Back in 2018, I shared several ways to implement fan-out/fan-in with Lambda. A lot has changed since, so let’s explore the solution space in 2024.
Remember, what’s “best” depends on your context. I will do my best to outline the trade-offs you should consider.
Many students and clients have asked me how to implement Map-Reduce workloads serverlessly. In most cases, they are actually asking about Fan-Out/Fan-In!
At a glance, the two patterns look very similar and they are often used interchangeably in conversations. So in this post, let’s compare them and see how they differ.
If you’re using CDK, you should use L3 constructs to encapsulate common patterns and best practices in your architecture.
However, sometimes you’d find a 3rd-party L3 construct that does most of what you want, but you need to customize how it configures some of its resources. That can be tricky because you don’t own the source code, and the construct author might not be willing to make the changes you want.
In this article, let me show you an easy and effective way to do this without having to clone and maintain a copy of the construct yourself.
Here is the biggest mistake many teams make when they try to adopt serverless and why they ultimately fail.
Don’t make the same mistake.
AppSync now supports invoking Lambda resolvers asynchronously. This simplifies a common challenge in GenAI applications where we had to hand off the call to the LLM to a background function so we can stream the LLM response back to the caller.
Step Functions lets you set a timeout on both Task states and the whole execution. By default, an execution can run for a year if TimeoutSeconds is not configured. To a user, the execution would appear as “stuck”. Which is why AWS best practices recommend using timeouts to avoid such scenarios. But once you have configured a timeout for the execution, it’s then important to consider what happens when you experience a timeout.
In this post, let’s explore 3 ways you can handle an execution timeout and use a Lambda function to perform automated remediation (e.g. applying rollbacks).
DynamoDB now supports resource-based policies, which simplified cross-account access to tables.
But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!
Cross-account access to DynamoDB tables is almost always a smell. But as with everything, there are exceptions and edge cases. You should think carefully before you use resource-based policies to enable cross-account access to your DynamoDB tables.
In this post, let’s explore some legitimate use cases for cross-account access to DynamoDB tables.
I’m a big fan of Step Functions, but it’s yet another AWS service you must learn and pay for.
It also introduces additional complexities. My application is harder to test; my business logic is split between configuration (ASL) and code; and I have new decision points, such as whether to use Express Workflows or Standard Workflows.
So it’s fair to ask, “Why should we even bother with Step Functions?”. Why not just do everything in code, inside a Lambda function?
Let’s break down the pros and cons and look at the trade-offs of each.
“Lambdalith” is a monolithic approach to building serverless applications where a single Lambda function serves an entire API, instead of having one function per endpoint. It’s an increasingly popular approach and provides portability between Lambda and containers and lets you use familiar web frameworks.
Tools like the AWS Lambda Web Adapter have made this approach more accessible, and it also works well with Lambda Function URLs.
But don’t be too hasty to get rid of API Gateway just yet!
In this post, let’s look at the pros and cons of API Gateway vs. Lambda Function URLs, and let me explain why I still prefer API Gateway.
LLRT, the new Low Latency Runtime for JavaScript, is an experimental runtime for Lambda that promises 10x faster startup time!
In this post, let’s look at why it’s so damn fast, and what design choices it makes (and why they make sense in the context of Lambda).
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