Differentiating the use of AWS EC2 and Lambda
Introduction
Amazon Web Services offers a wide range of services in the field of cloud computing, and among them, EC2 and Lambda play particularly important roles. In this context, we will provide detailed explanations about the characteristics of EC2 and Lambda respectively.
With the evolution of cloud computing, EC2 and Lambda have different advantages and use cases, making it important to understand the choices correctly. Now, let’s take a look at the key considerations for distinguishing between the usage of EC2 and Lambda.
Service overview
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a cloud-based virtual server service provided by Amazon Web Services. By using EC2, users can easily scale virtual computing resources according to demand.
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service provided by Amazon Web Services. With Lambda, you can execute code without the need to configure or manage servers. Lambda is based on an event-driven architecture and automatically executes code when specific events occur.
Features
(1) Execution Method:
Lambda: Lambda provides serverless computing and executes code in an event-driven manner. Code is automatically executed based on specific triggers.
EC2: EC2 offers virtual servers, where users manually launch instances to run applications or tasks.
(2) Management Necessity:
Lambda: Lambda is serverless, eliminating the need to worry about server configuration, management, and scaling.
EC2: With EC2, users are responsible for configuring, managing, and maintaining instances.
(3) Execution Time:
Lambda: The execution time of Lambda functions is limited to a maximum of 15 minutes.
EC2: EC2 instances can run for the required duration and continue running until they are stopped.
(4) Cost:
Lambda: Lambda is billed based on the actual executed code.
EC2: EC2 is billed based on the instance’s uptime and the resources utilized.
(5) Language Support:
Lambda: Multiple programming languages are supported with Lambda.
EC2: While EC2 also supports various programming languages, manual configuration on the instance is required.
Conclusion
In this discussion, we provided a detailed explanation about differentiating between the use of AWS EC2 and Lambda. EC2 offers virtual servers for flexible hosting of applications and services, while Lambda efficiently executes event-driven processes and scheduled tasks through serverless computing.
Considering factors such as project or application requirements, scaling needs, and budget constraints is crucial to determine whether EC2 or Lambda is the optimal choice. By selecting the appropriate service, you can enhance cost efficiency and optimize application performance and availability.
