Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (EB)

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk (EB) is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that lets you deploy and manage web applications by simply uploading your codes. It automatically handles provisioning, load balancing, scaling, and monitoring, while still allowing access to the underlying infrastructure if needed.

Ideal for developers with existing/traditional web apps (e.g., Java, Node.js) who want simple deployment but some infrastructure control.

Not suitable for mobile-native apps or container-first architectures. For such apps, use -

  1. AWS Amplify for modern front-end/serverless apps (e.g., React, Vue, GraphQL).
  2. AWS App Runner for deploying containerized applications with minimal ops.

Key Features

  1. Automatic provisioning of EC2, Auto Scaling, Load Balancer, CloudWatch, etc.
  2. Supports multiple platforms: Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, Docker.
  3. Custom AMI support: Use your own AMI to speed up instance launch or preinstall dependencies.
  4. Environment types: Web Server Environment (HTTP/HTTPS) and Worker Environment (asynchronous background jobs via SQS)

Deployment Options

  1. All at Once: Fastest, but causes downtime
  2. Rolling: Batches of instances updated gradually
  3. Rolling with Additional Batch: Adds temp batch to keep full capacity during update
  4. Immutable: Launches new set of instances → switches traffic only if healthy
  5. Blue/Green: Deploy to a new environment → swap CNAME if successful (manual version of immutable)

Monitoring & Logs

  1. Integrated with CloudWatch, X-Ray, and Elastic Load Balancer.
  2. View logs from the EB console or configure log streaming to S3.

When to Use Elastic Beanstalk

  1. You want quick deployment without deep infra knowledge.
  2. You prefer to focus on application code, not server setup.
  3. You still want some control over underlying AWS resources (e.g., scaling settings, instance type).

Amplify, Elastic Beanstalk & App Runner

  1. Amplify = Best for frontend-first teams building full-stack apps with minimal backend setup.
  2. Elastic Beanstalk = Good for developers with existing apps (e.g., Java, Node.js) who want simple deployment but some infra control.
  3. App Runner = Ideal for modern, containerized apps needing fast, infra-free deployment.