Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Optimizing for cost and performance with AWS App Runner (CON209)

Summary

AWS App Runner is a fully managed service designed to run web applications and APIs in the AWS Cloud without the need to manage infrastructure.
App Runner provides agility, performance, and cost optimization by abstracting away the need to manage build and deployment pipelines, compute instances, container orchestration, load balancers, and auto-scaling.
It is built on top of Firecracker VMs for enhanced security and isolation and integrates with IAM roles for fine-grained access control.
App Runner supports both source code and container image deployments, with automatic deployments on code push, zero downtime deployments, and automatic rollbacks.
Observability is built-in, with logs and metrics available in CloudWatch, and App Runner supports auto-scaling based on traffic, with unique pricing that charges for CPU only when requests are being served.
A customer success story was shared about Cox Automotive Inc., which used App Runner to run machine learning models as APIs at scale, resulting in simplified operations, cost efficiency, and increased productivity for their data scientists.

App Runner is ideal for developers who want to focus on building applications rather than managing infrastructure, as it offers a high level of abstraction and automation.
The service is designed to handle bursty traffic patterns efficiently, scaling up and down based on demand, which can lead to significant cost savings.
Security is a core feature of App Runner, leveraging AWS's Firecracker technology for micro VMs and IAM for access control, ensuring that applications are secure by design.
The observability features of App Runner allow developers to monitor their applications without the need for additional logging and metrics collection tools.
App Runner's pricing model is unique and potentially cost-effective, as it charges for CPU usage only when requests are being served, and scales down to zero when there is no traffic.
The case study of Cox Automotive Inc. demonstrates the real-world benefits of using App Runner, particularly for organizations with complex, high-traffic applications that require rapid iteration and deployment.