Measure and Increase Developer Productivity with Help of Serverless at Serverless Architecture Conference Berlin 2020

Measure and increase developer
productivity with the help of
Serverless
by Christian Bannes and Vadym Kazulkin, ip.labs GmbH, 14.10.2020

Contact
Vadym Kazulkin
ip.labs GmbH
v.kazulkin@iplabs.de
@VKazulkin
@ServerlessBonn (Meetup)
Christian Bannes
ip.labs GmbH
c.bannes@iplabs.de
xing.com/profile/Christian_Bannes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadymkazulkin/
https://www.iplabs.de/

Ip.labs GmbH
https://www.iplabs.de/

Let’s talk about the
challenges of the
software development in
general first

Cognitive Load –
the total amount of mental effort
being used in the working memory
• Intrinsic
• Extraneous
• Germane
https://teamtopologies.com/

Cognitive Load
• Intrinsic
• How to write a Java class or use a framework
(Spring)
• Extraneous
• Germane

Cognitive Load
• Intrinsic
• Extraneous
• How to automate tests (unit, integration, end-to-end, web, desktop, mobile)
• How to build, package, deploy and run my application
• How to configure monitoring, alerting, auto-scaling, logging and tracing
• How to operate and maintain infrastructure
• How to build-in fault-tolerance and resiliency
• How to make the hardware, networking and application secure
• Germane

Cognitive Load
• Intrinsic
• Extraneous
• Germane
• Domain Knowledge (payment, e-commerce)
• Business processes and workflows

Cognitive Load
• Intrinsic ->
become fluent in it
• Extraneous ->
minimize amount of what we
implement/operate/support/own by ourselves
• Germane ->
minimize amount of what we have to implement
by ourselves

Productivity
We are productive if we regularly ship products,
which are successfully used by our customers

What is holding us back from
being productive?
Technical Debt - reflects the implied cost
of additional rework caused by choosing an
easy (limited) solution now instead of using
a better approach that would take longer
”The Cost of Poor Quality Software in the US: A 2018 Report”
https://www.it-cisq.org/the-cost-of-poor-quality-software-in-the-us-a-2018-report/The-Cost-of-Poor-Quality-Software-in-the-US-2018-Report.pdf

Technical Debt
• Even a perfect solution can become the
technical debt over the time
• Version of programming language comes
out of support (Java 8, JS Frameworks)
• Security considerations forces us to
upgrade one of our dependencies (library
or web application server version)
• One of our dependencies (e.g. to open
source project) is discontinued

Technical Debt
Think of what can happen to your software over
the entire life cycle of our product

Technical Debt
• is related to amount of code written
• is related to amount of dependencies used
• open source projects, programming
languages, databases, (web) application
servers

Legacy Systems are systems that can’t
evolve
”The Cost of Poor Quality Software in the US: A 2018 Report”
https://www.it-cisq.org/the-cost-of-poor-quality-software-in-the-us-a-2018-report/The-Cost-of-Poor-Quality-Software-in-the-US-2018-Report.pdf
Legacy System

Evolutionary Architecture –
supports guided, incremental
change across multiple dimensions
• Incremental change
• Appropriate architectural coupling
• Fitness functions
”Architectural Coupling” https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/building-evolutionary-architectures/9781491986356/ch04.html

Fitness functions
• Source code metrics (such as measuring
cyclomatic complexity)
• Unit tests (% of coverage and % of success)
• Performance metrics (such as API latency or
throughput)
• Security (encryption at rest, e.g. checking that all S3
buckets have encryption enabled, or automatic key rotation
for all external APIs, with tools such as the AWS Secrets
Manager)
• ArchUnit, Sonar, CI/CD Tools
Danilo Poccia „ Serverless + Evolutionary Architectures + Safe Deployments = Speed in the Right Direction”
https://blog.usejournal.com/serverless-evolutionary-architectures-safe-deployments-speed-in-the-right-direction-7b4b01e27254

The Value Proposition of
Serverless
But let’s talk about of Total Cost of Ownership of
the Serverless paradigm

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Forrest Brazeal „The Business Case For Serverless” https://www.trek10.com/blog/business-case-for-serverless

No Infrastructure Maintenance
Is infrastructure maintenance and
operation your core competency ?

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Auto Scaling and
Fault Tolerance
Built in

Auto Scaling And Faul Tolerance
Built In
• Can you get capacity planning
and auto scaling right?
• Do you want to solve the hard problem
of fault tolerance by yourself?

