Do you know about the AWS App Runner service?
A relatively new service in the AWS serverless deployment family, it’s a game changer for running containerized services without a server.
The official AWS page introduces App Runner as
AWS App Runner is a fully managed container application that lets you build, deploy, and run containerized web applications and API services without prior infrastructure or container experience.
To further understand the App Runner’s services, key offerings, workflow, configuration, and pricing model we will dig a little deeper and look into the pros and cons of using this service.
Why App Runner?
Managing infrastructure, which includes but is not limited to tasks such as configuring SSL certificates, encrypting traffic, configuring VPC security groups, setting up message queues, and implementing autoscaling can make it appear overwhelming. A SaaS service like App Runner is a possible solution to simplify managing infrastructure.
Features of App Runner
A few features of the App Runner are
- Efficient: auto build and deployment from code repositories and ECR.
- Scalability & load balancing: automatically scale up and scale down the service based on the ingress traffic.
- Security: ease of setting up and configuring SSL certificates.
- Monitoring and logging: well integrated with AWS cloud watch.
Workflow
The workflow of the AWS App Runner is simple and straightforward, as shown in the picture
The above workflow can be summarized into three significant steps
- Add a source (git repo, ECR)
- Configure build and service settings (hardware configuration such as vCPUs, RAM, ports, autoscaling, etc)
- Deployment with a click of a button
Cons
A few cons of the App Runner service are
- App Runner supports the following hardware configuration. So, if your service needs more RAM/vCPU resources, consider looking at ECS or EC2.
| CPU | Memory Values |
| 1 vCPU | 2GB |
| 1 vCPU | 3GB |
| 1 vCPU | 4GB |
| 2 vCPU | 4GB |
- It does not support GPUs.
- The service is only available in the following regions: Europe (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon). However, this may change in the future.
Pricing Model
The pricing model is based on the compute and memory resources that our active/provisioned container instance is using.
The features included in the pricing model are
- Provisioned container instances
- Active container instances
- Automatic deployments
- Build fee
- Data transfer rates
The complete pricing list can be found here.
Get in touch with us!
The AWS App Runner service is scalable, secure, and easy to set up. If you need further help in the design, development, and deployment of Serverless Architectures on AWS, please contact us at www.rayn.group and we would be happy to set up a consultation call with one of our AWS experts.
