AWS Lambda vs Elastic Beanstalk

Question

Im new to aws.

I am going to develop a REST full app which is going host on aws.

I decided to use

• Amazon S3 for static contents
• Amazon Cognito User Pool for Authentication
• Amazon DynamoDB as db

I am confused on where my app is going to be hosted. I have 2 ideas for that.

1. AWS Lambda Function + api gateway

Can I implement entire app on it ?

2. Elastic Beanstalk

Can i integrate all the above aws services with it ? (Backend on .net core web api 2.0)

Please guid me

Answer 1

Since you might not be interested in managing the underlying system, you should opt for AWS Lambda + API Gateway.

Answer 2

As the experience of working with cloud, after 1y 6m I can give a proper answer for my own question.

Yes. There is a possibility to use API Gateway + Lambda for the entire app as the back end. But you have to manage your most of the app logic from the front end. On there you have to get a risk because the source code can be viewed by the public.

Keeping your all business logic in the client code is not a good practice. And keeping all the logic in the Lambda also not easy or cost effective. The reason is when you making a real world app, you will need thousands of functions. To do one task, you will have to call many functions (Then its a function run time). So it will be very expensive.

Best solution is hosting the backend on Elastic Beanstalk and front end on S3. If you have any heavy task ? then you can make Lambda functions for that.

Lambda is best for CPU bounded functions. But not to have all the application logic on it.