73. What is AWS Application Composer?

03/24/23 • 27 min

In this episode, we're going to be talking about AWS Application Composer - a FREE service that promises to help you build serverless applications with ease. With its simple drag-and-drop interface, it's supposed to make Infrastructure as Code a breeze. But the real question is - does it live up to the hype? We know a lot of you are probably struggling with building applications using CloudFormation. It's a real pain, right? So, we decided to take Application Composer for a spin and see if it's worth adding to your toolkit or giving it a hard pass. After covering a generic overview of the service, how it works, and the main concepts, we discuss our experience in creating a new simple serverless application from scratch only using API Gateway, Lambda, and S3. Then we cover what it looks like to import an existing project (a slightly more complicated one) into Application Composer and find out what works and what doesn't. We conclude by discussing some other things that didn't work as expected and by providing our general recommendation on whether you should be using this service today.

💰 SPONSORS 💰

AWS Bites is sponsored by ⁠fourTheorem⁠, an AWS Consulting Partner offering training, cloud migration, and modern application architecture.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

⁠Web platform filesystem Access API
The current status of cross-browser support for the File System Access API
Our first Application Composer demo source code
Earthquake notifier serverless project
Our previous episode on Fargate and how to optimize cost for it

You can listen to AWS Bites wherever you get your podcasts:

💰 SPONSORS 💰

AWS Bites is sponsored by ⁠fourTheorem⁠, an AWS Consulting Partner offering training, cloud migration, and modern application architecture.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

⁠Web platform filesystem Access API
The current status of cross-browser support for the File System Access API
Our first Application Composer demo source code
Earthquake notifier serverless project
Our previous episode on Fargate and how to optimize cost for it

You can listen to AWS Bites wherever you get your podcasts:

Previous Episode

72. How do you save cost with ECS?

AWS ECS is a powerful service that allows you to run containerized applications at scale. It's suitable for a variety of use cases, including web applications, microservices, and background processing.

In this episode, we'll provide an introduction to the main concepts of ECS and then dive into cost-optimization strategies. We'll explore the different options for running containers on ECS, including EC2, Fargate, and ECS Anywhere.

We'll discuss various opportunities for saving money, such as using Arm (Graviton) instances, Spot instances, Compute Savings Plans, and RIs or EC2 Saving Plans.

Finally, we'll cover how to set up ECS to use Spot instances, including how to create capacity providers and specify a capacity provider strategy. We'll also discuss whether it's always best to use EC2 instead of Fargate for cost optimization and recommend some tools that can help you find other opportunities to save on container costs.

💰 SPONSORS 💰

AWS Bites is sponsored by fourTheorem, an AWS Consulting Partner offering training, cloud migration, and modern application architecture.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

You can listen to AWS Bites wherever you get your podcasts:

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Next Episode

74. Function URLs vs API Gateway

How can you use a Lambda to respond to an HTTP request? There are more ways than ever to do it. We have API Gateway REST APIs, Lambda support for Application Load Balancer, and now Function URLs. But which one should you use, and when? In this episode of AWS Bites podcast, we will give you a quick and simple guide to picking the best way to build APIs with Lambda. In this video, we're going to pitch Function URLs against API Gateway in a battle for the ages! Function URLs offer a simple and quick way to get a public URL to invoke a Lambda function, with fewer configuration options and cheaper pricing. They are suitable for private webhooks, simple backend functions, and machine learning inference backend. However, they lack authorization and DDoS protection, making them unsuitable for public webhooks. On the other hand, API Gateway offers more features and control, making it suitable for public APIs. API Gateway comes in two flavors: REST and HTTP with some subtle differences. Finally, we will also cover Application Load balancer and explore when and why it can be a convenient alternative to both Function URLs and API Gateway.

💰 SPONSORS 💰

AWS Bites is sponsored by ⁠⁠fourTheorem⁠⁠, an AWS Consulting Partner offering training, cloud migration, and modern application architecture.

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources: