AWS Announces General Availability of AWS App Runner

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) announced AWS App Runner, a fully managed container application service that makes it easier and faster for customers to build, deploy, and run containerized web applications and APIs with just a few clicks. AWS App Runner handles all of the operational aspects of high-performance applications and APIs, including provisioning, scaling, and managing the container orchestrators, load balancers, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, as well as allowing customers to run containers without having to think about servers or clusters at all. Customers simply provide their source code, container image, or deployment pipeline and AWS App Runner builds and deploys the web application or API, load balances network traffic, scales capacity up or down based on demand, monitors application health, and encrypts traffic by default. With AWS App Runner, customers can take advantage, in a matter of minutes, of the portability, efficiency, and cost savings of containers (even if they lack prior experience running and managing containers) and development teams can focus on their business applications instead of configuring services and managing infrastructure. There are no upfront commitments or fees to use AWS App Runner, and customers pay only for the compute and memory resources used by their application. To get started, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/apprunner

Web applications and APIs power the essential elements of customers’ businesses, including end user-facing websites and backend services that process important business logic. Because of the business-critical nature of customers’ applications and APIs, AWS provides customers with a wide choice of powerful tools for full control over the deployment and operation of their applications, including the ability to scale the underlying infrastructure and load balance and encrypt network traffic. However, some customers don’t require such a fine degree of control and want to eliminate the added time and operational complexity that comes with configuring and integrating every underlying infrastructure service. While AWS Fargate has made it much easier for customers to deploy and run containerized applications without having to manage compute clusters or capacity, some customers have asked for a fully managed service to streamline their entire container environment. These customers want to simply point to their existing code or container repository and have their applications and APIs run and scale automatically in the cloud. They want a fully managed service that handles all of the tasks associated with running containerized applications like building and configuring container orchestrators, load balancers, and CI/CD pipelines, as well as ensuring consistent application and API response times by reducing latency and eliminating cold starts-even when their development teams lack prior experience deploying and managing containers or infrastructure.

AWS App Runner streamlines a customer’s entire container environment by providing the easiest and fastest way to build, deploy, and run modern containerized web applications and APIs on AWS. Customers can launch their web application or API by connecting AWS App Runner to their source code or container image and selecting “deploy” from the AWS App Runner console. The underlying compute is automatically deployed, scaled, and managed leveraging AWS Fargate, the serverless compute engine that powers hundreds of millions of containers on AWS in a secure environment-thereby eliminating the need for customers to choose instances and scale cluster capacity. AWS App Runner is built with AWS operational and configuration best practices, including automated safe deployments (which monitor and test a new application environment before live traffic is routed to it to minimize interruptions caused by changing application versions) and health checks. Additionally, AWS App Runner load balances traffic based on incoming requests and automatically scales resources according to traffic patterns. There is no need to build and configure CI/CD pipelines with AWS App Runner because it automatically detects changes to code or a container image and deploys a new version of the application. Furthermore, by provisioning memory to keep idle applications warm, AWS App Runner eliminates cold starts and provides a consistent application response time. With AWS App Runner, network traffic is encrypted by default so customers do not have to set up or manage encryption keys. AWS App Runner makes it easier and faster for developers (even those with no prior containers or infrastructure experience) to build, deploy, and run modern containerized web applications with just a few clicks, using a single service.

“AWS offers the broadest range of container technology in the cloud, and more and more customers want to benefit from the portability, efficiency, and cost savings containers provide,” said Deepak Singh, VP, Compute Services, AWS. “However, customers have asked us to make it even easier to get their containerized web applications up and running quickly so they can see these benefits more quickly. We are proud to give these customers AWS App Runner, a fully managed service that makes it possible to go from source code or container image to a securely running web application with just a few clicks. With AWS App Runner, development teams-even those who have never used containers or managed infrastructure-can get a containerized application up and running in minutes, so these customers can instead focus on creating the applications that drive their businesses forward rather than managing the underlying hardware and software infrastructure.”

AWS App Runner is available today in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), US East (Ohio), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Europe (Ireland), with availability in additional regions coming soon.

Chick-fil-A, Inc. is a family owned and privately held restaurant company that serves freshly prepared food in more than 2,500 restaurants in 47 states, Washington, D.C., and Canada. “We are excited about the ability of AWS App Runner to deploy applications and APIs easily and securely,” said Alex Crane, Principal Architect, Chick-fil-A, Inc. “With AWS App Runner handling the scaling, security patching, and provisioning, our engineers can focus on bringing business features and requests to life, instead of worrying about the infrastructure. We look forward to the potential of benefiting from AWS App Runner’s simplified operations.”

