Mar 10Member-onlyTop best practices you should follow when building with AWS LambdaSet CloudWatch log retention policies Lambda creates a log group that matches the name of your function in this format: /aws/lambda/[lambda name]. All log streams in this group persist forever by default. You pay for every byte written to the log group. These costs pile up forever (at $0.53/GB) unless you set a retention period. …AWS4 min readAWS4 min read
Mar 7Member-onlyTop things you should avoid when building with AWS LambdaDon’t set Provisioned Concurrency == Reserved Concurrency Reserved Concurrency (RC) is a configuration that places a max cap on concurrency available to the entire function family (all versions/alias). Provisioned Concurrency (PC) is set on a specific function version. If PC == RC, guess what happens? You you can’t execute any other versions of the function INCLUDING any…Serverless3 min readServerless3 min read
Jun 3, 2021Member-onlyDeveloping on AWS Lambda (Part 4): Switch to the AWS NodeJS SDK v3!In Part 1 of Developing on AWS Lambda, I covered the basics of developing Lambda functions with the AWS NodeJS SDK. This post was written with the NodeJS SDK version 2 in mind. In December 2020, there was a new major release of the SDK: Version 3. …AWS4 min readAWS4 min read
Apr 27, 2021Member-onlySplit large Amazon API Gateway specs up for easier managementLet’s look at some ways you can create APIs. Vanilla Cloudformation You can create API Gateway deployments with vanilla CloudFormation. The resources are AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi and AWS:ApiGateway::HttpApi. This is my least favorite way to create APIs. You have to define every method, permission, integration, and route. It’s extremely verbose and difficult to manage…AWS3 min readAWS3 min read
Mar 13, 2021Member-only(Securely!) Deliver native AWS events to any HTTP destination with EventBridge API DestinationsI’m super excited about the new feature for EventBridge called API Destinations. It lets you emit native events that occur in your AWS environment to any HTTP destination. Read more about the service via the AWS launch blog(written by James Beswick)! There are two features that make this amazingly powerful: …AWS5 min readAWS5 min read
Mar 11, 2021Member-onlyUse Amazon Cognito as an OIDC / OAuth Identity provider for API Gateway HTTP APIs JWT AuthorizersAmazon API Gateway HTTP APIs supports a new type of authorizer called JWT Authorizer. You deliver JWT tokens to API Gateway and it verifies them with the configured issuer. It’s fairly straight forward to configure. Identify the source for the incoming token that has your identity info. …Serverless2 min readServerless2 min read
Feb 19, 2021Member-onlyAmazon Cognito Primer & CheatsheetMost people find Amazon Cognito confusing. The learning curve is steep and there are service constraints you may need to work around. If you are deciding if Cognito will work as your IDP, the main constraint to consider is: Do you need to go Multi-Region? If yes, Cognito is not…AWS5 min readAWS5 min read
Dec 16, 2020Member-onlyDemystifying Java AWS Lambda handlers for API GatewayI recently did a deep dive into writing Java based AWS Lambda functions for Amazon API Gateway payloads. Special thanks to Heeki Park for helping figure this out! Check out his Medium for awesome AWS tips. Here’s the things you should know and will save you time and headache: You…AWS2 min readAWS2 min read
Nov 6, 2020Member-onlyHow do you build APIs that consume cross account resources (and do it securely)?Operating multiple accounts is an AWS best practice — it helps shard your work, distribute limits, and better segment your environments. It can be challenging to build APIs that consume resources in different accounts, but you have a few options: VPC peer or use Transit Gateway to enable communication between…AWS5 min readAWS5 min read
Sep 3, 2020Member-onlyLambda Provisioned Concurrency AutoScaling is Awesome. Make sure you understand how it works!A quick intro to Provisioned Concurrency — At re:Invent 2019, AWS added a flavor of AWS Lambda that lets you pre-provision Lambda capacity ahead of time — its called Provisioned Concurrency (PC). You tell AWS how much concurrency you want to keep warm and AWS will handle everything for you. …Serverless3 min readServerless3 min read
