Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms - Amazon Elastic Beanstalk
Supported Amazon Linux versionsList of Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms
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Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms

The Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms provide an extensive amount of functionality out of the box. You can extend the platforms in several ways to support your application. For details, see Extending Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms.

Most of the platforms that Elastic Beanstalk supports are based on the Linux operating system. Specifically, these platforms are based on Amazon Linux, a Linux distribution provided by Amazon. Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, and these instances run Amazon Linux.

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Supported Amazon Linux versions

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk supports platforms based on Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023.

For more information about Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023, see the following:

For details about supported platform versions, see Elastic Beanstalk supported platforms.

Note

You can migrate your application from an Elastic Beanstalk AL1 or AL2 platform branch to the equivalent AL2023 platform branch. For more information, see Migrating your Elastic Beanstalk Linux application to Amazon Linux 2023 or Amazon Linux 2.

Amazon Linux 2023

Amazon announced the general availability of Amazon Linux 2023 in March of 2023. The Amazon Linux 2023 User Guide summarizes key differences between Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023. For more information, see Comparing Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 in the user guide.

There is a high degree of compatibility between Elastic Beanstalk Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 platforms. Although there are some differences to note:

  • Instance Metadata Service Version 1 (IMDSv1) – The DisableIMDSv1 option setting defaults to true on AL2023 platforms. The default is false on AL2 platforms.

  • pkg-repo instance tool – The pkg-repo tool is not available for environments running on AL2023 platforms. However, you can still manually apply package and operating system updates to an AL2023 instance. For more information, see Managing packages and operating system updates in the Amazon Linux 2023 User Guide.

  • Apache HTTPd configuration – The Apache httpd.conf file for AL2023 platforms has some configuration settings that are different from those for AL2:

    • Deny access to the server’s entire file system by default. These settings are described in Protect Server Files by Default on the Apache website Security Tips page.

    • Deny access to set up of .htaccess in all directories, except for those specifically enabled. This setting is described in Protecting System Settings on the Apache website Security Tips page. The Apache HTTP Server Tutorial: .htaccess files page states this setting may help improve performance.

    • Deny access to files with name pattern .ht*. This setting prevents web clients from viewing .htaccess and .htpasswd files.

    You can change any of the above configuration settings for your environment. For more information, see Configuring Apache HTTPD.

  • Multiline environment variable support – AL2023 platforms support multiline values for environment variables and secrets in systemd service configurations. Amazon Linux 2 platforms do not support multiline environment variable values. This enhancement allows you to use multiline secrets and configuration values on AL2023 platforms. For more information about using environment variables and secrets, see Multiline values in Amazon Linux 2 environment variables.

  • CloudWatch custom log forwarding – The deprecated CloudWatch Logs agent (awslogs package) is not available on AL2023 platforms. If you have custom log forwarding configurations that install and use the deprecated awslogs agent, you must update your configuration files to use the unified CloudWatch agent when migrating from Amazon Linux 2 to AL2023. For more information, see Custom log file streaming.

Platform-specific differences

In addition to the base operating system differences, there are platform-specific differences between Amazon Linux 2 and AL2023 runtime platforms:

  • .NET platform branching – The .NET platform branching strategy differs between Amazon Linux 2 and AL2023. On Amazon Linux 2, the .NET Core platform maintains a rotating window of .NET major versions within a single platform branch. On AL2023, each platform branch is pinned to a specific .NET major version (for example, .NET 9, .NET 10).

    If you deploy framework-dependent applications (applications that rely on the platform's installed .NET runtime), you must select a platform branch that matches your application's target .NET version. If you deploy self-contained applications (applications that bundle their own .NET runtime), you can use any AL2023 .NET platform branch regardless of your application's .NET version, as your application is not dependent on the platform's installed runtime. For more information, see Bundling applications for the .NET Core on Linux Elastic Beanstalk platform.

  • Node.js version selection – The Node.js platform on Amazon Linux 2 supports specifying a Node.js version in your application's package.json file. The Node.js platform on AL2023 does not support this feature. You must use the default Node.js version provided by the platform branch. For more information about Node.js version management, see Configuring your application's dependencies on Elastic Beanstalk.

  • Ruby Puma server version – The Ruby platform on Amazon Linux 2 ignores the Puma version specified in your application's Gemfile.lock file and uses the platform default Puma version. The Ruby platform on AL2023 honors the Puma version specified in Gemfile.lock if present. If no version is specified, the platform installs the platform default Puma version.

  • PHP package availability – Some packages available on Amazon Linux 2 PHP platforms are not available on AL2023 PHP platforms:

    • MySQL client packages – The mysql and mysql-devel command-line client packages are not installed on AL2023 PHP platforms. If your application requires MySQL database connectivity, use the PHP mysqli or pdo_mysql extensions, which are available on both platforms.

    • Compass and Ruby tools – The ruby-devel and rubygems packages for Compass CSS framework support are not installed on AL2023 PHP platforms. Compass has been deprecated. Consider using modern CSS preprocessing tools as alternatives.

  • Go version control tools – The Bazaar version control system (bzr) is not available on AL2023 Go platforms. Bazaar is deprecated and not included in the AL2023 package repository. Use Git, Mercurial, or Subversion for version control instead, all of which are available on AL2023 Go platforms.

List of Elastic Beanstalk Linux platforms

The following list provides the Linux platforms that Elastic Beanstalk supports for different programming languages as well as for Docker containers. Elastic Beanstalk offers platforms based on Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 for all of them. To learn more about a platform, select the corresponding link.