This document discusses unexpected use cases for AWS Lambda. It begins with an overview of Lambda and serverless applications. It then explores using Lambda with various AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, Kinesis, and more. Examples of unexpected uses include powering chatbots, processing logs, running untrusted code in sandboxes, and handling incident management. The document emphasizes focusing on business logic, reusing code, and testing quickly with Lambda.

1. © 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Randall Hunt, Technical Evangelist
April 2017
Lambda Can Do That?
Unexpected Places To Use AWS Lambda

2. Agenda
What is AWS Lambda?
What is a Serverless Application?
What are some unexpected use cases of AWS Lambda?
• Event Sources
• Orchestration Tools
• Third Party Libraries

3. What is AWS Lambda?

4. AWS compute offerings
VM Task Function
Service EC2 ECS Lambda
H/W OS Runtime
Unit of scale
Level of
abstraction

5. AWS compute offerings
I want to
configure
servers,
storage,
networking,
and my OS
I want to run
servers,
configure
applications,
and control
scaling
Run my
code when
it’s needed
Service EC2 ECS Lambda
How do I
choose?

6. AWS Lambda: Run code in response to events
FUNCTION SERVICES (ANYTHING)
Changes in
data state
Requests to
endpoints
Changes in
resource state
Node
Python
Java
C#
EVENT SOURCE

7. Using AWS Lambda
Bring your own code
• Node.js, Java, Python,
C#
• Bring your own libraries
(even native ones)
Simple resource model
• Select power rating from
128 MB to 1.5 GB
• CPU and network
allocated proportionately
Flexible use
• Synchronous or
asynchronous
• Integrated with other
AWS services
Flexible authorization
• Securely grant access to
resources and VPCs
• Fine-grained control for
invoking your functions

8. Using AWS Lambda
Authoring functions
• WYSIWYG editor or
upload packaged .zip
• Third-party plugins
(Eclipse, Visual Studio)
Monitoring and logging
• Metrics for requests,
errors, and throttles
• Built-in logs to Amazon
CloudWatch Logs
Programming model
• Use processes, threads,
/tmp, sockets normally
• AWS SDK built in
(Python and Node.js)
Stateless
• Persist data using
external storage
• No affinity or access to
underlying infrastructure

9. What are serverless
applications?

10. Servers
How will the application
handle server hardware failure?
How can I control
access from my servers?
When should I decide to
scale out my servers?
When should I decide to
scale up my servers?
What size servers are
right for my budget?
How much remaining
capacity do my servers have?
(AAHHHHHHHHH!!)

11. Operations and management Scaling
Provisioning and utilization Availability and fault tolerance
Owning servers means dealing with ...

12. Amazon API Gateway: Serverless APIs
Internet
Mobile Apps
Websites
Services
AWS Lambda
functions
AWS
API Gateway
Cache
Endpoints on
Amazon EC2
All publicly
accessible
endpoints
Amazon
CloudWatch
Monitoring
Amazon
CloudFront
Amazon
API Gateway
Any other
AWS service

13. No servers to provision
or manage
Scales with usage
Never pay for idle Availability and fault
tolerance built in
Benefits of Lambda and serverless compute

14. Common use cases
Web
Applications
• Static
websites
• Complex web
apps
• Packages for
Flask and
Express
Data
Processing
• Real time
• MapReduce
• Batch
Chatbots
• Powering
chatbot logic
Backends
• Apps &
services
• Mobile
• IoT
</></>
Amazon
Alexa
• Powering
voice-enabled
apps
• Alexa Skills
Kit
IT
Automation
• Policy engines
• Extending
AWS services
• Infrastructure
management

15. Unexpected Adventures in
Lambda and AWS

16. Amazon S3 Amazon
DynamoDB
Amazon
Kinesis
AWS
CloudFormation
AWS CloudTrail Amazon
CloudWatch
Amazon
Cognito
Amazon SNSAmazon
SES
Cron events
DATA STORES ENDPOINTS
CONFIGURATION REPOSITORIES EVENT/MESSAGE SERVICES
What can we do with these?
… and a few more with more on the way!
AWS
CodeCommit
Amazon
API Gateway
Amazon
Alexa
AWS IoT AWS Step
Functions

17. You can do anything.

19. When I need to iterate quickly
• Focus on the business logic
• Reuse don’t rewrite
• Test quickly locally and remotely
• Scale effortlessly

20. Focus On The Business Logic

21. Where am I? – Architecture
Mother
Lambda
function
Query
Response
Child
Information

22. Grab the location
import os
import foursquare
token = os.getenv('ACCESS_TOKEN')
client = foursquare.Foursquare(access_token=token)
def get_loc():
checkin = client.users.checkins(params={'limit':
1})['checkins']['items'][0]
venue = checkin['venue']
return {
'name': venue['name'], # name
'loc': [venue['location']['lat'], venue['location']['lng']],
'ts': checkin['createdAt'] #when
}

23. Handle The Event
def lambda_handler(event, context):
loc = get_loc()
return loc

24. DEMO

25. Architecture

26. Other Ideas

27. Other Ideas
• Alexa and HealthAI - @OliPicard
• Parsing logs when logstash is too slow -
@MartinJThwaites
• Sandboxes for untrusted code - @dasniko
• Processing DNA segments in parallel
• Incident Management - @celiturgay
• Cloudformation Custom Resources - @thelogicbox
• ffmpeg on s3 upload

28. Lessons
• Lambda can be invoked by **anything** or you can
figure out a way to make it happen.
• Don’t think about the code, think about the outcome and
work backwards.
• Iterate and test quickly with local code and fake events.