CODEWITHSUNDEEP
amazon-web-servicesamazon-ec2aws-lambdaaws-api-gateway
Rahul Singh
Rahul Singh

Reputation: 801

AWS Lambda vs EC2: Which one to choose

I am trying to make login service which is deployed on EC22 to serverless. But I am not sure if AWS Lambda or serverless exposed via AWS API Gateway is right fit for login use cases where after successful log in it would return accesstoken.

That's the only responsibility of this microservice.

And I am not sure how Lambda would behave for load test and high volume of http requests.

And, also we need to a low response time.

Could you please let me know how can Lambda scale and is this right use-case?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 9267

Answers (3)

Maurice
Maurice

Reputation: 13117

Based on the discussion in the comments I'm now adding a complete answer to this, as this is not really suitable for a comment.

You mentioned that your current service is already running on EC2 and you'd like to move that over to a Serverless solution. Furthermore you mention the options of "Lambda or Serverless exposed via API-Gateway". Then you add some additional information about expecting a response time of 500ms and the Lambda doing 2 DynamoDB calls.

I'll address these points in order:

EC2 vs Serverless Solution:

You seem to have already decided on trying the Serverless route, which works quite well in principle for a Microservice-Type architecture you're describing. I'm not going to focus too much on the merits of the EC2 solution here. Going serverless can have the following benefits (among others):

  • Cost effectiveness: You pay only for the resources your code consumes while it's running and not for idle times
  • Scalability: Lambda scales horizontally, fast and effortlessly - you basically don't worry about it (up to 1000 parallel "instances")
  • Lower operational overhead: No need to patch operating systems - AWS takes care of that for you
  • Focus on your business logic, leave the heavy lifting of managing the infrastructure to AWS

Lambda or Serverless exposed via API-Gateway

Serverless isn't really an AWS Service but a paradigm or architectural pattern so these options don't completely make sense - you'd use the API Gateway to trigger Lambda functions whenever an Event (read: HTTP-Request) occurs. This means you'll setup a fully-managed REST-Endpoint (API-Gateway) to call your code (Lambda) on demand.

On Performance

A response time of 500ms is realistic for the use case you're describing - DynamoDB advertises single-digit-millisecond latency, so two calls to it within 500ms shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately Lambda cold-start is a thing. Lambda scales out with parallel requests, meaning a new Micro-VM gets provisioned if there aren't enough warm instances of your function available to serve your request. This takes time, but in your use-case this shouldn't be an issue, since you don't need access to a VPC (in that case it would take multiple seconds).

Lambda is limited in performance compared to EC2 instances, you scale the amount of performance Lambda provides by specifying the amount of RAM the function gets allocated (CPU resources are provided based on the RAM). For a simple Login-Service this shouldn't be an issue as well.

I suggest you read up on the points I mentioned in the Lambda documentation (which is quite good).

Upvotes: 11

dassum
dassum

Reputation: 5103

According to me for your use case, AWS Lambda with API Gateway is the preferred choice. Scaling in AWS Lambda is not an issue. Also using AWS Lambda you can save cost.

Please read: Using AWS Lambda with Amazon API Gateway - AWS Lambda

Upvotes: 0

Raghav Kukreti
Raghav Kukreti

Reputation: 590

If you want your events driven service managed use AWS Lambda, you just provide the code in the required language, and Amazon AWS does the rest. If you want to customise for your own needs and use whatever coding language you prefer Amazon EC2 offers flexibility and a whole range of EC2 Instance types to choose from, in conjunction with Elastic Beanstalk services for deploying onto Amazon EC2.

AWS Lambda is a service for running code in response to events, such as changes to data in an Amazon S3 bucket and Amazon DynamoDB tables, or as compute services to run your code in response to HTTP requests using Amazon API gateway or API calls made by using AWS SDKs. This is an ideal computing platform for applications when running within the standard runtime environment.

Lambda should be your best bet.

Upvotes: 0

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