Frontend Deployment on AWS with Amazon S3-Cloudfront, AWS Amplify and Amazon EC2

Overview

For optimum website speed and performance directly affecting user experience, front-end deployment on AWS is a crucial factor. This post examines three front-end application deployment options on AWS: Amazon S3-CloudFront, AWS Amplify, and Amazon EC2. Each technique is assessed Based on several variables, including cost, the components used, the deployment process, and security considerations.

Introduction

The speed of a website is a key factor in today’s digital environment because our front-end applications are crucial in determining how users perceive our digital offerings.
We’ll utilize important benchmarks to compare three AWS deployment strategies (Amazon S3-CloudFront, AWS Amplify, and Amazon EC2):

• Cost: Examining CapEx and OpEx, considering AWS service fees and maintenance costs.
• Components: Listing the AWS services that each deployment plan makes use of.
• Deployment: Counting the actions and procedures needed to deploy a front-end application.
• Security: Investigate the security configurations and options available for each deployment type.

Our decision on the best deployment strategy is based on these benchmarks, which optimize performance, cost, and security for better user experiences.

Amazon S3-Cloudfront deployment

For huge datasets, including pictures, videos, and documents, Amazon S3 delivers scalable and dependable object storage. A content delivery network (CDN) called Amazon CloudFront caches items, including photos, CSS, and JavaScript, to speed up applications and enable effective video streaming. Amazon CloudFront uses AWS’s extensive global network presence to distribute content quickly from any originating location. Amazon S3-CloudFront Deployment improves the scalability, security, and performance of web applications by storing static content in Amazon S3 and providing users with quick, low-latency access via Amazon CloudFront’s CDN.

1. Cost: Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront, two serverless services, are cost-effective, with the main charges coming from Egress-Network-Responses as the consequence of high traffic. While the app is being developed and deployed, a vital pipeline monitors CloudFront invalidation, ensures real-time Amazon CloudFront updates, and effectively manages OpEx.
2. Components: Even if your static site is in the eu-west-1 region or any other AWS region, you must generate your Amazon CloudFront certificate from the us-east-1 region when using Amazon S3-Cloudfront. As a result, you have a resource that must be maintained in different AWS regions, further complicating matters.
3. Deployment: Two significant activities must be carried out to deploy using this architecture properly:

• The front-end application is developed to replace all current files in Amazon S3, and its output is transferred into Amazon
• Invalidating the Amazon Cloudfront distribution will allow Amazon Cloudfront to erase its cache and fetch new material from S3.

4. Security: When utilizing Amazon Cloudfront-S3 for front-end deployments, various levels of protection must be stated.

• Public read-write access must not be permitted to the S3 bucket.
• Origin Access Identity or Origin Access Control (OAI/OAC) must be implemented on CloudFront to safely grab the file contents from Amazon S3.
• By implementing crucial security headers, including CSRF, XSS, CSP, HSTS, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Referrer-Policy, Lambda@Edge improves security for front-end web applications. AWS Lambda function connected to Amazon CloudFront begins to operate based on Amazon CloudFront events.

AWS Amplify Deployment

It accommodates various technologies, including static site generators like VuePress, and JavaScript frameworks like Angular, Vue.js, ReactJS.

• Cost: Some of these characteristics also make AWS Amplify a serverless service. Like the Amazon S3-CloudFront configuration, an application can be hosted on Amplify for $0/month, depending on how much traffic it receives. The cost for AWS Amplify is shown in the following diagram.

Source: AWS

Components: AWS Amplify consists of several services that have been compressed into one. These include CDN, Amazon S3 for website content storage, Amazon CloudFront for caching, and CodePipeline /CodeDeploy for continuous integration and continuous deployment. AWS Amplify helps to conduct cache invalidation for things it has already cached.

Deployment:

• Configuring AWS Amplify offers a range of picks. A GitHub repository can be linked to the AWS Amplify application for one of the simplest ways to deploy the AWS Amplify.
• The JavaScript framework that is used will be automatically detected by Amplify, which will then generate the CodeBuild script for creating and setting up the application in AWS Amplify. This setup must be done once.

Security: Frontend security is frequently disregarded, but AWS Amplify has simplified and improved it. Without AWS Lambda@Edge, all the security measures listed in the Amazon S3-Cloudfront architecture may be implemented directly in AWS Amplify. For web applications deployed in AWS Amplify, the Custom Headers functionality of AWS Amplify is used to configure header security. It enables you to add any security header required to increase the server and application’s security.

Amazon EC2 deployment

Before serverless and cloud computing gained popularity, this was the standard way to deploy websites and front-end programs. Another term for a virtual machine in AWS is Amazon EC2. There are several ways to deploy a frontend application onto Amazon EC2. More components will be required for high availability and scalability in this design, which are not required in a simple setup.

1. Cost: AWS service components determine the setup’s cost. A basic tnano instance is $4.16/month or $0.0056/hour. Frontend apps work best on larger instances, such as t3.medium (0.0456/hr, $33.29/month). The cost of a load balancer ($16–$18/month) has increased.
2. Components: A web server setup within an Amazon EC2 Instance, such as Nginx or Apache, is a prerequisite for an Amazon EC2 front-end deployment. Additional AWS services like a load balancer, launch configuration, and autoscaling group are necessary for high availability and scalability.
3. Deployments: Writing a pipeline that can accomplish the same task is an alternative to manually loading the built file into the Amazon EC2 instance and launching it. The pipeline will start/restart the webserver to apply new modifications and connect to an Amazon EC2 instance (SSH for Linux, RDP for Windows). It will copy the build files there.
4. Security: Layers of security are added by Amazon EC2 deployment:

• Via Security Group and NACL, restrict public access to ports (such as 22, 3389).
• Make sure instances running in private subnets don’t have public IP addresses.
• Automated deployment should be chosen over manual adjustments.
• Set up header security on the web server.

Conclusion

We have looked at several front-end application deployment strategies on AWS. The most effective action strategy is to start with what you know and progressively transition to architectures with lower OpEX and higher Performance Efficiency and Operational Excellence, such that managing infrastructure may take a back seat to writing code.

Drop a query if you have any questions regarding Frontend Deployment on AWS and we will get back to you quickly.

About CloudThat

CloudThat is an official AWS (Amazon Web Services) Advanced Consulting Partner and Training partner, AWS Migration Partner, AWS Data and Analytics Partner, AWS DevOps Competency Partner, Amazon QuickSight Service Delivery Partner, AWS EKS Service Delivery Partner, and Microsoft Gold Partner, helping people develop knowledge of the cloud and help their businesses aim for higher goals using best-in-industry cloud computing practices and expertise. We are on a mission to build a robust cloud computing ecosystem by disseminating knowledge on technological intricacies within the cloud space. Our blogs, webinars, case studies, and white papers enable all the stakeholders in the cloud computing sphere.

To get started, go through our Consultancy page and Managed Services Package, CloudThat’s offerings.