Tag: Amazon Lambda

faast.js – serverless batch computing made simple

faast.js is a new framework that makes writing serverless functions super easy. Read more about it in this introductory blog post:

Faast.js started as a side project to solve the problem of large scale software testing. Serverless functions seemed like a good fit because they could scale up to perform work in parallel, then scale down to eliminate costs when not being used. Even better, all infrastructure would be managed by the cloud provider. It seemed like a dream come true: a giant computer that could be as big as needed for the job at hand, yet could be rented in 100ms increments.
But trying to build this on AWS Lambda was challenging:
* Complex setup. Lambda throws you into the deep end with IAM roles, permissions, command line tools, web consoles, and special calling conventions. Lambda and other FaaS are oriented towards an event-based processing model, and not optimized for batch processing.
* Primitive package dependency support. Everything has to be packaged up manually in a zip file. Every change to the code or tests requires a manual re-deploy.
* Native packages. Common testing tools like puppeteer are supported only if they are compiled specially for Lambda.
* Persistent infrastructure. Logs, queues, and functions are left behind in the cloud after a job is complete. These incur costs and count towards service limits, so they need to be managed or removed, creating an unnecessary ops burden.
* Developer productivity. Debugging, high quality editor support, and other basic productivity tools are awkward or missing from serverless function development tooling.
Faast.js was born to solve these and many other practical problems, to make serverless batch processing as simple as possible.

And here’s the quick visualization of the architecture for you.

Building serverless apps with components from the AWS Serverless Application Repository

Last year, after attending the AWSome Day in Athens, I had a strong feeling that I’ll hear more and more about serverless applications and Lambda functions in the coming months. Turns out I wasn’t wrong.

As infrastructure moves from large dedicated servers through virtual machines to containers, so does the software, from large applications through libraries and components, all the way to individual functions and microservices.

“Building serverless apps with components from the AWS Serverless Application Repository” is just one recent blog post, illustrating how to utilize small components to build a serverless application. While the whole article is well worth a read, I found the link to AWS Serverless Application Repository particularly useful.

Scrolling through all the applications, I have to admit that they aren’t too many yet – a total of 435 at the time of this writing, and most haven’t been deployed widely (the most deployed one having only 28.9K deploys). But as with many other app stores and directories, this is a good start with many examples and some handy microservices already.

The most challenging thing for me, when it comes to microservices, is changing the way I think about applications. While I always try to build the smallest and simplest version first and then iterate it over and over, thinking of a collection of smaller functions and services doesn’t happen easy. I guess, like with everything, this approach needs time and practice to settle in.

Serverless PHP on AWS Lambda

For all those of you who want to try out Amazon Lambda with PHP, here’s a quick and simple guide as to how to set it up: Serverless PHP on AWS Lambda.

This is some pretty exciting stuff!