Compute
Selecting compute resources that meet your requirements, performance needs, and provide great efficiency of cost and effort will permit you to accomplish more with the same number of resources. When evaluating compute options, be aware of your requirements for workload performance and cost requirements and use this to make informed decisions.
In AWS, compute is available in three forms: instances, containers, and functions:
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Instances are virtualized servers, permitting you to change their capabilities with a button or an API call. Because resource decisions in the cloud aren’t fixed, you can experiment with different server types. At AWS, these virtual server instances come in different families and sizes, and they offer a wide variety of capabilities, including solid-state drives (SSDs) and graphics processing units (GPUs).
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Containers are a method of operating system virtualization that permit you to run an application and its dependencies in resource-isolated processes. AWS Fargate is serverless compute for containers or Amazon EC2 can be used if you need control over the installation, configuration, and management of your compute environment. You can also choose from multiple container orchestration platforms: Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
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Functions abstract the run environment from the code you want to apply. For example, AWS Lambda permits you to run code without running an instance.
The following question focuses on these considerations for performance efficiency.
| PERF 2: How do you select your compute solution? |
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| The more efficient compute solution for a workload varies based on application design, usage patterns, and configuration settings. Architectures can use different compute solutions for various components and turn on different features to improve performance. Selecting the wrong compute solution for an architecture can lead to lower performance efficiency. |
When architecting your use of compute you should take advantage of the elasticity mechanisms available to verify you have sufficient capacity to sustain performance as demand changes.
