When it comes to deploying web applications on the cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk is a popular choice for many developers. Elastic Beanstalk takes care of the infrastructure and platform configuration, allowing you to focus on your application code.
But have you ever wondered what web server Elastic Beanstalk uses under the hood? Let’s dive into it!
What is Elastic Beanstalk?
Elastic Beanstalk is a fully managed service provided by AWS that makes it easy to deploy and scale your applications. It supports various programming languages such as Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Go. By abstracting away the underlying infrastructure details, Elastic Beanstalk allows you to quickly deploy your applications without worrying about server management.
The Architecture of Elastic Beanstalk
Under the hood, Elastic Beanstalk uses Amazon EC2 instances to run your application code. EC2 stands for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. With Elastic Beanstalk, you can choose to use either Amazon Linux or Windows Server as your operating system.
Amazon Linux:
- Amazon Linux is a CentOS-based operating system optimized for AWS.
- It provides a secure and stable environment for running applications.
- Amazon Linux comes pre-configured with various software packages and tools required for web application development.
Windows Server:
- If you prefer Windows as your operating system, you can choose Windows Server with IIS (Internet Information Services).
- IIS is a web server created by Microsoft that supports various features like ASP.NET hosting, URL rewriting, security configurations, and more.
Load Balancing and Auto Scaling
One of the key benefits of using Elastic Beanstalk is its built-in support for load balancing and auto scaling. This ensures that your application can handle traffic efficiently and scales automatically based on demand.
Elastic Beanstalk utilizes Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), another AWS service, to distribute incoming traffic across multiple instances. ELB automatically detects unhealthy instances and redirects traffic to healthy ones, improving the availability and fault tolerance of your application.
Auto Scaling, another feature provided by Elastic Beanstalk, allows you to define scaling rules based on metrics such as CPU utilization or request count. When your application exceeds these thresholds, additional instances are automatically launched to handle the increased load.
In Conclusion
So, to answer the question – “What web server does Elastic Beanstalk use?” – it depends on your choice of operating system.
For Amazon Linux, it uses the Apache HTTP Server by default. And for Windows Server, it uses IIS as the web server.
Elastic Beanstalk takes care of all the underlying infrastructure complexities, allowing you to focus on developing your applications. With its support for load balancing and auto scaling, Elastic Beanstalk provides a scalable and reliable environment for deploying your web applications on AWS.
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, Elastic Beanstalk simplifies the deployment process and enables you to take full advantage of cloud computing without getting overwhelmed by server management tasks.