On their stroll along the path to eternal revenue, Amazon and Google have cut across the other's path more than once. This tells the tale of one such encounter.
It is not a straightforward task to find the best way to host a website, and that's simply because of the myriad offers provided by different vendors. Looking at the two titans, we have several options availing themselves, from GCS and AWS S3 buckets to App Engine (AE) and Elastic Beanstalk (EB). The last two are an interesting pair and as such, take to the ring in this speel.
Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end, then stop.
And so we make landfall on EB's page, which shows us languages, cost and partners, before sending us off to tutorial-purgatory (it's purported that hell is forever, whereas the levels here are 10 minutes each).
AE follows the same trend, except for the tutorials sprinkled generously at the end of the landing, in hopes of tripping one or two developers, we can only assume.
EB takes this small victory since they take steps to allay a first-timer's fears of how much time is needed to become conversant with the platform. Either that or the 10-minute link is a flame, and we are moths.
Amazon came out on top in the first flurry of claws. Is there a card up Google's metaphorical feathers?
Abstraction helps us stay sane. For if we needed to constantly be aware of how the 1s and 0s are combined to form this, there would be no processing power left in our heads to handle if else scenarios in relationships. Both entities know this, so they make sure to strike a balance between what one would like to do for oneself, and what one would want to invoke with a single command.
Jumping straight into the trenches, AE requires an app.yaml file in whichever project you'd like deployed, along with the commands below to have a scaleable backend;
$ gcloud app create
$ gcloud app deploy app.yaml --project <project_id>
EB, on the other hand, takes a more robust approach in showing you how to have an application running. eb create is the single command needed to have your scaleable backend up and running, and the "robust" part is the exhibit of the prompts that come up on using the command.
The next salvo of claws had dealt equal damage to both. Who will have the upper wing in this final round?
For this next comparison, we'll dip our toes into the pricing. To get a feel for which platform has the better offer for a side-project one hopes may take off someday, but presently does not attract that much traffic.
Both EB and AE offer free tiers if you're just joining the fray. However, if you've been with either for at least a year, the side project will rack up some costs for EB, seeing as EC2 instances and S3 buckets are deployed to host the project. For AE, a couple of free hours a day are offered, as well as the option to have nothing deployed if there's no traffic coming in.
A draw, it looks like. Will we see a winner the next time the two are brought together? Let's find out in Episode 3: --title pending--...
PS: We make a few assumptions during deployment;
- Command Line Interfaces and authorizations have been installed and allowed.
- A single app is to be deployed to a fresh AE or EB