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Auto Scaling and
Fault Tolerance
Built in
Do more with less

Do more with less
By heavily relying on the managed
Serverless services you
• Need fewer engineers to start
implementing your new product idea
• Can do more with the same amount of
people

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Auto Scaling and
Fault Tolerance
Built in
Do more with less
Lower technical
debt

Lower technical debt
• Whatever code you write today is always tomorrow’s technical
debt © Paul Johnston
• Less code means lower technical debt
• Time and effort required for maintaining the solution over its whole
lifecycle is by far much more than for developing it
Jeff Atwood „The Best Code is No Code At All” https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-all/
Paul Johnston “Cloud 2.0: Code is no longer King — Serverless has dethroned it”
https://medium.com/@PaulDJohnston/cloud-2-0-code-is-no-longer-king-serverless-has-dethroned-it-c6dc955db9d5

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Auto Scaling and
Fault Tolerance
Built in
Do more with less
Lower technical
debt
Focus on Business
Value and Innovation

Focus On Business Value and
Innovation
Every organization wants exactly this!

TCO Full Picture
No Infrastructure
Operation and
Maintenance
Auto Scaling and
Fault Tolerance
Built in
Do more with less
Lower technical
debt
Faster Time to
Market
Focus on Business
Value and Innovation

Faster Time To Market
• Time To Market is the key differentiator in
today’s business!
• Ask yourself: what is core for your business
and what you can get as Commodity +(Utility)
as a Service?

Serverless Mindset at ip.labs
“Accelerate Innovation and Maximize Business Value with Serverless Applications”
https://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/accelerate-innovation-and-maximize-business-value-with-serverless-applications-srv212r1-aws-reinvent-2018

Serverless Mindset at ip.labs
If AWS offers a managed service with acceptable price
and „good enough“ feature set, use it
• AWS-native aka Serverless is your first option.
• For the price consider the Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO)
If market offers a managed service with acceptable price
and „good enough“ feature set, buy/rent it
• PagerDuty instead of CloudWatch Alarm
• Akamai or Digital Ocean CDN instead of AWS
CloudFront
If you have to manage it by yourself, manage it • Prometheus/Grafana instead of AWS CloudWatch
If you can reconsider requirements, do it • Narrow the scope, get 80% of what you need
from AWS or market, instead of building or hosting it
yourself
• Get faster time to market, don‘t lose the focus
• AWS AppConfig instead of own Feature Toggle
solution
• AWS Step Functions instead of Camunda BPMN
If you have to build it, own it • Business logic in the core domains
Jared Short https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1100887501047132160?lang=de

How to measure success
See DORA State of DevOps 2018-2019 Reports

Software Delivery and
Operational Performance

Example: strategies to reduce
time to restore service

Blue-Green
deployment
“Win-Win Deployment Strategies for Modern Apps” https://rollbar.com/blog/deployment-strategies/
Canary
deployment

AWS Lambda Deployment
Best Practices:
• API Gateway Stage variables and Lambda
Aliases
• Lambda Alias Traffic Shifting
Chris Munns: “Testing and Deployment Best Practices for AWS Lambda-Based Applications”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJQDAsWm-5k&list=LLYgjRSI2oCzI9eooyFrWR7A&index=1

AWS Lambda Deployment
Best Practices
• AWS Lambda Alias Canary and Linear Traffic
Shifting & AWS SAM Safe Deployments
• CloudWatch Rollback Alarms & Lambda hooks
Chris Munns: “Testing and Deployment Best Practices for AWS Lambda-Based Applications”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJQDAsWm-5k&list=LLYgjRSI2oCzI9eooyFrWR7A&index=1

Time Spent

Wardley Maps
Simon Wardley https://www.slideshare.net/swardley/why-the-fuss-about-serverless-88107645
Co-evolution of practices
to become productive
with Serverless

Co-evolution of practices with
Serverless 1/2
• True DevOps (even DevSecOps)
• FinDev responsibilities in the teams
• Complete infrastructure automation
• Chaos Engineering
Sheen Brisals “Why the ‘WHY’ matters more than the ‘WHAT’ in Serverless!”
https://medium.com/lego-engineering/why-the-why-matters-more-than-the-what-in-serverless-2ef56c397962
DevOps Topologies: https://web.devopstopologies.com/

Co-evolution of practices with
Serverless 2/2
• Each developer has its own (AWS test) account
• No local testing environment or only for quick
functional tests
• Testing in production
Michael Bryzek “What do you know about testing in production?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ATZTUgaAo

Using Serverless ecosystem
with the right engineering practices in place will
significantly reduce
• extraneous and germane cognitive load
• the amount of code written

How to write less code with
AWS Serverless services 1/3
• Write fewer Lambda functions
• use direct AWS service integrations in case the Lambda only
calls the AWS service itself

