Difference between AWS Resource Access Manager and Amazon VPC Lattice
AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) and Amazon VPC Lattice are two distinct AWS services that serve different primary purposes but can work together in certain scenarios.
AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)
AWS RAM is a service specifically designed for sharing AWS resources across different AWS accounts. It allows you to:
- Share resources between AWS accounts within your organization or with specific AWS accounts outside your organization
- Share resources with organizational units (OUs) or an entire organization in AWS Organizations
- Eliminate the need to create duplicate resources across multiple accounts, reducing operational overhead
- Share various resource types including transit gateways, subnets, License Manager configurations, and Route 53 Resolver rules12
AWS RAM is available at no additional charge and helps organizations that use multiple accounts for management, billing separation, and error isolation to efficiently share resources rather than duplicating them.
Amazon VPC Lattice
VPC Lattice is an application networking service focused on connecting, monitoring, and securing communications between services and resources. It provides:
- Simplified connectivity between services and resources across VPCs and accounts
- Improved security posture through authentication and context-specific authorization
- Automatic scaling of compute and network resources for high-bandwidth workloads
- Support for HTTP, HTTPS, gRPC, and TCP workloads
- Ability to connect to TCP resources like RDS databases across multiple VPCs and accounts34
VPC Lattice helps improve developer productivity by handling the networking complexity so developers can focus on building business features.
How They Work Together
VPC Lattice integrates with AWS RAM to enable sharing of VPC Lattice entities (services, resource configurations, and service networks) with other AWS accounts or through AWS Organizations57. This integration allows:
- Partners to share their SaaS services and allow access to your service network
- Communication between services and VPCs deployed as part of VPC Lattice
- Association of shared VPC Lattice resources with resources in your account6
When using VPC Lattice with AWS RAM, you can create a resource share specifying which VPC Lattice entities to share and with whom. This enables multi-account scenarios where service networks can span organizational boundaries810.
In essence, AWS RAM is the mechanism that enables resource sharing, while VPC Lattice is an application networking service that can leverage RAM for cross-account sharing of its specific networking constructs.
