Running Serverless
This book is 100% complete
Completed on 2020-01-23
About the Book
This book will help you get started with AWS Lambda and the Serverless Application Model (SAM). Lambda is Amazon's engine for running event-driven functions, and SAM is an open-source toolkit that greatly simplifies configuring and deploying Lambda services. Together, they make it easy to create auto-scaling APIs and cloud services designed for serverless deployments. This book will help you:
- Design applications that get the most out of serverless architectures
- Create auto-scaling web APIs
- Handle background tasks and messaging workflows
- Set up a deployment pipeline for effective team collaboration
- Test and troubleshoot code designed for AWS Lambda
- Inspect and monitor serverless applications
This book is structured as a walk-through for building a practical application. We start from a simple static API and gradually grow it into an online image-resizing service, ready for millions of users, with all the supporting operational and infrastructural capabilities. The application closely resembles real-world systems that many of you will develop in your jobs. This will give you a good structure for your own work, and you will be able to almost copy parts to get a head start. As you discover how to create and deploy different parts of the application, you will also learn about key aspects of Lambda and related services, important tips, techniques and tools for running serverless.
The tutorial evolved from dozens of conference workshops and code camps. My colleagues and I have used the exercises from this book to teach hundreds of developers about serverless architectures, improving the examples through feedback into a great way to gradually introduce important concepts.
About the Author
Table of Contents
Copyright
About the author
Thanks to everyone who helped
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Introduction
1 Serverless in five minutes
The serverless pricing model
How request pricing affects deployment architecture
How request pricing affects security
How request pricing affects product decisions
Important AWS Lambda technical constraints
No session affinity
Non-deterministic latency
Limited execution time
No direct control over processing power
When to use Lambda
Interesting experiments
2 Set up tools for local development
Setting up prerequisites
Installing JavaScript tools
Installing the SAM command line tools
Configuring access credentials
Running with restricted user accounts
Using a profile
Interesting experiments
3 Create a web service
Infrastructure as code
The Lambda programming model
Deploying SAM applications
Step 1: Build
Step 2: Package
Step 3: Deploy
Inspecting a stack
Inspecting a stack from the command line
Interesting experiments
4 Development and troubleshooting
Retrieving execution logs
Retrieving logs from the command line
Searching logs
Logging incoming events
Simulating Lambda locally
Debugging functions
Validating templates
Working in a team
Setting up a deployment pipeline
Interesting experiments
5 Safe deployments
Function configurations
Versions and aliases
Gradual deployments
Adding deployment alerts
Interesting experiments
6 Handling HTTP requests
API Gateway events
Customising responses
Troubleshooting Gateway integrations
Processing request parameters
Using global settings to configure the implicit API
Creating parameterised CloudFormation stacks
Defining stack parameters
Referencing parameter values
Custom API domain names
Provide parameter values during deployment
Making stack parameters more user-friendly
Interesting experiments
7 Using external storage
Cloud storage options
Lambda access rights
Generating unique references
Using AWS resources from Lambda functions
Passing resource references to functions
Authorising access with IAM policies
Dealing with network timeouts
Interesting experiments
8 Cheaper, faster, serverless
Signing requests
Signed download URLs
Protecting S3 files
Interesting experiments
9 Handling platform events
Generating test events
Working with files
Working with asynchronous events
Avoiding circular references
Setting custom IAM policies
Handling asynchronous errors with dead letters
Conditional resources
Interesting experiments
10 Using application components
The AWS Serverless Application Repository
Lambda layers
Linking functions with layers
Invoking system utilities
Publishing to SAR
Interesting experiments
11 Managing sessions and user workflows
Moving session state out of Lambda functions
Resumable sessions
Minimise coordination
Moving static assets out of Lambda functions
Using S3 as a web server
Working with cross-origin resource sharing
Configuring S3 buckets for CORS
Configuring API Gateway for CORS
Uploading files to S3
Using custom resources to extend CloudFormation
Redeploying custom resources
Uploading files without the SAR component
Interesting experiments
12 Designing robust applications
API endpoints with path parameters
Designing with Ports and Adapters
Request processor
Infrastructure adapters
Lambda utility methods
Lambda entry code
Protecting against abuse
API throttling
Lambda throttling
Monitoring throttling
Interesting experiments
13 Deployment options
Think about jobs, not functions
One Lambda or many?
Aggregate processing data ownership
Aggregate code that needs to be consistent
Divide code around security boundaries
Divide code around CPU and memory needs
Divide tasks around timing restrictions
Sharing behaviour
Bundling shared libraries
Working with Lambda layers
Invoking one function from another
Sharing configuration
Interesting experiments
Where next?
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