Amazon Web Services aims to simplify roll-out of Node.js apps

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded its Elastic Beanstalk to include Node.js, in an effort to make it easier to deploy and manage application development on its cloud.

Elastic Beanstalk allows developers to upload an application and then it automatically handles capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application-health monitoring. The expansion allows Node.js developers to focus on writing their applications and lets Elastic Beanstalk run it and scale it automatically, according to Amazon.

Amazon adding support for Node.js to Elastic Beanstalk shouldn't come as a surprise since both are optimized for Web applications.

One of the advantages with Node.js is that developers can scale their applications without having to deal with polling, timeouts and event loops, according to Amazon. It is based on Google's V8 JavaScript engine and includes a library of functions that work under an event-driven model.

Amazon's implementation is compatible with Nginx and Apache HTTP Server. Developers can integrate their apps with Amazon's Relational Database Service and run them using the company's Virtual Private Cloud offering, which lets users create logically isolated virtual servers and an optional VPN connection to their own data center.

This isn't the first time Amazon has offered support for Node.js on its cloud. In December, the company announced the AWS SDK for Node.js, which is available for download as a developer preview.

It also isn't the first time this year Amazon has upgraded its cloud offerings with ease of deployment and management in mind. Last month the company introduced OpsWorks, a cloud-based platform powered by the Chef framework, which will give enterprises more integrated tools for managing the complete application life cycle.

While Elastic Beanstalk is specifically optimized for the most common Web applications and application middleware, OpsWorks can be used with anything from simple Web applications to highly complex applications.

Elastic Beanstalk was announced in January 2011 and is still labeled as a beta. In addition to Node.js apps, it can be used with Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, and .NET applications.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

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