AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Kubernetes

Overview

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Stacks2.1K

Followers1.8K

Votes241

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Kubernetes are two popular platforms for deploying and managing applications. Here are key differences between them:

1. **Abstraction Level**: AWS Elastic Beanstalk operates at a higher level of abstraction, providing a PaaS-like experience where developers can easily deploy applications without worrying about infrastructure. In contrast, Kubernetes offers a lower level of abstraction, giving users more control over the infrastructure and configurations.

2. **Scalability**: Elastic Beanstalk is designed to automatically handle application scaling based on user-defined metrics, making it easier for users to scale their applications without manual intervention. Kubernetes, on the other hand, requires users to set up and manage their own scaling mechanisms through horizontal pod autoscaling and cluster scaling.

3. **Ecosystem and Community**: Kubernetes has a larger and more active open-source community compared to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, leading to quicker adoption of new features, better support, and a wider range of third-party tools and integrations available for Kubernetes users.

4. **Portability**: Kubernetes provides more portability and flexibility in terms of deploying applications across different cloud providers and on-premises environments. Elastic Beanstalk is more tailored towards AWS services and may not offer the same level of portability for applications.

5. **Management Complexity**: Elastic Beanstalk abstracts away many of the complexities involved in application deployment and management, making it simpler and quicker to deploy applications. Kubernetes, while offering more control, requires a higher level of expertise to manage containers, pods, and clusters effectively.

6. **Cost**: Elastic Beanstalk may have a lower cost of entry for small applications due to its simplicity and managed services, whereas Kubernetes can be more cost-effective for larger applications that require fine-grained control over resources and scaling.

In Summary, AWS Elastic Beanstalk offers a higher level of abstraction and simplicity for deploying applications, while Kubernetes provides more control, scalability, and portability for users with more advanced deployment needs.

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Advice on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Kubernetes

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

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Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.

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Detailed Comparison

AWS Elastic Beanstalk	Kubernetes
Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.	Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
Elastic Beanstalk is built using familiar software stacks such as the Apache HTTP Server for Node.js, PHP and Python, Passenger for Ruby, IIS 7.5 for .NET, and Apache Tomcat for Java;There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk - you pay only for the AWS resources needed to store and run your applications.;Easy to begin – Elastic Beanstalk is a quick and simple way to deploy your application to AWS. You simply use the AWS Management Console, Git deployment, or an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Eclipse or Visual Studio to upload your application;Impossible to outgrow – Elastic Beanstalk automatically scales your application up and down based on default Auto Scaling settings;Complete control – Elastic Beanstalk lets you "open the hood" and retain full control over the AWS resources powering your application;Flexible – You have the freedom to select the Amazon EC2 instance type that is optimal for your application based on CPU and memory requirements, and can choose from several available database options;Reliable – Elastic Beanstalk runs within Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters, and provides an environment where developers can run applications requiring high durability and availability.	Lightweight, simple and accessible;Built for a multi-cloud world, public, private or hybrid;Highly modular, designed so that all of its components are easily swappable
Statistics
Stacks 2.1K	Stacks 61.2K
Followers 1.8K	Followers 52.8K
Votes 241	Votes 685
Pros & Cons
Pros 77 Integrates with other aws services 65 Simple deployment 44 Fast 28 Painless 16 Free Cons 2 Charges appear automatically after exceeding free quota 1 Lots of moving parts and config 0 Slow deployments	Pros 166 Leading docker container management solution 130 Simple and powerful 108 Open source 76 Backed by google 58 The right abstractions Cons 16 Steep learning curve 15 Poor workflow for development 8 Orchestrates only infrastructure 4 High resource requirements for on-prem clusters 2 Too heavy for simple systems
Integrations
Docker Papertrail	Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine

What are some alternatives to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Kubernetes?

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Related Comparisons

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Kubernetes are two popular platforms for deploying and managing applications. Here are key differences between them:

1. **Abstraction Level**: AWS Elastic Beanstalk operates at a higher level of abstraction, providing a PaaS-like experience where developers can easily deploy applications without worrying about infrastructure. In contrast, Kubernetes offers a lower level of abstraction, giving users more control over the infrastructure and configurations.

2. **Scalability**: Elastic Beanstalk is designed to automatically handle application scaling based on user-defined metrics, making it easier for users to scale their applications without manual intervention. Kubernetes, on the other hand, requires users to set up and manage their own scaling mechanisms through horizontal pod autoscaling and cluster scaling.

3. **Ecosystem and Community**: Kubernetes has a larger and more active open-source community compared to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, leading to quicker adoption of new features, better support, and a wider range of third-party tools and integrations available for Kubernetes users.

4. **Portability**: Kubernetes provides more portability and flexibility in terms of deploying applications across different cloud providers and on-premises environments. Elastic Beanstalk is more tailored towards AWS services and may not offer the same level of portability for applications.

5. **Management Complexity**: Elastic Beanstalk abstracts away many of the complexities involved in application deployment and management, making it simpler and quicker to deploy applications. Kubernetes, while offering more control, requires a higher level of expertise to manage containers, pods, and clusters effectively.

6. **Cost**: Elastic Beanstalk may have a lower cost of entry for small applications due to its simplicity and managed services, whereas Kubernetes can be more cost-effective for larger applications that require fine-grained control over resources and scaling.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Kubernetes

Overview