Vertex Macro | Financial Cloud Cloud · AWS Re:cap
AWS Re:cap 11: What's New with AWS Lambda (CNS376)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9lJzpHBJ0
Lambda's Key Differentiation: Speed
● Main aspiration: Provide speed to customers and builders
● Speed encompasses code generation and the entire shipping cycle
● Faster shipping leads to more engaging applications and user feedback
● Applications are well-architected by default, handling scalability, availability, and reliability
● Primary benefit: No infrastructure to manage, reducing operations and increasing speed
Launches Bucketed into 3 Cohorts
1 New Primitives
● Introduction of Lambda's managed instances
2 Managed Instances
● Mental model: Lambda shines with needlepoint workloads (high traffic spikes)
● For steady-state traffic, builders seek to optimize performance and costs
● Allows choice of compute instances, network, or memory for performance optimization
● Retains full surveillance operations and developer experience
● Event source integrations, patching, routing, and scaling are handled by Lambda
● Introduces multi-concurrency for more efficient request handling
● Incorporates EC2’s pricing incentives (savings plans, reserved instances) for cost
optimization
3 Capacity Provider
● Additional requirement: Create a capacity provider
10.Specify preferences for compute instances, memory instances, or scaling profile
11.Optionally, let Lambda choose and continuously improve price performance
Use Cases and Features
● Steady State Applications: Seamlessly handled by Lambda
● Needlepoint Bursts/Traffic Management: Leave on Lambda for functionality
● Steady State/Popularity: Move to managed instances for optimization
● Performance Critical Apps: Specialized instances available
● Variety of Applications: Media data processing, web applications, event-driven applications
● Regulatory Requirements: Managed instances allow preferences for compute zones
Tenant Isolation Feature
● Use Case: scenario needing isolation between requests
● Benefit: Pass unique tenant ID or JWT token for clean, isolated execution environment
● Improves: CICD cycles and eliminates need for custom tooling
Well-Architected by Default
● Value Prop: Latest programming languages with performance and security fixes
● Recent Additions: Python 3.14, Java 2.5, Node.js 24
● Benefit: Improves developer productivity and enables safe, faster software shipping
● Mental Model: Make new runtimes available within 90 days of community release
Additional Features and Benefits
Runtime Upgrading
● Automated Patches: Handles vulnerabilities like Log4j
● Challenge: High effort to upgrade runtime for large function counts
● Solution: AWS Transform Custom (Gen AI-based upgrades)
● Benefit: Reduces tech debt by up to 85%, seamless integration into dev cycles
● Snapstart:
● Problem: Cold starts during function initialization
● Solution: Snapshots execution environment for faster subsequent invokes
● Benefit: Reduced cold start times, no code changes or custom tooling required
● Fault Injection Service (FIS) Integration:
● Purpose: Test application resilience under stress conditions
● Features: Specify conditions like increased latency or unavailable downstream services
● Benefit: Helps plan and prevent outages, increases confidence in production scenarios
● Improved Observability:
● Challenge: Lack of visibility into event source polling mechanisms
● Solution: Enabled additional CloudWatch metrics for count, log, and throttles
● Benefit: Instant issue detection and improved time to resolution, no custom tooling required
AWS Transform custom
AWS-managed, out-of-the-box transformations that are pre-built, AWS-vetted transformations
for common upgrade scenarios. These are ready to use without any additional setup.
Currently available transformations
● Java 8 to 17 migrations (for both Gradle and Maven)
● Node.js 12 to 22 upgrades (including Lambda environments)
● Python runtime updates to 3.11/3.12/3.13 (standard and Lambda)
● AWS SDK migrations (v1 to v2)
● Key characteristics:
● Validated by AWS - These transformations are vetted by AWS to be high quality
● Ready to use - No additional setup required
● Continuously growing - Additional transformations are continually being added
● Customizable - Pre-built transformations can be enhanced with specific rules for your organization's needs (e.g., adding rules for handling internal libraries or coding standards)
● Experimental support - Some transformations may be marked as experimental as they undergo further testing
Additional Features and Benefits
Additional CloudWatch Metrics
● Problem: Lack of visibility into event source polling mechanisms (Kafka, SQS)
● Solution: Enabled additional metrics for polar count, lag, and throttles
● Benefit: Instant issue detection and improved time to resolution, no custom tooling required
● Schema Registry Support for Avro Format:
● Problem: Builders had to manually add boilerplate code for Avro serialization/deserialization
● Solution: Added capability to auto serialize and deserialize Avro events
● Benefit: Less code, fewer errors, schema evolution support, no custom tooling required
● Provision Mode for SQS:
● Problem: Customers needed faster scaling and control over concurrency for polling
● Solution: Provision mode allows pre-warming capacity to handle spikes instantly
● Benefit: Eliminates delays during spikes, helps meet SLAs, optimizes costs, no custom tooling required
● Accelerating Developers:
● Goal: Help developers ship software faster
● Developer Preference: Develop in local machines/IDE after initial console testing
● Focus: Streamline development process to reduce time to market
Features to Accelerate Development Cycles
Seamless Console to IDE Transition
● Feature: Build bare-bones application on console with single click
● Benefit: Packages dependencies, lights up on local IDE for immediate coding without manual work
● Local Testing with LocalStack:
● Partner: LocalStack emulates AWS services (storage, database, networking)
● Benefit: Develop and test offline fully on local machine, leading to faster iterations of business logic without custom tooling
● Remote Debugging:
● Feature: Enable checkpoints/breakpoints with two clicks
● Benefit: Analyze variables and source code locally while code runs in production, test IAM policies, roles, database connectivity, VPC, and network configurations without custom tooling
● MCP Server for Best Practices:
● Feature: Bakes in best practices (input validations, error handling, status codes)
● Benefit: Generates better quality, consistent code, reduces code review cycles, accelerates velocity
● Support: Web apps and event-driven applications (Kafka triggers, event-driven architectures)