AWS App Mesh vs Consul: What are the differences?

Introduction

AWS App Mesh and Consul are both service mesh solutions that provide traffic management and observability capabilities for microservices. While they have similar goals, there are key differences between the two platforms.

1. Integration with Microservices: AWS App Mesh is tightly integrated with AWS services, making it a suitable choice for applications hosted on AWS infrastructure. It leverages AWS resources such as Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) for service discovery and routing. On the other hand, Consul is platform-agnostic and can be used with any infrastructure, including AWS.

2. Service Discovery and Registry: Consul has its built-in service registry, which allows services to be created, registered, and discovered. It provides DNS-based service discovery and allows dynamic updates to service endpoints. In contrast, AWS App Mesh relies on AWS service discovery mechanisms, such as Amazon Route 53 or AWS CloudMap, for service registration and discovery.

3. Protocol Support: While both AWS App Mesh and Consul support multiple protocols, AWS App Mesh is primarily designed for HTTP-based communication. It offers advanced features like HTTP/2 and GRPC support, making it suitable for modern microservices architectures. Consul, on the other hand, supports a wide range of protocols including HTTP, TCP, and DNS.

4. Traffic Routing and Control: AWS App Mesh provides fine-grained control over traffic routing and offers advanced features like weighted routing, retries, and circuit breakers. It allows for declarative configuration through AWS CloudFormation or APIs. Consul also supports traffic routing and control but might require additional configuration using tools like Envoy Proxy.

5. Observability and Monitoring: AWS App Mesh integrates seamlessly with AWS CloudWatch, allowing for centralized monitoring, logging, and tracing of microservices. It provides rich observability features like distributed tracing with AWS X-Ray. Consul also offers observability features through integration with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Zipkin.

6. Vendor Lock-in and Ecosystem: AWS App Mesh is part of the AWS ecosystem and tightly integrated with other AWS services. While this provides convenience for AWS users, it can also lead to vendor lock-in. Consul, being platform-agnostic, offers more flexibility in terms of infrastructure choices and avoids any vendor lock-in concerns.

In summary, AWS App Mesh and Consul have key differences in terms of integration with infrastructure, service discovery mechanisms, protocol support, traffic control capabilities, observability features, and ecosystem integration. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements of the application and the underlying infrastructure.