What is Elastic Beanstalk?

Elastic Beanstalk (EB) is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) by AWS that helps developers deploy and manage applications in the cloud—without managing the underlying infrastructure.

You just upload your code, and Beanstalk:

  • Handles provisioning (EC2, ELB, Auto Scaling, etc.)
  • Monitors the health of your app
  • Manages deployments
  • Supports multiple languages: Python, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, .NET, Go, and Docker

Why Use Elastic Beanstalk?

Feature Description
Fully Managed No need to manage servers or scaling manually
Fast Deployment Upload code + config and it’s live
Customizable Full control of underlying EC2, VPC, Security
Built-in Monitoring Comes with CloudWatch integration
Supports CI/CD Works with CodePipeline & GitHub Actions

Supported Architectures

  • Single-instance: Good for dev/test environments
  • Load-balanced + Auto-scaled: Great for production
  • Worker Environment: For background jobs (e.g., SQS consumers)

Step-by-Step: Deploy a Python Web App to Elastic Beanstalk

Let’s deploy a simple Flask app:

Step 1: Set Up the Project Locally 

mkdir flask-eb-demo && cd flask-eb-demo
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install flask

Create application.py:

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def home():
    return "Hello from Elastic Beanstalk!"

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

Create requirements.txt:

Flask==2.2.2

Create Procfile:

web: gunicorn application:app

Step 2: Install EB CLI 

pip install awsebcli

Configure it:

aws configure

Step 3: Initialize and Deploy 

eb init -p python-3.8 flask-eb-demo
  • Choose region
  • Create or use an existing Elastic Beanstalk app
  • Link to your Git repo if available

Then create an environment:

eb create flask-env

To deploy:

eb deploy

To open the app in your browser:

eb open

Securing Your Environment

  • Use HTTPS with SSL certs via ACM
  • Set env variables using: 
eb setenv KEY=value ANOTHER=value
  • Restrict EC2 access via security groups

Monitoring & Logs

Elastic Beanstalk provides:

  • Health Monitoring Dashboard
  • CloudWatch Logs
  • Auto Recovery options
  • Alarms for CPU, memory, latency, etc.

To pull logs:

eb logs

Advanced: CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Example .github/workflows/deploy.yml:

name: Deploy to Elastic Beanstalk

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - name: Checkout
      uses: actions/checkout@v2

    - name: Deploy to EB
      uses: einaregilsson/beanstalk-deploy@v20
      with:
        aws_access_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws_secret_key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        application_name: "flask-eb-demo"
        environment_name: "flask-env"
        version_label: ${{ github.sha }}
        region: "us-east-1"

When Not to Use Elastic Beanstalk

  • If you need fine-grained container orchestration → use ECS or EKS
  • If you want ultra-low latency and edge computing → use Lambda + API Gateway

💬 Final Thoughts

Elastic Beanstalk is perfect for:

  • Quick deployments
  • Projects where you don’t want to manage infra
  • Teaching DevOps concepts (CI/CD, monitoring, scaling)

You get control without complexity.