Less Lambda functions means less:
• code to write, test, run and maintain
• CI/CD (deploy, rollback strategies) to maintain
• Infrastructure as a Code (IAM policies, permission) to write and test
• cold-start worries
• point of failures and retries
• security concerns
• worries about Lambda limits (e.g. concurrency settings per AWS account)
• spending on Lambda, CloudWatch and 3rd party SaaS on (AWS) (monthly) bill
Sheen Brisals “Don’t wait for Functionless. Write less Functions instead”
https://medium.com/lego-engineering/dont-wait-for-functionless-write-less-functions-instead-8f2c331cd651

• Write fewer Lambda functions
• use more direct service integrations in case the Lambda only calls the
Service itself
• Write less Infrastructure as a Code
• applies not only for Lambda but also to other services like AppSync
• Use (AWS) Services/Frameworks which provide meaningful abstractions
• Amplify Framework or Serverless Framework Components

• API Gateway Service Integration
• HTTP APIs Storage-First Service
Integration
• Step Functions Service Integration
• Event Bridge Filtering and Routing
• Lambda Destinations
• AppSync and Direct Lambda
Resolvers
• Amplify Framework
• Serverless Framework
Components

Sheen Brisals “Don’t wait for Functionless. Write less Functions instead”
https://medium.com/lego-engineering/dont-wait-for-functionless-write-less-functions-instead-8f2c331cd651
API Gateway Service Integration

API Gateway Service Integration with
Dynamo DB : Example ID generator 1/2
Sheen Brisals “Sequence Numbering in Serverless via API Gateway”
https://medium.com/lego-engineering/sequence-numbering-in-serverless-via-api-gateway-40e5f6c83e93
https://github.com/ToQoz/api-gateway-mapping-template

API Gateway Service Integration with
Dynamo DB : Example ID generator 2/2
Sheen Brisals “Sequence Numbering in Serverless via API Gateway”
https://medium.com/lego-engineering/sequence-numbering-in-serverless-via-api-gateway-40e5f6c83e93
https://github.com/ToQoz/api-gateway-mapping-template

Eric Johnson “https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/compute/building-storage-first-applications-with-http-apis-service-integrations/”
HTTP APIs Storage-First Service
Integration
• Event Bridge
• Kinesis Data Streams
• SQS
• AppConfig
• Step Functions

Step Functions Service Integration
“Service Integrations with AWS Step Functions” https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/concepts-service-integrations.html

Event Bridge Filtering and Routing
“Reducing custom code by using advanced rules in Amazon EventBridge”
https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/compute/reducing-custom-code-by-using-advanced-rules-in-amazon-eventbridge/

Lambda Destinations
“Introducing AWS Lambda Destinations” https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/compute/introducing-aws-lambda-destinations/
https://www.trek10.com/blog/lambda-destinations-what-we-learned-the-hard-way

AppSync and Direct Lambda
Resolvers
https://aws.amazon.com/de/appsync
“Introducing Direct Lambda Resolvers: AWS AppSync GraphQL APIs without VTL” https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/mobile/appsync-direct-lambda/

Amplify Framework
https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/?nc1=h_ls

Serverless Framework Components
https://www.serverless.com/blog/what-are-serverless-components-how-use

Using Serverless ecosystem will
with the right engineering practices in place will
significantly reduce
• extraneous and germane cognitive load
• the amount of code written
• amount of dependencies (no execution runtime and web
application server to take care of)

Serverless with the focus on you
core domains will enable
• iterative development mind set
• experimentation culture
• focus on business value innovation and
faster time to market
• evolutionary architectures

supports guided, incremental
change across multiple dimensions
• Incremental change
• Appropriate architectural coupling
• Fitness functions
”Architectural Coupling” https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/building-evolutionary-architectures/9781491986356/ch04.html
• Serverless ecosystem supports
evolutionary architectures really
well
• All Serverless solutions often
suffer from the “Antipattern:
Last 10% Trap”

AWS Serverless ecosystem
Overview of the recent major
improvements

Architecture and
workloads types
• Event-driven
• API-driven
• Batch Job
• Internal Tool
• ML/AI
• Big Data
Image: flickr.com/photos/everywhereatonce/294789504 Christian Bannes and Vadym Kazulkin @VKazulkin , ip.labs GmbH

Lambda Layers
& Lambda
Runtime API
Door opener for use
cases like:
• Big Data
• ML/AI
Christian Bannes and Vadym Kazulkin @VKazulkin , ip.labs GmbH

A Shared File
System for Your
Lambda
Functions
Door opener for use
case like:
• ML/AI

Provisioned
Concurrency for
Lambda Functions

Lambda functions
as targets for
Application Load
Balancers

HTTP APIs in Beta
70% cheaper as API Gateway
• Fewer configuration options
• Well-suited for most use-cases

DynamoDB
On-Demand
Capacity mode

Jeremy Daly: “Mixing VPC and Non-VPC Lambda Functions for Higher Performing Microservices”
https://www.jeremydaly.com/mixing-vpc-and-non-vpc-lambda-functions-for-higher-performing-microservices/ Vadym Kazulkin @VKazulkin , ip.labs GmbH
Lambda behind the
Virtual Private
Cloud (VPC)

