Amazon Web Services’ 50.1% market share is the largest among the top 10 cloud providers. With a 31% customer growth rate, AWS also leads in adoption compared to global cloud providers like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
As a leader in the cloud industry, AWS offers a wide range of compute services to address different needs, from small startups to large enterprises. This variety is a key strength but can also make it harder to decide which service is the best fit for your needs.
In this post, we’ll explore the core AWS compute services, highlight their unique capabilities, and help you decide which services align best with your technical and business goals. Read on!
What are AWS Compute Services?
AWS compute services provide the infrastructure to run applications, process data, and support workloads in the cloud. They include virtual machines, containers, serverless computing, and high-performance computing solutions, designed for specific use cases like web hosting, big data processing, and machine learning. These services ensure scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency, offering tailored options for various workload requirements.
Benefits of AWS Compute Services
AWS compute services are tailorable to suit your workloads, delivering benefits like:
- Scalability: Dynamically scale resources up or down to meet demand with tools like AWS Auto Scaling, ensuring consistent performance and cost efficiency.
- Reliability: Enjoy high availability through multiple Availability Zones, while disaster recovery ensures data integrity and uptime.
- Global reach: Deploy applications closer to users with AWS’s global network of regions, reducing latency and meeting data residency requirements.
- Cost management: Optimize budgets with pay-as-you-go pricing, AWS Savings Plans, and other cost-effective options without compromising performance.
Categories of AWS Compute Services
AWS compute services are organized into distinct categories. Each category addresses unique technical and business needs and ranges from traditional virtual machines to edge computing solutions.
Understanding these categories helps you choose the right services to meet your workloads’ specific demands:
Instances (virtual machines)
Virtual Machines (VMs) are the foundational building blocks of cloud computing, providing virtualized computing power that can be scaled up or down as needed. The AWS cloud offers several types of VMs, each designed to handle different workloads and provide flexibility in configuration, security, and storage service.
AWS VMs are particularly useful for hosting web applications, running large-scale data analytics, and supporting enterprise applications like SAP or Oracle.
Containers
Containers are lightweight software packages that bundle an application’s code along with all the libraries, dependencies, and configuration files it needs to run. This self-contained format ensures the application can run consistently across different environments, eliminating the need for multiple formats to support platforms like Windows, Linux, or macOS.
By packaging everything an application requires into a single unit, containers simplify deployment, portability, and scalability. Containers are especially suited for modern software practices like microservices architectures, CI/CD pipelines, and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) applications.
Examples of AWS container services:
- Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service): A fully managed orchestration service for Docker containers, simplifying the deployment and management of containerized workloads.
- Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service): A managed Kubernetes service that supports deploying, scaling, and managing applications in Kubernetes.
- AWS Fargate: A serverless compute engine for containers that eliminates the need to manage servers or clusters, allowing you to focus on your applications.
Serverless
Serverless computing lets you build and run applications without provisioning or managing infrastructure. AWS serverless services handle all the backend management, allowing you to focus solely on writing and deploying code. These services automatically scale to meet demand, making them an ideal choice for event-driven workloads and applications with unpredictable traffic patterns.
Key benefits of serverless computing include reduced operational complexity, automatic scaling and fault tolerance, and cost-effectiveness, as you only pay for the compute time you use. We’ll take a look at AWS Lambda later on in this post, which is AWS’ premier serverless computing service, to explore how it simplifies the development of modern applications.
Edge and hybrid
Edge and hybrid computing bring AWS capabilities closer to where data is generated or consumed, bridging the gap between the cloud and on-premises infrastructure. These services reduce latency, improve application performance, and support workloads that require seamless integration between cloud and local environments.
Edge and hybrid services are valuable for low-latency applications, such as gaming or IoT, data residency and compliance requirements, and integrating on-premises infrastructure with the cloud.
Cost and capacity management
AWS provides several cost management tools and plans, such as Savings Plans or Reserved Instances, which offer significant savings over On-Demand pricing in exchange for a commitment to a defined usage for a one- or three-year period.
These plans help you manage and optimize costs without sacrificing performance. Each category supports a broad spectrum of industry demands and integrates with other AWS services, ensuring you can build and scale applications with confidence.
Compare AWS compute services and identify the right solution that aligns with your business strategies.
Popular Examples of AWS Compute Services
AWS compute services cater to varying needs. Options like managed container orchestration, serverless computing, and virtual servers ensure there’s a suitable solution for your specific workload.
Here’s a look at the most popular AWS Compute services:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a scalable virtual server solution designed to provide flexible compute capacity in the cloud. EC2 lets you launch virtual machines, known as instances, in seconds, making it ideal for applications that require varying levels of compute power. You can select from a wide array of instance types optimized for CPU, memory, storage, or compute needs.
Common use cases include hosting web applications, big data processing, running development and test environments, and supporting enterprise-grade workloads like SAP.
Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
AWS ECS provides a container management service that supports Docker containers and allows you to easily run applications on a managed cluster of EC2 virtual machines. Use ECS for efficient container images, orchestration, upgrades, and scaling requirements.
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
AWS EKS handles the heavy lifting of Kubernetes infrastructure management, including provisioning and managing the control plane, ensuring high availability, and applying security patches.
EKS also integrates seamlessly with AWS services like IAM, CloudWatch, and Auto Scaling to enhance application performance and security. It supports both hybrid and cloud-native environments, so you can run workloads consistently on AWS or on-premises.
