Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Your first container in the cloud (CON207)

Summary

Omar Lari, a principal product manager at AWS, introduced AWS App Runner and Elastic Beanstalk, focusing on App Runner.
App Runner is designed to simplify operations and provide an easy start for web applications on AWS.
The service abstracts away infrastructure complexities, offering a simple deployment model for containers or source code.
App Runner provides best practices, auto-scaling, and integration with the AWS ecosystem without managing EC2 instances, clusters, or load balancers.
The service supports a consumption-based model, scaling up and down as needed, and charges for CPU and memory usage.
Omar demonstrated deploying an application using App Runner, showcasing the ease of setting up a service and the automatic handling of scaling and endpoint creation.
Miller Fanning from Cox Auto shared their journey from using ECS on Fargate to adopting App Runner for their data science workloads.
App Runner's benefits include handling burst traffic efficiently, cost savings by not over-provisioning, and ease of integration with other AWS services like API Gateway.
Some limitations of App Runner were discussed, such as the need for CLI calls in CI/CD processes, limited CPU and memory configurations, and potential cost increases for sustained high traffic.
The roadmap for App Runner includes new features and improvements, with a call for community feedback to guide development.

App Runner is particularly beneficial for teams looking for a simple and quick way to deploy web applications and APIs without deep infrastructure knowledge.
The service is suitable for both small-scale experiments and high-volume production applications due to its elastic scaling and cost model.
Integration with the broader AWS ecosystem allows for leveraging services like RDS, DynamoDB, and ACM, enhancing the capabilities of applications deployed via App Runner.
The real-world use case from Cox Auto illustrates that App Runner can be a viable alternative to ECS on Fargate for certain workloads, especially those with unpredictable traffic patterns.
The feedback from Cox Auto highlights the importance of community input in shaping the future of AWS services, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of customers.
The roadmap for App Runner suggests a commitment to continuous improvement and responsiveness to customer needs, with a focus on expanding capabilities and addressing current limitations.