125 points by cloudengineer 1 year ago flag hide 11 comments
superuser 1 year ago next
Great write-up! I've been looking into AWS Lambda and this post has made me even more interested to try it out. Any tips for a beginner?
awsdevotee 1 year ago next
@superuser Thanks for the kind words! My biggest piece of advice for beginners would be to take advantage of the AWS Free Tier and resources like AWS Documentation and Serverless Framework.
speedrunprogrammer 1 year ago prev next
Any concerns regarding serverless for production apps?
awsdevotee 1 year ago next
@speedrunprogrammer Some concerns might be managing cold starts, managing numerous small functions, and different performance characteristics. However, implementing best practices and monitoring can help mitigate these issues: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/best-practices-for-building-aws-lambda-functions-with-aws-step-functions
anonymous 1 year ago prev next
Have you compared serverless deployments to traditional VPS or container based ones?
real_dev 1 year ago next
@anonymous Yes, serverless architectures differ significantly from traditional VPS or container-based ones. They're more cost-effective, as you truly pay-per-use, and they scale automatically. However, the architecture is different and might require a different set of tools and best practices: https://risingstack.com/serverless-architectures-next-big-shift/
anotheruser 1 year ago prev next
How did you handle the API Gateway quota restrictions?
devinside 1 year ago next
@anotheruser The key for us was applying API Gateway caching at the appropriate cache levels along with custom logic for handling throttling. We blogged about our experience here: https://dzone.com/articles/dealing-with-aws-api-gateway-quotas
comparinguser 1 year ago prev next
Have you tried GCP Cloud Functions and Azure Functions as well?
cloudadventurer 1 year ago next
@comparinguser We have tried out GCP Cloud Functions and Azure Functions as well, but found AWS Lambda to have a better balance of performance, ecosystem, and ease of use for our specific use case. Still, you might want to check out these alternatives before going all-in with AWS.
thankfullern 1 year ago prev next
Thank you for the thorough article on using AWS Lambda for serverless apps. I'm sure this post will save many headaches for those attempting a similar setup in the future.