The talk will focus on how we are utilizing AWS Lambda for certain applications and the advantages/disadvantages, and the challenges we discovered along the way. It would help those who are looking to reduce technical debt with the infrastructure and costs. Previously a Director of technical operations at fox networks (21st Century Fox/News Corporation) responsible for infrastructure and building deployment pipelines. Currently a Python programmer / DevOps engineer with roots in systems/networks administration. Focus is on infrastructure and application automation. Worked as an engineer for Cisco Systems with emphasis on video conferencing. Built microwave networks at Bel Air Internet. Find me on github and twitter @itsmemattchung Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLcElBUhfrQ Join DevOps Exchange London here: http://www.meetup.com/DevOps-Exchange-London Follow DOXLON on twitter http://www.twitter.com/doxlon

1. Serverless Architecture with AWS lambda
@itsmemattchung

2. Agenda
• Brief background about me
• Use Case / Problem
• Live Demo
• Lessons Learned

3. About Me
Roots in systems and networking. Primary
focus is software development
• Engineer @ Cisco Systems
• Director.Technical Operations @ Fox
Networks (NewsCorp / 21st Century
Fox)
• Python / DevOps @ Whalerock
Industries

4. What problem are we trying
to solve?
• Scheduled tasks
• Existing solutions
• Cron
• Celery beat
• RQ

5. What is AWS Lambda
"... a compute service where you can upload your code to AWS Lambda
and the service can run the code on your behalf using AWS
infrastructure."1
-- AWS Developer Guide
1
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=619362

6. Attending AWS re:Invent
2015
• Python / Django shop - Celery Beat with single instance scheduler
• Lambda as Cron: Scheduling Invocations in AWS Lambda
• Using CloudWatch to trigger alarm
• SNS topic to trigger AWS Lambda
There's got to be an EASIER way

7. AWS Announces support for
Cron

8. A few Core Principles
• Pre-production (i.e "DEV", "QA") and production environments
• Application logging
• Monitoring / Notifications
• Easy to deploy

9. Live Demo
• Trigger web performance tests on a scheduled basis using
SpeedCurve API.
Sample application
• Build
• Deploy
• Execute

10. How to separate
environments
Each function is its own "environment"
• DeploySpeedCurve-dev
• DeploySpeedCurve-staging
• DeploySpeedCurve-production

11. Use Case: Log Ingestion
service
• Akamai Netstorage
• AWS Lambda
• SumoLogic

12. Things I wished I knew
before
• Language support
• Limitations

13. Example code
var path = require('path');
path.parse(logfileToUpload)
....
TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method 'parse'
Worked locally, but NOT on AWS Lambda

14. Supported Languages
• Node.js: v0.10.36
• Java: Java 8
• Python: Python 2.7

15. Limitations

16. How to separate environments
Environment Variables

17. How to separate
environment variables (part
2)
• Download .env-$ENVIRONMENT from S3
• Invoke Build Process

18. How much did we spend the
last month?

19. Key Takeaways
• Treat file system as ephemeral
• What language version are you running?

20. Resources
How to create a deployment package
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-python-how-
to-create-deployment-package.html
AWS Lambda Limits
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/limits.html
Supported Language Versions
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/current-supported-
versions.html

21. Contact
Email: hello@itsmemattchung.com
GitHub / Twitter : @itsmemattchung