AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources for you, making it easy to build applications that respond quickly to new information. AWS Lambda starts running your code within milliseconds of an event such as an image upload, in-app activity, website click, or output from a connected device.

1. AWS Lambda: Event-driven Code
in the Cloud
Tom Maddox, Solutions Architect
September 24th, 2015 | London, UK

2. Our customers had some relatively simple problems
Maybe only 10 lines of code
Think thumbnail generation for an image
or
Validating the format of an address

3. That were solved with pretty complicated solutions
Scaling
Queuing
Deployment
Monitoring
Logging
Patching
Instance upgrades

4. What if every AWS service could generate events?
What if you could react to those events in a really
simple way?

5. Event-Driven Compute in the Cloud
Lambda functions: Stateless, request-driven code execution
• Triggered by events in other services:
• PUT to an Amazon S3 bucket
• Write to an Amazon DynamoDB table
• Record in an Amazon Kinesis stream
• Amazon SNS Message received
• Changes in Amazon Cognito data
• Makes it easy to…
• Transform data as it reaches the cloud
• Perform data-driven auditing, analysis, and notification
• Kick off workflows

6. AWS Lambda – General Availability
• Larger default limits
– 100 concurrent executions
– 1,000 invokes per second
– Increases available via AWS customer service
• Preview label removed
– Updated API based on feedback during preview
– Multiple Lambda functions per Kinesis stream

7. Data Triggers: Amazon S3
Amazon S3 Bucket Events AWS Lambda
Original image Image thumbnail
1
2
3

8. Data Triggers – Amazon Simple Notification Service
Lambda FunctionSNSCloudWatch
Metric

9. Data Triggers – Amazon Cognito
Lambda FunctionCognito

10. Data Triggers: Amazon DynamoDB
AWS LambdaAmazon DynamoDB
Table and Stream
Send SNS Push
notifications
Update another table

11. Data Triggers – Amazon Kinesis
IoT
Device
Kinesis Lambda DynamoDB

12. Demo: ClickStream processing with with
AWS Lambda

13. Demo Architecture

14. What We *Didn’t* Have to Do:
• Provision software or hardware infrastructure
• Plan capacity
• Understand fault tolerance boundaries
• Write code to scale up and out
• Implement monitoring
• Update operating systems or language runtimes
• …

15. Mobile Compute

16. Mobile Compute: Building Backends with Lambda
• Request/Response
• AWS Mobile SDK
• Easy Personalization
…for devices
…for end users
AWS LambdaMobile App

17. Event-Driven Compute in the Cloud and for Devices
• Request / response
– Create instantly scalable backends for mobile apps
– Run stateless computations for web apps without servers
– Build cloud-based IoT ecosystems using C/C++ libraries
– Complements the existing asynchronous functionality

18. AWS Mobile SDK
• Build high quality mobile apps quickly and easily.
• AWS Lambda now available in:
– AWS mobile SDK for Android
– AWS iOS mobile SDK
– API Gateway

19. AWS API Gateway

20. Easy Personalization
Which device is she using?
?
Which end user is this?
?

21. Key Benefits

22. No Infrastructure to Manage Automatically Scaling
Fine Grained PricingBring Your Own Code

23. Using AWS Lambda

24. Calling Lambda Functions
• Call from mobile or web apps
– Wait for a response or send an event and continue
– AWS SDK, AWS Mobile SDK, REST API, CLI
• Send events from Amazon S3 or SNS:
– One event per Lambda invocation, 3 attempts
• Process DynamoDB changes or Amazon Kinesis
records as events:
– Ordered model with multiple records per event
– Unlimited retries (until data expires)

25. Writing Lambda Functions
• The Basics
– Stock node.js or Java
– AWS SDK comes built in and ready to use
– Lambda handles inbound traffic
• Stateless
– Use S3, DynamoDB, or other Internet storage for persistent data
– Don’t expect affinity to the infrastructure (you can’t “log in to the box”)
• Familiar
– Use processes, threads, /tmp, sockets, …
– Bring your own libraries, even native ones

26. AWS Lambda or EC2 / ECS?
AWS Lambda
• Request-driven
• Prioritizes ease of use –
one OS, default hardware
choice
• AWS owns and manages
the infrastructure
• Implicit scaling; just make
requests
Amazon EC2 and ECS
• Infrastructure rental
• Flexible – choose
instance type, OS,
language, …
• You own and configure
the infrastructure
• Scale by provisioning
instances or containers

27. Dynamic content generation
based on incoming news text
and images
Real time log
processing for
prediction analytics
Thumbnailing
installation site photos
for mobile use
Real time processing and
recording of inbound traffic from
a range of social media
platforms
Large scale distributed
search across blog
content
Operational
analytics and real
time troubleshooting

28. Three Next Steps
1. Go to the AWS console to create and test your first Lambda
function. The first 1M requests each month are on us!
2. Use the AWS Mobile SDK and Lambda to quickly create an
instantly scalable mobile app.
3. Use AWS Lambda to add custom logic to S3, DynamoDB,
SNS, Kinesis, or Cognito events…no servers required!

29. LONDON