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Amazon Virtual Private Cloud vs Apache Spark comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
Ranking in Compute Service
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Apache Spark
Ranking in Compute Service
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (1st), Java Frameworks (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is 0.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache Spark is 11.3%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

Dineshkumar Thulasiraman - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers auto-scaling policies, security groups are very useful and good support
VPC itself is pretty good, but understanding it well is key. One of the challenges for beginners is understanding IP address ranges and subnet concepts. For example, why use a /16 CIDR block for a VPC versus a /24? It's important to understand these concepts before creating a VPC. Once you understand the basics, you can leverage VPC features based on your architecture. For example, a three-tier architecture (web application, database, etc.) can benefit from public and private subnets. The web application can reside in a public subnet for internet access, while the database can reside in a private subnet for security, only accessible through the web application. This helps isolate resources and improve performance. So, the first step is understanding VPC creation and then using subnets (public and private) based on your architecture. Public subnets can connect to the internet, while private subnets cannot by default. For internet access in a private subnet, you can use a NAT Gateway and route tables. Other components include the internet gateway (for public subnet internet access), Elastic IPs (static IP addresses), and more advanced options like VPN connections, AWS PrivateLink, etc. Once you grasp these basic concepts, you can explore the more advanced features.
Ilya Afanasyev - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, able to expand, and handle large amounts of data well
We use batch processing. It works well with our formats and file versions. There's a lot of functionality. In our pipeline each hour, we make a copy of data from MongoDB, of the changes from MongoDB to some specific file. Each time pipeline copied all of the data, it would do it each time without changes to all of the tables. Tables have a lot of data, and in the last MongoDB version, there is a possibility to read only changed data. This reduced the cost and configuration of the cluster, and we saved about $150,000. The solution is scalable. It's a stable product.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Amazon Virtual Private Cloud isolates networks and offers robust network security. It also adds two network security layers."
"The main feature I like about Amazon VPC is its security capabilities, including security groups and subnets."
"It is a good solution."
"It is a very stable product...Amazon Virtual Private Cloud gives you security."
"The solution's subnetting feature is good and has impacted our network design."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple since my company manages it with the use of Terraform."
"I recommend introducing Amazon VPC to others as it provides an excellent entry-level understanding of cloud computing and its relevance in today's world."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"There's a lot of functionality."
"I found the solution stable. We haven't had any problems with it."
"The fault tolerant feature is provided."
"The most significant advantage of Spark 3.0 is its support for DataFrame UDF Pandas UDF features."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"I like that it can handle multiple tasks parallelly. I also like the automation feature. JavaScript also helps with the parallel streaming of the library."
"ETL and streaming capabilities."
"This solution provides a clear and convenient syntax for our analytical tasks."
 

Cons

"They could improve the platform's ability to establish VPN connections to interact with resources outside the network."
"This solution is not fully compatible with every vendor that we use regarding firewalls and networking equipment. They provide you with the option and details on how to configure this on your premises but it would be good to have an easier way to do this."
"The product is restricted to a particular region. They should provide a global architecture."
"The solution could improve its price."
"The solution has to be more robust and scalable."
"In Amazon VPC, there's room for improvement. For example, when we create security groups, I think we should be able to restrict outgoing traffic to secured websites. I know there's a method to restrict that, but we should also be able to design outgoing traffic restrictions at the system level. We should use that to deny ports instead of relying solely on network access controls at the subnet level."
"From an improvement perspective, the product's initial setup phase should be easy for those who are not experienced in creating VPCs."
"The overall integration capabilities of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud with third-party tools need to improve."
"I would like to see integration with data science platforms to optimize the processing capability for these tasks."
"Technical expertise from an engineer is required to deploy and run high-tech tools, like Informatica, on Apache Spark, making it an area where improvements are required to make the process easier for users."
"The graphical user interface (UI) could be a bit more clear. It's very hard to figure out the execution logs and understand how long it takes to send everything. If an execution is lost, it's not so easy to understand why or where it went. I have to manually drill down on the data processes which takes a lot of time. Maybe there could be like a metrics monitor, or maybe the whole log analysis could be improved to make it easier to understand and navigate."
"At the initial stage, the product provides no container logs to check the activity."
"Apache Spark can improve the use case scenarios from the website. There is not any information on how you can use the solution across the relational databases toward multiple databases."
"Stability in terms of API (things were difficult, when transitioning from RDD to DataFrames, then to DataSet)."
"Include more machine learning algorithms and the ability to handle streaming of data versus micro batch processing."
"I know there is always discussion about which language to write applications in and some people do love Scala. However, I don't like it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon is not very transparent with pricing. It's quite complicated to see where you're spending and how you can track it. I was spending $30,000 a year and $3600 monthly on top of that initial payment. However, I have been able to bring the cost down for this year."
"The product is expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"We can use the tool for free."
"The solution is pricey but worth its money."
"It is a free-to-use service."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"Amazon VPC is generally affordable. There might be costs if you need to reserve specific IPs. Otherwise, it's cheap."
"It is an open-source platform. We do not pay for its subscription."
"The solution is affordable and there are no additional licensing costs."
"Since we are using the Apache Spark version, not the data bricks version, it is an Apache license version, the support and resolution of the bug are actually late or delayed. The Apache license is free."
"It is an open-source solution, it is free of charge."
"Spark is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."
"I did not pay anything when using the tool on cloud services, but I had to pay on the compute side. The tool is not expensive compared with the benefits it offers. I rate the price as an eight out of ten."
"The tool is an open-source product. If you're using the open-source Apache Spark, no fees are involved at any time. Charges only come into play when using it with other services like Databricks."
"We are using the free version of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud?
The cost of Amazon VPC depends on the components you put inside the VPC and the traffic volume. While the direct cost of the VPC is usually not problematic, the associated components and their traf...
What needs improvement with Amazon Virtual Private Cloud?
I would look at database options for improvements. There is a specific configuration where I was using a Windows Server, and I could not configure RDS Oracle on it. I believe they need to revise ho...
What do you like most about Apache Spark?
We use Spark to process data from different data sources.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Spark?
Compared to other solutions like Doc DB, Spark is more costly due to the need for extensive infrastructure. It requires significant investment in infrastructure, which can be expensive. While cloud...
What needs improvement with Apache Spark?
The Spark solution could improve in scheduling tasks and managing dependencies. Spark alone cannot handle sequential tasks, requiring environments like Airflow scheduler or scripts. For instance, o...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Amazon VPC
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hess, Expedia, Kelloggs, Philips, HyperTrack
NASA JPL, UC Berkeley AMPLab, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, UC Santa Cruz, TripAdvisor, Taboola, Agile Lab, Art.com, Baidu, Alibaba Taobao, EURECOM, Hitachi Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Virtual Private Cloud vs. Apache Spark and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.