Serverless vs Managed Servers Choosing the Right AWS Cloud Computing Service for Your Application

Marve Ike
3 min readOct 10, 2023

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As cloud computing becomes more prevalent in modern application development, businesses searching for suitable cloud solutions have to make critical decisions on their infrastructure design. One of the most significant decisions involved in this process is selecting the right cloud service to use for your application. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a wide range of cloud computing services, including serverless services and managed servers, and understanding when to use each service type is essential for efficient cloud architecture design. Here’s everything you need to know about AWS serverless services and managed servers.

Serverless Services:

Serverless computing is a cloud computing model where developers don’t have to provision or manage servers. Instead, the focus is on writing code to build applications, and the cloud provider handles the underlying infrastructure. AWS offers several serverless services that are ideal for various use cases:

AWS Lambda:

Lambda allows code to run in response to events without managing servers or infrastructure.
It’s cost-effective, efficient, and highly scalable as you only pay for the compute time required.
Amazon API Gateway:

A fully managed service for deploying, creating, and managing APIs.
It integrates seamlessly with AWS Lambda, enabling you to build serverless APIs quickly.
Amazon S3:

Host static websites or web assets in Amazon S3 without using traditional web servers.
Amazon DynamoDB:

Managed NoSQL database service, ideal for serverless applications for data storage.
Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS:

Messaging and queuing service used in building event-driven and decoupled applications.
AWS Step Functions:

Serverless workflow service used to coordinate multiple AWS services for building complex applications.
AWS App Runner:

Simplifies deployment of containerized applications and handles the underlying infrastructure, scaling, and load balancing.
AWS Fargate:

Abstracts away the need to manage EC2 instances for container workloads. You specify your container requirements, and AWS manages the infrastructure.

Managed Servers:

Managed servers, unlike serverless services, require provisioning and managing virtual machines or containers for running applications. AWS provides a collection of services for managing servers:

Amazon EC2:

Launch and manage virtual machines in the cloud, providing full control over the OS and application stack.
It’s suitable for applications that require a high degree of customization.
Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS:

Used for managing containerized applications at scale. ECS is ideal for Docker containers, while EKS is for Kubernetes orchestration.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk:

Platform as a Service (PaaS), which abstracts the underlying infrastructure and simplifies the deployment of web applications and APIs
AWS OpsWorks:

Offers configuration management and application deployment services for EC2 instances — a perfect service for managing complex applications.

Choosing Between Serverless and Managed Servers:

To make the right choice between serverless and managed servers, businesses must consider key application factors like scalability, cost-effectiveness, customization needs, and your development team’s familiarity with each service. Serverless services such as AWS Lambda and Amazon API Gateway are suitable for stateless, event-driven tasks. In contrast, managed servers such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon ECS are better for unique customization requirements, legacy applications or more specialized data requirements. However, many businesses choose to combine both serverless and managed services in a mix-and-match approach to improving efficiencies and scalability.

In conclusion, AWS offers a range of cloud computing services suitable for your application’s needs. Whether serverless or managed servers is suitable for your application, choosing the right service type tailored towards your needs is highly relevant to optimize performance, lower cost, and maximize your benefits.

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Marve Ike

Software engineer, writer & tech enthusiast. Co-founder of Brand Deals Hub. Passionate about simplifying complex tech topics & inspiring others. Let's connect!