In this AWS Elastic Beanstalk tutorial, we will learn what is Elastic Beanstalk in AWS, its benefits, and more. Further, we will also learn how to create an Amazon Elastic Beanstalk Environment.
Following is the list of all the topics which are discussed in this AWS Elastic Beanstalk tutorial:
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What is Elastic Beanstalk in AWS?
AWS Elastic Beanstalk is a compute service that makes it easier for the developers to quickly deploy and manage applications that you upload to the AWS cloud. Developers simply upload their application to the AWS cloud, and then let the AWS Beanstalk provision and handle the configuration for you. Your application will be provided with Capacity Provisioning, Load Balancing, AWS Auto-Scaling, and Health monitoring.
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How does Elastic Beanstalk in AWS work?
Before using Amazon elastic beanstalk service, you have to create a local application of any platform. It can be Python, PHP, Node.js, etc. After that, you have to create an application in Elastic Beanstalk with an environment where you can upload your local application. Then you deploy it and use the URL provided for it to launch it.
There are no costs applied for Elastic Beanstalk in AWS separately, you only pay for the only resources you use to run your application like for storage you use Amazon S3. Also, the cost is not fixed, it can vary with the number of EC2 instances, size of the S3 bucket, and the configuration of the database instances.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Benefits
Now that we understood AWS Elastic Beanstalk and how it works, let us now understand its benefits. So, Elastic Beanstalk provides the user with several benefits and they are:
- Easy to start with
- Autoscaling options
- Developer productivity
- Customization
- Cost-effective
- Management and updates
Let’s discuss all the benefits in detail.
Easy to start with
- The fastest and easy way to upload your application and keep it running is by uploading it to Elastic Beanstalk.
- You need not worry about the platform of your application, you can create it on your local system and upload it.
Autoscaling options
- Beanstalk takes care of scaling up or down whenever required. If your application’s traffic increases or decreases, beanstalk automatically scales it accordingly.
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Developer productivity
- Developers don’t need to think much about uploading their application online, they only have to concentrate on keeping their application more secure and user friendly.
Customization
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk allows you to select the configuration of the AWS services that you have used with your application. For example, consider Amazon EC2, you can change the AWS EC2 instance types which is optimal for your application. Also, if you want to take control of some services manually, you can change the settings according to it.
Cost-Effective
- There is no cost involved in creating a Beanstalk environment. When there is a need for making it into the production of the application, then you can create your application bigger.
Management and Updates
- You don’t need to worry about updating your application according to the change in the platform. The software patches, platform updates, and infrastructure management are taken care of by the AWS professionals.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk Concepts
Let us now look at some key concepts of the elastic beanstalk environment.
Application
In Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, you upload your application as a zip file with all the contents in it. An Elastic Beanstalk application is logically considered equivalent to a file containing the source code. The file is the application in the Elastic Beanstalk environment.
Application Version
Application Version refers to the web application which you have uploaded and will upload its next upgraded version. For example, you upload your application to AWS Beanstalk at first and then you have updated the source code of your application. Instead of overwriting your previous version of the application, you can give it a new version name which you could use to compare them both.
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Environment
The collection of AWS resources is an environment and an environment can only run one application version at a time. You may run multiple applications in multiple environments at the same time.
Whenever an environment is created, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk automatically provisions required EC2 instances and S3 buckets.
Environment Tier
You can also mention the tier of your environment. Basically, there are two environment tiers available and they are Web Server Environment and Worker Environment.
An application using PHP or requires HTTP requests runs in a Web Server Environment.
An application using Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) runs in a Worker Environment.
Environment Configuration
The configuration of an environment is a set of parameters like security group, Instance type, and platform version. If you change the configuration, Amazon Elastic Beanstalk implements it dynamically. It either applies the new changes or deletes and deploys new resources.
Saved Configuration
You can create a template that contains the basic functionalities and use it as a starting point for your environment configurations. You can also modify the configurations whenever you need them and use them while creating a new environment.
Platform
A platform is a combination of all the AWS Beanstalk components, an Operating system, a programming language runtime, and a webserver to run the applications. You can choose your platform while creating your application or environment. You don’t need to update it or include software patches, AWS takes care of that. Just try to make your application as good as possible.
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Now that we have a clear understanding of AWS Elastic Beanstalk and its components let’s move on and get to the hands-on part.
Hands-on: Creating an Elastic Beanstalk Application
Step 1: Logon to the AWS management console
Step 2: Click on the Elastic Beanstalk service under the services dropdown
Step 3: Click on Get Started on the opening page and then create a Web Application by providing the required details.
Step 4: Now, you have created an Elastic Beanstalk environment and a sample application. Also, the configuration of your application will be provided in the right end.
Step 5: Use the URL provided at the top of the page and run it.
Now we have created a running sample PHP application using Elastic Beanstalk! You can now create applications on whatever platform you want and upload them to Elastic Beanstalk.
Hope this Elastic Beanstalk tutorial has helped you learn the concepts of AWS Elastic Beanstalk. If you would like to dive deeper into AWS then do check out our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Program. Keep visiting for more tutorials on AWS Services.