Lambda behind the VPC
• The network interface creation happens
when Lambda function is created or its
VPC settings are updated
• Reduced additional cold start from approx.
10 seconds to below 1 second
Chris Munns: "Announcing improved VPC networking for AWS Lambda functions”
https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/compute/announcing-improved-vpc-networking-for-aws-lambda-functions/

Amazon Aurora
Serverless Data
API as beta for MySql
and Postgres available
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/de_de/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/data-api.html Christian Bannes and Vadym Kazulkin @VKazulkin , ip.labs GmbH

RDS Proxy –
Generally Available
for Aurora MySQL, Aurora
PostgreSQL, RDS MySQL
and RDS PostgreSQL

Compute
Savings Plans
now cover AWS
Lambda Usage

Recent CloudWatch Improvements
• Search over multiple Log Groups became possible
• CloudWatch Logs Insights
• enables you to interactively search and analyze your
log data in Amazon CloudWatch Logs
• Embedded Metric Format
• JSON specification used to instruct CloudWatch Logs to
automatically extract metric values embedded in
structured log events.

Further Improvement Areas for
Serverless Ecosystem 1/2
• EFS improvements
• Enable calling Lambda upon EFS Events (file created or updated)
• Integrate with AWS compliance and governance services e.g.
AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail like S3 does
• CloudWatch improvements
• Observability (no match to Lumigo or Epsagon)
• Alarms (no match to PagerDuty or Lumigo or Epsagon)

Further Improvement Areas for
Serverless Ecosystem 2/2
• CodeCommit improvements
• not nearly comparable to GitHub and BitBucket
• X-Ray support for all (async) Serverless services
• EventBridge

Serverless in practice
( for large scale projects)
Situation at ip.labs
• Hybrid (still having monolithic java application)
• One team completely serverless for two years
• Another team just started using serverless only technology

Reduce handover
between Teams
https://hackingchristianity.net/2014/07/justice-is-not-a-sprint-or-a-marathon.html

Before we went serverless...
• Central system administration team
• Tickets prioritized
• Lead to waiting time
Waiting = WASTE

No low level administration
• No need for low level administration at networking level
• No servers and no OS
• Less interaction with administration team

Responsibility Shift
• Still need for operation
• Serverless = Devops
• Less waiting time means you go faster

Less Code
https://www.flickr.com/photos/qubodup/16258492451

Managed Services
• Use managed services for generic subdomains
• Example: Authentication with Cognito

Live Demo
• Static webpage on S3
• API via Http API Gateway
• Authentication via Cognito
• JWT Authorizer

Organize lambdas
around business
domain

Architecture for serverless
• 'just functions' - no need for architecture?
• Architecture = long term investment
• Important for large scale projects

Organize lambdas around business domain
Domain

Organize lambdas around bussiness
domain
...
Subdomain
...
Identity
& Access

Organize lambdas around bussiness
domain
Product Portfolio
Identity
& Access
...
...
Bounded
Context
Product
Inventory
Shop
Integration

Product Inventory Bounded Context
Bounded
Context

Use Case = One Lambda Function
Use Case

Communication via Events
Communication via
events

Shared Infrastructure
Shared
infrastructure

Namespacing Data
• Each service operates only on
its own data
• HashKey with namespace
prefix
• Policy ensures service can only
access it's own data
• Fine grained access control

Subdomain = Independant Application
Product Portfolio
Identity
& Access
...
...
Product
Inventory
Shop
Integration

Separate business
from
infrastructure logic
https://pixabay.com/de/photos/stra%C3%9Fenverkehr-kreuzung-kreisel-971205/

Why you should separate
• Evolve technology and business independently
• Expect technology changes in the future
• Refactor technology without changing business code

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_architecture_(software)
Ports & Adapters
• Interface in language of your
domain = ports
• Implementation = adapters
• Inject the implementation into your
domain

Ports & Adapters implementation
Adapters
Ports

Ports & Adapters implementation
Business method
depens on interfaces
Convert intput to domain
object
Adapters for injection

Automate
everything
https://pixabay.com/de/photos/roboter-arm-technologie-roboterarm-2791671/

• Infrastructure as Code is a MUST
• Create a CLI for scaffolding & common tasks
Automation

• Creates serverless.yml with predefined settings
• Project scaffolding
• Deployment pipeline
CLI usage
cli create:service product-inventory

Continuous Delivery
• Codepipeline for deployments
• One Pipeline for one service
• Every commit on master triggers deployment

Measure and Increase Developer Productivity with Help of Serverless at Serverless Architecture Conference Berlin 2020

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