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that runs your code in response to events like changes in data, HTTP requests, or operating-system-level triggers. Lambda eliminates the need to manage servers by automatically provisioning and scaling infrastructure to handle code execution based on demand.
Lambda is particularly beneficial for event-driven applications, real-time data processing, and back-end services for mobile or IoT apps. The pay-per-use pricing model ensures you only pay for the compute time used, making Lambda a cost-effective option for unpredictable workloads.
Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is a simplified cloud platform designed for developers and small businesses that need to quickly launch and manage projects with minimal complexity. You get pre-configured virtual private servers (VPS), along with easy-to-use features like managed databases, elastic load balancing, and storage.
Lightsail is ideal for projects like small-scale websites, blogs, e-commerce stores, and test environments. Thanks to its user-friendly interface and predictable pricing, it’s also an excellent choice for users who are new to the cloud or require a straightforward solution for their workloads.
AWS Batch
AWS Batch is ideal for efficient batch processing at scale. This service manages the execution of batch jobs, as well as the necessary compute environments, optimizing resource allocation and reducing the need to manually manage infrastructure.
AWS Fargate
With AWS Fargate, you can run containers without managing servers or clusters. It allows you to focus on building and deploying applications, while Fargate provisions, scales, and manages the container infrastructure.
AWS Outposts
AWS Outposts extend AWS infrastructure and services to on-premises environments, providing a seamless hybrid cloud experience. With Outposts, you can run services like EC2, Amazon S3, and RDS in your own data center, enabling low-latency access to local resources while maintaining consistent operations across the cloud and on-premises.
Key Considerations for Choosing the Right AWS Compute Service
AWS offers a wide range of compute services, so it can be challenging to determine the best solutions for your needs. But by understanding these key considerations, you’ll be able to make better decisions that optimize cost, performance, and efficiency for your applications.
Matching service to workload requirements
Different workloads require different compute solutions. The first step is to define the type of workload your application supports and then choose a service that aligns with those needs. Consider these common scenarios:
- Batch Processing: If your workload involves large-scale, time-intensive tasks like data transformation or scientific simulations, AWS Batch is ideal as it automates resource provisioning and scaling.
- Always-On Applications: For workloads requiring continuous uptime, such as enterprise systems or e-commerce platforms, Amazon EC2 provides customizable and reliable virtual servers.
- Event-Driven Applications: Applications that respond to specific triggers, such as database updates or API calls, benefit from AWS Lambda, which scales automatically with demand.
By identifying the nature of your workload, you can ensure your compute service choice is aligned with your operational goals.
Performance demands
The performance of your application is determined by factors like processing power, memory, and storage. To meet these demands, evaluate your compute options based on the following:
- High-Compute Workloads: Applications like machine learning or video rendering benefit from Amazon EC2 compute-optimized instances or GPUs.
- Low-Latency Storage: Workloads requiring high-speed storage, such as transactional databases, pair well with EC2 instances that support dedicated storage options.
- Lightweight Processing: For smaller, highly distributed tasks, AWS Lambda provides a cost-efficient, serverless environment optimized for lightweight event processing.
Scalability
Scalability is critical for applications with fluctuating or unpredictable demand. AWS compute services offer flexibility to scale resources dynamically:
- Traffic spikes: EC2 Auto Scaling enables automatic resource adjustments to handle traffic fluctuations.
- Unpredictable workloads: Serverless options like AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate scale automatically without manual intervention, making them ideal for workloads with unpredictable patterns.
- Microservices Architectures: Container-based applications can benefit from the horizontal scaling capabilities of Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.
Management and operational overhead
The level of control and management effort required can influence your choice of compute service:
- Flexibility: Amazon EC2 provides full control over instances, from OS updates to network configurations, delivering maximum flexibility, but at the expense of additional management effort.
- Serverless: AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate eliminate the need to manage servers or infrastructure, allowing you to focus solely on your application’s code and deployment.
- Balance: Amazon ECS and EKS provide a balance, offering managed orchestration while allowing some control over cluster configurations.
Cost Optimization
Cost-effectiveness is a key factor when choosing an AWS compute service, and AWS offers various pricing models to suit different budgets:
- On-Demand Instances: Provide flexibility but may cost more for long-term workloads
- Savings Plans or Reserved Instances: Provide significant discounts for predictable usage patterns
- Spot Instances: Offer up to 90% savings for workloads that can tolerate interruptions
- Serverless solutions: Charge only for the compute time the workload is active, making them ideal for intermittent workloads
Reliability and availability
Reliability and availability are essential for ensuring continuous operation, especially for critical applications. Here’s how each service stacks up:
- Amazon EC2: Supports high availability with multi-AZ deployments and fault-tolerant configurations
- AWS Lambda and AWS Fargate: Inherently fault-tolerant, distributing workloads across multiple availability zones
- AWS Outposts: Enable hybrid setups, ensuring reliability for applications requiring on-premises and cloud integration
Selecting a compute service that meets your availability requirements will help ensure consistent performance, even during unexpected disruptions.
Maximize Your AWS Return on Investment with ProsperOps
Understanding your AWS services is essential, but optimizing your cloud costs is just as critical. While native AWS tools are a great place to start your cloud cost optimization efforts, a specialized FinOps automation platform like ProsperOps can help you take your strategy to the next level.
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This hands-free approach to AWS cost optimization can save your team valuable time while ensuring automation continually optimizes your AWS discounts for maximum Effective Savings Rate (ESR).
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