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Application Load Balance VS AWS Fargate

Compare Application Load Balance VS AWS Fargate 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.

AWS Fargate logo AWS Fargate

AWS Fargate is a compute engine for Amazon ECS and EKS that allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters.
  • Application Load Balance Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-05
  • AWS Fargate Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-29

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.

AWS Fargate features and specs

  • Simplified Management
    AWS Fargate eliminates the need to provision, configure, and scale clusters of virtual machines, simplifying container management and reducing operational overhead.
  • Scalability
    Fargate automatically scales compute capacity to match the resource requirements of your application, ensuring performance and cost-efficiency.
  • Isolation
    Each Fargate task runs in its own environment, providing better security through enhanced isolation between tasks compared to shared environments.
  • Cost Efficiency
    Fargate allows you to pay only for the resources you actually use, such as vCPU and memory, which can be more cost-effective for unpredictable workloads.
  • Integration
    Fargate integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like Amazon ECS, ECR, IAM, and CloudWatch, providing a cohesive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Fargate

  • Higher Cost for Persistent Workloads
    While Fargate can be cost-efficient for variable workloads, it may become more expensive compared to EC2 for long-running, persistent workloads due to its pricing model.
  • Configuration Limitations
    Fargate may have limitations on the customization and configuration options available, which can be restrictive for certain use cases requiring highly specialized setups.
  • Cold Start Latency
    Fargate can experience cold start latency, where newly instantiated containers take a few seconds or longer to become operational, which can be a drawback for latency-sensitive applications.
  • Limited to AWS Ecosystem
    Fargate is tied to AWS's ecosystem, potentially causing vendor lock-in and limiting flexibility if you need to transition to a multi-cloud or hybrid environment.
  • Learning Curve
    For teams not familiar with the AWS ecosystem, there can be a learning curve associated with leveraging Fargate and its integrations effectively.

Analysis of AWS Fargate

Overall verdict

  • AWS Fargate is generally considered an excellent solution for organizations and developers looking to deploy containerized applications without the complexity of managing the underlying infrastructure. It is particularly well-suited for workloads that require dynamic scaling and benefit from a cloud-native, serverless environment.

Why this product is good

  • AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that eliminates the need to provision and manage servers, allowing developers to focus on building and running applications rather than managing infrastructure. It offers scalability, flexibility, and reliability, integrating seamlessly with Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS to run containerized applications with ease. Key benefits include automatic scaling, a pay-as-you-go pricing model, and reduced operational overhead.

Recommended for

    AWS Fargate is recommended for teams and businesses of all sizes seeking to adopt a microservices architecture or run containerized applications in the cloud. It's especially beneficial for those who need to rapidly deploy applications without the overhead of infrastructure management, as well as for projects where workload demands are variable and scalability is a priority.

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

AWS Fargate videos

Deep Dive into AWS Fargate

More videos:

  • Tutorial - AWS Fargate Tutorial | AWS Tutorial For Beginners | AWS Certification Training | Edureka
  • Review - AWS Fargate - Running Dockerized Apps

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Application Load Balance and AWS Fargate)
Cloud Computing
24 24%
76% 76
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Databases
100 100%
0% 0

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Application Load Balance and AWS Fargate

Application Load Balance Reviews

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AWS Fargate Reviews

Top 12 Kubernetes Alternatives to Choose From in 2023
For Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) Kubernetes alternatives, AWS Fargate is a great option. It is well-known for simplifying container management and deployment on AWS.
Source: humalect.com
Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
Using AWS Fargate, you now donโ€™t need to provision, configure, and scale cluster virtual machines to execute containers. This, in turn, eliminates the requirement to select server types, determine at what time to scale your clusters or optimize cluster packing.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, AWS Fargate should be more popular than Application Load Balance. It has been mentiond 53 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
View more

AWS Fargate mentions (53)

  • Beyond the Hype: Rediscovering Why Containers Won
    The future is getting weird in a good way. New technologies like AWS Firecracker and serverless containers (AWS Fargate, Google Cloud Run) are basically giving you VM-level security with container-level performance. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • MCP Security: Tr-tr-tr-tricky, tricky, tricky
    The centerpiece of the authentication and authorization is an MCP Auth Service, which runs in a secure virtual private cloud (VPC) on AWS Fargate. MCP Auth Service works with DynamoDB and Cognito to send tokens to the MCP client, routing through the AWS Application Load Balancer and CloudFront. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • AWS Serverless Compute Offerings: A Comprehensive Developerโ€™s Guide (2025)
    Security: Tasks run in dedicated runtime environments, ensuring workload isolation (AWS Fargate). - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Large-scale Data Processing with Step Functionsย : AWSย Project
    The workers in this example are containers, running in Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) with an Amazon Fargate Capacity Provider . Though the workers could potentially run almost anywhere so long as they had access to poll the Step Functions Activity and report SUCCESS/FAILURE back to Step Functions. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Ephemeral Jobs Longer than the Lambda Timeout
    One option is to use ECS run-task with a Fargate launch type. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Application Load Balance and AWS Fargate, you can also consider the following products

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

Amazon ECS - Amazon EC2 Container Service is a highly scalable, high-performanceโ€‹ container management service that supports Docker containers.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

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

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL as a Service