they were built for - no additional changes or tweaking required.;Detailed monitoring statistics for the engine nodes at no extra cost via Amazon CloudWatch;Pay only for the resources you consume based on node hours used	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 1.3K	Stacks 26.0K
Followers 1.0K	Followers 18.8K
Votes 151	Votes 432
Pros & Cons
Pros 58 Redis 32 High-performance 26 Backed by amazon 21 Memcached 14 Elastic	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

What are some alternatives to Amazon ElastiCache, AWS Lambda?

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

MemCachier

MemCachier provides an easy and powerful managed caching solution for all your performance and scalability needs. It works with the ubiquitous memcache protocol so your favourite language and framework already supports it.

Serverless

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Memcached Cloud

Memcached Cloud is a fully-managed service for running your Memcached in a reliable and fail-safe manner. Your dataset is constantly replicated, so if a node fails, an auto-switchover mechanism guarantees data is served without interruption. Memcached Cloud provides various data persistence options as well as remote backups for disaster recovery purposes.

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

Related Comparisons

AWS Lambda vs Amazon ElastiCache: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Service Type: AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. On the other hand, Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store service that helps improve performance by caching data in memory.
Use Case: AWS Lambda is best suited for event-driven, serverless computing tasks such as data processing, real-time file processing, and backend tasks triggered by events. In contrast, Amazon ElastiCache is ideal for applications that require low-latency access to cached data, such as caching frequently accessed data from a database.
Scaling: When it comes to scaling, AWS Lambda automatically scales based on the number of incoming requests. The service can run multiple instances of the function in parallel to handle the workload. Amazon ElastiCache, on the other hand, allows you to scale horizontally by adding more nodes to your cluster to accommodate increasing data storage and performance needs.
Monitoring and Management: AWS Lambda provides robust monitoring and logging capabilities through Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to track performance metrics and troubleshoot issues. Amazon ElastiCache offers monitoring and management features through the AWS Management Console, providing insights into cache performance, usage, and health status.
Cost Model: AWS Lambda follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you only pay for the compute time consumed by your functions. In contrast, Amazon ElastiCache has a pricing structure based on the type and size of cache nodes deployed, along with any additional features such as encryption and AWS CloudFormation.
Data Storage: While AWS Lambda is designed for executing code without managing underlying infrastructure, Amazon ElastiCache focuses on enhancing performance through in-memory caching. This difference highlights the distinct purposes of each service in optimizing application performance and scalability.

In Summary, understanding the differences between AWS Lambda and Amazon ElastiCache helps in selecting the appropriate service based on the specific use case and requirements.

AWS Lambda vs Amazon ElastiCache

Overview