AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kong: What are the differences?
Introduction
In this article, we will compare the key differences between AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and Kong. Both ELB and Kong are popular tools for load balancing in web applications. However, they have distinct features and capabilities that set them apart from each other.
-
Scalability and Flexibility: AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a managed load balancing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers high scalability and flexibility as it automatically scales according to the incoming traffic load. In contrast, Kong is an open-source API gateway that provides load balancing along with other functionalities such as authentication, rate limiting, and logging. Kong can be deployed in various environments, giving users more choice and flexibility in the setup.
-
Integration with AWS services: ELB is tightly integrated with AWS services and cloud infrastructure. It seamlessly works with different AWS resources like EC2 instances, Auto Scaling groups, and CloudFormation templates. ELB also supports integration with other AWS services like AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for SSL/TLS certificates and AWS CloudTrail for logging and auditing. On the other hand, Kong is a more standalone solution that can be deployed on any infrastructure. It can integrate with various databases, message queues, and other third-party services.
-
Granular Control and Customization: ELB provides a set of predefined load balancing algorithms, including round-robin, least connections, and IP hash. It automatically distributes incoming traffic to multiple instances based on these algorithms. However, ELB has limited customization options compared to Kong. Kong allows users to define their own load balancing algorithms and also provides advanced routing capabilities like path-based and header-based routing. This makes Kong more flexible and suitable for complex routing scenarios.
-
Monitoring and Metrics: AWS ELB provides built-in monitoring and metrics through AWS CloudWatch. It offers metrics like request count, latency, and backend connection errors. ELB also supports integration with AWS X-Ray for distributed tracing and analysis. In contrast, Kong does not provide built-in monitoring and metrics out of the box. Users need to set up additional tools like Prometheus or Grafana to collect and analyze metrics from Kong.
-
Service Discovery and Load Balancer Configuration: ELB supports automatic service discovery for EC2 instances within a VPC. It can dynamically register and deregister instances based on their health status. ELB automatically handles load balancer configuration and scaling. Kong, on the other hand, requires manual configuration and management of the load balancer. Users need to define the upstream services and their endpoints manually in Kong's configuration.
-
Pricing and Cost: AWS ELB pricing is based on the usage and type of load balancer (Classic, Application, or Network). It has different pricing tiers for data transfer, requests, and load balancer capacity. Kong, being an open-source tool, does not have any direct licensing or usage costs. However, users need to consider the infrastructure and maintenance costs for hosting Kong and any associated services like databases or message queues.
In Summary, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a managed load balancing service offered by AWS, tightly integrated with other AWS services, providing high scalability and automation. Kong, an open-source API gateway, offers more customization options, flexibility in deployment, and better control over load balancing algorithms and routing.