ZS Associates is a global professional services firm that creates solutions for clients, particularly in the biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical technology spaces. “Our consulting teams at ZS Associates are dedicated to creating a positive client experience and delivering immediate and long-term impact. This includes getting our solutions to our clients faster,” said Bharath Sundararaj, Cloud Engineering Architect, ZS Associates. “We’re excited about AWS App Runner because it can help reduce the time it takes for us to deliver solutions to our customers. AWS App Runner abstracts away the need to manage and configure infrastructure, which means we can move rapidly from idea to production. Solutions like AWS App Runner help us accelerate our clients’ digital transformation.”

DeNA is one of Japan’s leading mobile gaming and internet services companies with major business areas in mobile games, sports, live streaming, healthcare, and automotive. “Our development teams want to focus on delivering a delightful customer experience. AWS App Runner can help us achieve this goal by removing the need to configure and manage infrastructure so that teams can prioritize building applications,” said Hiroyoshi Hochi, Senior Architect, DeNA. “With AWS App Runner, we don’t need to operate a separate deployment pipeline, container orchestrator, and load balancers. Our teams can benefit from AWS App Runner’s operational best practices informed by years of AWS operational excellence.”

Pioneer Square Labs is a Seattle-based startup studio and early-stage venture capital fund. “We’re excited about the increased development and deployment velocity AWS App Runner can help our portfolio companies achieve,” said Dave Peck, Engineer, Pioneer Square Labs. “Even for those teams that are new to containers, App Runner makes it easier than ever to get started. As our portfolio companies grow, AWS App Runner’s ability to seamlessly scale with traffic enables our teams to continue writing code and growing their business rather than focusing on re-architecting their applications.”

Datadog is the monitoring and analytics platform for developers, operations, and business users in the cloud age. “At Datadog, we’re focused on helping customers monitor their applications wherever and however they run,” said Ilan Rabinovitch, Senior Vice President, Product and Community, Datadog. “Using AWS App Runner, customers can now more easily deploy and scale their web applications from a container image or source code repository. With our new integration, customers can monitor their AWS App Runner metrics, logs, and events to troubleshoot issues faster, and determine the best resource and scaling settings for their app.”

MongoDB is a leading modern, general purpose database platform with more than 24,800 customers in over 100 countries. “With AWS App Runner, customers can enjoy a fast, simple, and secure way to go directly from code or container image to a running web application on AWS,” said Benjamin Cefalo, Director of Product Management, MongoDB. “We’re excited to integrate AWS App Runner with MongoDB Atlas so that developers can leverage the scalability and performance of our global, cloud-native database service for their AWS App Runner applications. Coupled with AWS App Runner’s fully managed load balancing, container orchestration, and compute capabilities, customers can increase their focus on delivering business value through their applications.”

HashiCorp provides cloud infrastructure automation software that enables organizations to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure for any application. “AWS App Runner makes it easier for developers to build and run containerized applications,” said Burzin Patel, VP of Global Partner Alliances, HashiCorp. “At HashiCorp, our foundational technologies solve the core challenges around infrastructure so that teams can focus on business-critical tasks. Integrating HashiCorp Terraform with AWS App Runner means developers have a faster, easier way to deploy production cloud applications, with less infrastructure to configure and manage.”

Sysdig is a SaaS-based platform built on open source that provides the security and visibility needed to confidently run containers, Kubernetes, and cloud services. “With AWS App Runner, infrastructure management is offloaded to AWS. This frees organizations to focus on developing and deploying their applications,” said Loris Degioanni, Chief Technology Officer and Founder, Sysdig. “At Sysdig, we are exploring integrations with AWS App Runner that will simplify the ability of organizations to secure and optimize their applications for an enhanced developer experience.”

Pulumi provides a cloud engineering platform for developers to build, deploy, and manage modern cloud applications using any language across any architecture. “Our customers use a variety of compute services in their cloud architectures, depending on their workloads or application needs,” said Luke Hoban, CTO, Pulumi. “AWS App Runner is great because it is built with leading containers technology but does not require developers to have any containers expertise to run their web applications and services. We are excited to support AWS App Runner as a resource in Pulumi.”