10. Serverless Applications

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AWS Lambda

You can use AWS Lambda to run code without provisioning or managing servers.

Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, and logging. With Lambda, all you need to do is supply your code in one of the language runtimes that Lambda supports.

You organize your code into Lambda functions. The Lambda service runs your function only when needed and scales automatically. You only pay for the compute time that you consume—there is no charge when your code is not running.

For more information, see

AWS Lambda Pricing⁠

When to use Lambda

Lambda is an ideal compute service for application scenarios that need to scale up rapidly, and scale down to zero when not in demand. For example, you can use Lambda for:

File processing: Use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to trigger Lambda data processing in real time after an upload.

Stream processing: Use Lambda and Amazon Kinesis to process real-time streaming data for application activity tracking, transaction order processing, clickstream analysis, data cleansing, log filtering, indexing, social media analysis, Internet of Things (IoT) device data telemetry, and metering.

Web applications: Combine Lambda with other AWS services to build powerful web applications that automatically scale up and down and run in a highly available configuration across multiple data centers.

IoT backends: Build serverless backends using Lambda to handle web, mobile, IoT, and third-party API requests.

Mobile backends: Build backends using Lambda and Amazon API Gateway to authenticate and process API requests. Use AWS Amplify to easily integrate with your iOS, Android, Web, and React Native frontends.

When using Lambda, you are responsible only for your code. Lambda manages the compute fleet that offers a balance of memory, CPU, network, and other resources to run your code. Because Lambda manages these resources, you cannot log in to compute instances or customize the operating system on provided runtimes. Lambda performs operational and administrative activities on your behalf, including managing capacity, monitoring, and logging your Lambda functions.

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Lambda functions:

Consist of code and any associated dependencies.

Configuration information is associated with the function.

You specify the configuration information when you create the function.

API provided for updating configuration data.

You specify the amount of memory you need allocated to your Lambda functions.

AWS Lambda allocates CPU power proportional to the memory you specify using the same ratio as a general purpose EC2 instance type.

Functions can access:

AWS services or non-AWS services.

AWS services running in VPCs (e.g. RedShift, Elasticache, RDS instances).

Non-AWS services running on EC2 instances in an AWS VPC.

To enable your Lambda function to access resources inside your private VPC, you must provide additional VPC-specific configuration information that includes VPC subnet IDs and security group IDs.

AWS Lambda uses this information to set up elastic network interfaces (ENIs) that enable your function.

You can request additional memory in 1 MB increments from 128 MB to 10240 MB.

There is a maximum execution timeout.

Max is 15 minutes (900 seconds), default is 3 seconds.

You pay for the time it runs.

Lambda terminates the function at the timeout.

Code is invoked using API calls made using AWS SDKs.

Lambda assumes an IAM role when it executes the function.

AWS Lambda stores code in Amazon S3 and encrypts it at rest.

Lambda provides continuous scaling – scales out not up.

Lambda scales concurrently executing functions up to your default limit (1000).

Lambda can scale up to tens of thousands of concurrent executions.

Lambda functions are serverless and independent, 1 event = 1 function.

Functions can trigger other functions so 1 event can trigger multiple functions.

Use cases fall within the following categories:

Using Lambda functions with AWS services as event sources.

On-demand Lambda function invocation over HTTPS using Amazon API Gateway (custom REST API and endpoint).

On-demand Lambda function invocation using custom applications (mobile, web apps, clients) and AWS SDKs, AWS Mobile SDKs, and the AWS Mobile SDK for Android.

Scheduled events can be configured to run code on a scheduled basis through the AWS Lambda Console.

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Invoking Lambda Functions

You can invoke Lambda functions directly with the Lambda console, the Lambda API, the AWS SDK, the AWS CLI, and AWS toolkits.

You can also configure other AWS services to invoke your function, or you can configure Lambda to read from a stream or queue and invoke your function.

When you invoke a function, you can choose to invoke it synchronously or asynchronously.

Other AWS services and resources invoke your function directly.

For example, you can configure CloudWatch Events to invoke your function on a timer, or you can configure Amazon S3 to invoke your function when an object is created.

Each service varies in the method it uses to invoke your function, the structure of the event, and how you configure it.

Synchronous invocation

You wait for the function to process the event and return a response.

When you invoke a function synchronously, Lambda runs the function and waits for a response.

When the function execution ends, Lambda returns the response from the function’s code with additional data, such as the version of the function that was executed. To invoke a function synchronously with the AWS CLI, use the invoke command.

$ aws lambda invoke –function-name my-function –payload ‘{ “key”: “value” }’ response.json { “ExecutedVersion”: “$LATEST”, “StatusCode”: 200 }

Asynchronous invocation

When you invoke a function asynchronously, you don’t wait for a response from the function code.

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For asynchronous invocation, Lambda handles retries and can send invocation records to a destination.

For asynchronous invocation, Lambda places the event in a queue and returns a success response without additional information. A separate process reads events from the queue and sends them to your function. To invoke a function asynchronously, set the invocation type parameter to Event.

$ aws lambda invoke --function-name my-function --invocation-type Event --payload '{ "key": "value" }' response.json { "StatusCode": 202 }

The output file (response.json) doesn’t contain any information but is still created when you run this command. If Lambda can’t add the event to the queue, the error message appears in the command output.

Lambda Handler

A handler is a function which Lambda will invoke to execute your code – it is an entry point.

When you create a Lambda function, you specify a handler that AWS Lambda can invoke when the service executes the function on your behalf.

You define a Lambda function handler as an instance or static method in a class.

Function Dependencies

If your Lambda function depends on external libraries such as AWS X-Ray SDK, database clients etc. you need to install the packages with the code and zip it all up.

For Node.js use npm & “node modules” directory.

For Python use pip — target options.

For Java include the relevant .jar files.

Upload the zip file straight to Lambda if it’s less than 50MB, otherwise upload to S3.

Native libraries work they need to be compiled on Amazon Linux.

AWS SDK comes with every Lambda function by default.

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Event source mappings

To process items from a stream or queue, you can create an event source mapping. An event source mapping is a resource in Lambda that reads items from an Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) queue, an Amazon Kinesis stream, or an Amazon DynamoDB stream, and sends the items to your function in batches. Each event that your function processes can contain hundreds or thousands of items.

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Event source mappings maintain a local queue of unprocessed items and handle retries if the function returns an error or is throttled. You can configure an event source mapping to customize batching behavior and error handling, or to send a record of items that fail processing to a destination.

For more information, see

How Lambda processes records from stream and queue-based event sources⁠

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What is AWS Lambda? - AWS Lambda Lambda is a compute service that you can use to build applications without provisioning or managing servers. docs.aws.amazon.com⁠

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When to use Lambda

Invoking Lambda Functions

Synchronous invocation

Asynchronous invocation

Lambda Handler

Function Dependencies

Event source mappings

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