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Application Load Balance VS Amazon EC2

Compare Application Load Balance VS Amazon EC2 and see what are their differences

Application Load Balance logo Application Load Balance

Automatically distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets using an Application Load Balancer.

Amazon EC2 logo Amazon EC2

Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.
  • Application Load Balance Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-05
  • Amazon EC2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-06

Application Load Balance features and specs

  • Layer 7 Processing
    Application Load Balancer operates at the application layer (Layer 7), allowing it to make routing decisions based on advanced content-based rules, such as the HTTP headers, request URL, and query string.
  • Advanced Routing
    ALB supports dynamic host-based and path-based routing, enabling requests to be dispatched to different backend services based on the URL pattern or the host domain, which is particularly useful for microservices architectures.
  • WebSocket and HTTP/2 Support
    Supports sticky sessions and WebSocket, allowing for long-lived sessions and bidirectional communication between clients and servers. It also supports HTTP/2, providing improved performance over HTTP/1.1.
  • Integrated Security Features
    ALB integrates with AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) to secure applications and protect against common web exploits. It also supports TLS offloading, simplifying encryption management.
  • Monitoring and Logging
    Offers detailed CloudWatch metrics and logs to monitor traffic patterns, latency, and other critical operational details. This helps in proactively troubleshooting and optimizing performance.

Possible disadvantages of Application Load Balance

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring ALB might be more complex compared to Network Load Balancers or Classic Load Balancers, especially with intricate routing and security rules.
  • Higher Costs
    Application Load Balancers can be more expensive due to advanced features and capabilities, particularly when handling high traffic levels, compared to simpler load balancing solutions.
  • Limited Protocol Support
    ALB is primarily designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic and may not be suitable if your application needs to handle TCP/UDP-based protocols directly.
  • Performance Overhead
    Operating at Layer 7 can introduce slight latency due to the additional processing required for content-based routing and SSL termination.

Amazon EC2 features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon EC2 allows you to quickly scale your resources up or down based on demand. This flexibility helps you manage your compute needs efficiently without overcommitting resources.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing
    With Amazon EC2, you only pay for the instances you use. This usage-based pricing model can help reduce costs, especially for businesses with variable compute workloads.
  • Wide range of instance types
    EC2 offers a variety of instance types optimized for different use cases, such as compute-intensive or memory-intensive applications, allowing you to choose the most suitable instance for your needs.
  • Global availability
    Amazon EC2 is available in multiple regions around the world, enabling you to deploy your applications closer to your users for reduced latency and improved performance.
  • Integration with other AWS services
    EC2 integrates seamlessly with other AWS services such as S3, RDS, and VPC, providing a comprehensive cloud infrastructure for your applications.
  • Security and compliance
    Amazon EC2 provides a range of security features, including VPC, IAM roles, and encryption, to help you protect your data and comply with regulatory requirements.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon EC2

  • Complexity
    Managing EC2 instances can be complex, especially as your infrastructure grows. This may require specialized knowledge and skills to properly configure, monitor, and maintain the instances.
  • Cost management
    Although the pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective, it can also lead to unexpected expenses if resources are not managed carefully. Overprovisioning or forgetting to shut down instances can quickly increase costs.
  • Performance variability
    While EC2 offers high performance, there can be variability in resources allocated to your instances, especially in the shared tenancy model. This can lead to occasional performance inconsistencies.
  • In-depth knowledge required
    To fully leverage Amazon EC2, a good level of expertise in AWS services, cloud computing concepts, and best practices is required. This can be a barrier for organizations without adequate technical skills.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Amazon EC2 can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to alternative platforms or cloud providers without significant effort and potential downtime.
  • Privacy concerns
    Although AWS provides robust security measures, some organizations may have concerns about storing sensitive data on a third-party managed service and prefer managing their own infrastructure.

Analysis of Amazon EC2

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Amazon EC2 is generally considered good for hosting scalable and robust applications in the cloud. Its ability to adapt to various computing needs while ensuring security and flexibility makes it a popular choice among developers and businesses.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon EC2 is considered good because it offers scalable computing capacity in the cloud. It provides flexible configurations, a wide range of instance types, reliable performance, robust security features, and a strong ecosystem of AWS services to support diverse workloads. Furthermore, the pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures cost efficiency, making it accessible for startups, enterprises, and everything in between.

Recommended for

  • Startups looking for cost-effective cloud computing solutions.
  • Established businesses needing reliable and scalable infrastructure.
  • Developers requiring a customizable environment to run applications.
  • Companies wanting to leverage a broad selection of complementary AWS services.
  • Organizations aiming for a hybrid cloud approach with seamless integration.

Application Load Balance videos

AWS ALB | AWS Application Load Balancer | What is Application Load Balancer AWS | Intellipaat

More videos:

  • Review - Step by Step Instructions to setup Application Load Balancer | what is AWS Application Load Balancer

Amazon EC2 videos

Introduction to Amazon EC2 - Elastic Cloud Server & Hosting with AWS

More videos:

  • Review - What is Amazon EC2? (Part 1) | AWS Training

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Application Load Balance and Amazon EC2)
Cloud Computing
9 9%
91% 91
Cloud Hosting
18 18%
82% 82
Cloud Infrastructure
0 0%
100% 100
Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon EC2 should be more popular than Application Load Balance. It has been mentiond 77 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Application Load Balance mentions (23)

  • Authenticating users in the load balancer with Cognito
    Say that we have an application running behind a public-facing Application Load Balancer (ALB). The load balancer's target can be any supported target, including ECS containers, EC2 instances or even Lambda functions. Because the application is only available to authenticated users, we want to find a solution to identify them. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • A Practical Guide To Deploying A Complex, Production Level, Three-tier Architecture On AWS
    The Load balancer is the entry point to the application. The Application Load Balancer, residing in the presentation layer, will route traffic through the AutoScaling Group to logic-tier instances residing in the logic layer. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • The RoboNet Artificial Media Protocol - How a new internet protocol can make AI regulation more human
    Eg. AWS can have their Load Balancer tuned for OSI layer 7 rules for ramp content, exactly what everyone would need to redirect RAMP headers/signatures/etc straight into its proper routes/servers. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Creating Application Load Balancer rules for fast feature stack deployments
    The service in question uses ECS Fargate behind a private Application Load Balancer (ALB). The engineering team placed an HTTP API Gateway before the ALB that performs the authentication. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Introduction to Cloud Load-Balancers
    What is an Application Load Balancer? Https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/introduction.html. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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Amazon EC2 mentions (77)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Application Load Balance and Amazon EC2, you can also consider the following products

Amazon API Gateway - Create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Microsoft Azure - Windows Azure and SQL Azure enable you to build, host and scale applications in Microsoft datacenters.

Amazon Route 53 - Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable DNS web service.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.