Elastic Beanstalk vs. Engine Yard  

Scalability is a crucial part of the enterprise, and prioritising it from the start promotes higher agility, improved user experience, and lower maintenance costs.

Thanks to the advancement of several platform-based services which deploy and scale applications, scalability enables software to grow and generate revenue without facing any limitations of the structure or resources.

Offering several benefits whilst deploying and scaling web applications and services, the platform services are a developer’s delight. In this article, let us compare two popular cloud services services, Elastic Beanstalk, and Engine Yard.  

About Elastic Beanstalk

Elastic Beanstalk is a platform as a service within AWS that deploys and scales web applications and services.

It is a pre-configured EC2 server that can take up the application code along with environment configurations to directly deploy the necessary resources within AWS and run the web application.

Elastic beanstalk allows users to use the pre-configured server for the application. Developers need to upload the applications to use the service.

It supports web apps written in Node.JS, Java, Python, Ruby, etc. It monitors the application’s health and deploys applications not written for the web. 

Features of Elastic Beanstalk

• Obtain control over tools

AWS offers added control over tools and resources such as Amazon EC2 instance type, optimal for the application.

In addition, the Elastic Beanstalk Management Capabilities enables users to take over the elements of the infrastructure. 

• Flexible and easy to begin

AWS makes it easy to deploy the application and can be done with Visual Studio, Visual Studio, AWS Management Console, or Eclipse.

In addition, EBS automatically manages deployment details of auto-scaling, capacity provisioning, and application health monitoring. 

• Application support

Elastic Beanstalk is ideal for the application environment. Thanks to Amazon, it supports a whole range of coding and container platforms, including popular ones such as Node.js, Python, Java, Docker, .NET, Ruby, etc.  

• AWS integration

Elastic Beanstalk manages resources and user functionality. It also integrates with AWS services which are otherwise not used directly as part of the environment.

Deep and native integration enables easy application configuration, including choosing the instance types with less or more memory.

In addition, it facilitates SSH access that arranges the necessary security whilst connecting with other AWS services such as RDS, S3, and Lambda.  

• Boosts productivity

EBS secures servers whilst managing and configuring the. It furthermore manages the database, firewalls, load balancers, and networks.

This helps users to focus on building code instead of performing other actions. EBS furthermore operates and supervises the infrastructure and manages the applications. It helps to save time from development and expertise.  

• Scalability

Amazon allows you to create up to 75 applications in Elastic Beanstalk that comprises as many as 1000 versions.

In addition, users can run up to 200 environments across the applications and request a request form if the organisation needs more resources.  

Pricing

Users do not need to pay any additional charge for AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Instead, users can pay for AWS resources that store and runs the application. You only pay for your use, and there are no minimum fees or upfront commitments.

The price of running a website using Elastic Beanstalk essentially depends on the number of Amazon EC2 instances required to handle the website traffic, the bandwidth consumed by the application, and the database or storage options the application uses.  

About Engine Yard

Engine Yard is a platform as a service that relies on technologies such as Java, PHP, Node.js, and Ruby on Rails for small and large-scale deployments in the cloud.

It is power packed with several robust features such as load balancing, backups, cloning, database replication, etc. Engine Yard is one of the most significant choices for application developers for independent architecture and self-containment.

The applications run on infrastructures such as Windows Azure or Amazon Web Services. Therefore, the users can easily perform environment and application deployment customisation.

It makes use of MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, in addition to AWS Elastic Block Store and AWS Simple Storage Service. 

Features of Engine Yard

• Boosts performance and control costs

It auto-scales instantly based on demand and boosts application performance. It helps you to optimise resource utilisation as you scale.

Pods can scale horizontally depending on memory, CPU, and custom metrics. Pod sizes are well configured in increments of 1GB, allowing fine-grained control.  

• Intelligent structure optimisation

Having defined highly optimised stacks for every application, Engine Yard delivers faster start times, greater scalability, and improved performance.

The platform monitors application performance whilst using the insights to optimise infrastructure with machine learning technologies. The infrastructure is well optimised based on the practices of AWS, further reducing costs. 

• Zero downtime

Engine yard updates the environments to stay abreast with the new releases for the latest stack and security patch versions.

The backups are run, and DP replicas are created automatically. The platform configures the security groups and firewalls whilst minimising exposure.  

• Troubleshoot concerns easily

It enables users to see the application logs in a single place through ELK capabilities. Furthermore, it helps you analyse the application errors and diagnose the performance problems by assessing the logs.  

• Built-in monitoring

Each application in Engine Yard is well connected to the Grafana instance, offering basic metrics such as CPU usage, memory, scale, etc. In addition, it offers users automated alerts about any application failure.  

Pricing

• Standard Plan: The plan is available for free, offering 12 hours of support 5 days a week.  It costs $150 monthly per instance.  

• Premium Plan: The plan is ideal for taking care of production workloads of more than $800. In addition, users can acquire access to 24*7 support.  It costs $300 monthly per instance.  

• Platinum Plan: It is suitable for mission-critical applications and is ideal for $1,200 or 30 percent container usage.  It costs $400 monthly per instance.  

Engine Yard vs Elastic Beanstalk Comparison

Conclusion

Elastic Beanstalk and Engine Yard are great PaaS – Platform as a Service solutions for application development.

Elastic Beanstalk is an AWS product that has been running since 2011 that orchestrates multiple services like S3, EC2, etc. It is free of charge and supports customers like Siemens and Echelon.

Engine Yard is a platform as a service offering that has been running since 2006, focused on application deployment and management. It offers a free trial and has customers like Freshdesk and Comestri.

So, choose the ideal platform that suits your development needs and requirements. 

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