While writing an AWS Step Function, I needed to sort an array of objects by an object path -- something that was beyond the ability of the built-in intrinsic functions. It was easily done with a Lambda, but that struck me as overkill. Could I use something lightweight like CloudFront functions? Yes! In this post, I'll show how I use CloudFront as a performant, inexpensive REST API that runs on the edge.
Did you know that setting environment variables on a Lambda function could add over 20 ms to your coldstart times? In this post, I'll talk about how I discovered this and when it matters.
It is common to emit two log types; application logs and request logs from a service application. In EC2, ECS and Fargate these logs can be pumped to separate CloudWatch Log Groups using the CloudWatch Agent, FireLens and FluentBit. Unfortunately in Lambda, these logs can only go to one log group. In this post, I explore a method for pumping request logs to a separate log group to workaround this Lambda limitation.
Have you ever thought you understood the timeline of a request in AWS Lambda only to stare at your logs and traces and find out that you didn't? The official documentation has diagrams that look pretty, but don't convey everything that is important. In this post I'll present the infographic I use to understand what Lambda is doing and what is and isn't in the logs.
In November 2023, I noticed Lambda coldstarts were 40 ms - 300 ms slower because they unnecessarily loaded the SSO credentials provider. I cut a GitHub issue which was closed with wontfix. Fast forward to January 29, version 3.502 of the AWS JavaScript SDK was released to lazy load non-essential credentials providers. This is a big win, but you can still squeeze out more performance. In this post I'll show you how to make your coldstarts 35 ms faster.
I'm writing this year in review because it takes discipline, something I don't have. Also, reflecting on oneself allows you to ask the hard questions like "What does my tail look like and is it acceptable?"
Big coldstart will try anything. It’s bikeshedding. Git gud. Negligible at scale. Use the AWS SDK v3. Read this blog. Just use provisioned concurrency.
But the truth is, we aren’t holding it wrong and coldstarts aren’t all your fault. In this post, I fail to stay frosty. In fact I get spicy, and make the case that we shouldn’t lay off the pepper until we stopped getting blamed for AWS’s coldstart problem.