Serverless a superpower for frontend developers

serverless:
by Yan Cui
@theburningmonk

@theburningmonk theburningmonk.com

hey guys, vote on this post
and I’ll announce a winner at
10PM tonight

10PM
traffic

10PM
traffic
70-100x

system couldn’t fast enough

updates required 30 mins downtime

features took months to deliver

Dan North
“lead time to someone saying thank you is the
only reputation metric that matters.”

6 months, 6 devs

95% cost saving compared to existing EC2-based solution

velocity went from months to days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evsz__BDprs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evsz__BDprs
AppSync
DynamoDB
Lambda

Yan Cui
http://theburningmonk.com
@theburningmonk
AWS user for 10 years

Yan Cui
@theburningmonk
http://bit.ly/yubl-serverless

Yan Cui
@theburningmonk
Developer Advocate @

Yan Cui
@theburningmonk
Independent Consultant
advisetraining delivery

2010

users are distributed
around the world
systems have to be
available 24/7

millions of unique daily-active users

SCALABILITY
RESILIENCE
SECURITY

SCALABILITY
RESILIENCE
SECURITY
SPEED

networking
set up VPC
set up public subnet
set up private subnet
set up Internet Gateway
set up NAT Gateway
configure Route Tables
configure Network ACL
configure Security Groups

networking VMs
apply patches
install dependencies
create base AMI
set up auto-scaling
set up multi-AZ
set up load balancer
conﬁgure IAM roles
set up logging agent
set up VPC
set up NAT Gateway

networking VMs
apply patches
create base AMI
set up auto-scaling
set up multi-AZ
application
set up web server
conﬁgure middlewares
set up VPC
set up NAT Gateway

networking VMs
apply patches
create base AMI
set up auto-scaling
set up multi-AZ
application
set up web server
write 1st line of
business logic
set up VPC
set up NAT Gateway

networking VMs
apply patches
create base AMI
set up auto-scaling
set up multi-AZ
application
set up web server
write 1st line of
business logic
set up VPC
set up NAT Gateway
the only thing the
customer cares about!

networking VMs
apply patches
create base AMI
set up auto-scaling
application
set up web server
write 1st line of
business logic
set up VPC
set up NAT Gateway
mooooo..

but, nonetheless… they’re important for setting you up to succeed

spinning up a web-server a production-ready environment!===

“we ain’t gonna need it”

“we ain’t gonna need it”
translation: “we will never be successful”

trafﬁc
holy crap, we’ve
got traction!

trafﬁc
oh no… our server died!

prepare for success

isn’t the savior?

0
Theory
“it works on
my machine!”
“production
ready!”days

0
Theory
“it works on
my machine!”
“production
ready!”
0
Reality
“it works on
my machine!”
“production
ready!”
days
days

mooooo..

scale

scale complexity

but our cognitive capacity hasn’t increased…

leverage: do more with less

EC2
EC2

EC2
EC2
we’re still managing
infrastructure

https://bit.ly/2Im61VK
“Unless you’re an infrastructure company,
infrastructure is basically overhead.”
Matt Klein

infrastructure
you

Serverless means…
don’t pay for it if no-one uses it
don’t need to worry about scaling
don’t need to provision and manage servers

“Serverless”

Gojko Adzic
It is serverless the same way
WiFi is wireless.
http://bit.ly/2yQgwwb

“Function-as-a-Service”
AWS Lambda
Azure Functions
Google Cloud Functions
Auth0 Webtask
Spotinst Functions Kubeless
IBM Cloud Functions

AWS Lambda
API Gateway IOT SNS Kinesis CloudWatch

Why serverless?

more Scalable

100% SERVERLESS
IN PRODUCTION

80 MILLION
MONTHLY USERS

Cheaper
(don’t pay for idle servers)

Resilience
(built-in redundancy and multi-AZ)

Secure

idea production
amazing VELOCITY from idea to product

idea production
choose language
+ framework
master language
+ framework
figure out
deployment
configure AMI
configure ELB
configure
autoscaling
capacity planning
over-provision for
launch
are we doing
microservices?
configure CI/CD

truly “fullstack” developers are rare, and expensive

AWS
Scalability
Resilience
Security
DevOps
Distributed
Systems
JavaScript
CSS
HTML
SPA Framework
Responsive
Design
Debugging

what you need to know to build a production-ready backend on AWS
EC2 / Containers Serverless

frontend focused teams can delay the point when they need a backend specialist

backend engineers can get so much more done with less effort and stress

what you need to know to build a production-ready backend on AWS
EC2 / Containers Serverless
AWS basics, DynamoDB,
Lambda, SNS, etc.

AppSync
DynamoDB
Lambda
ElasticSearch

focus your time and energy on improving the UX

the backend should “just work”

the backend should “just work”
it shouldn’t be THAT hard, and it doesn’t have to

don’t use callbacks, use async-await

avoid mixing callbacks with Promises

too sequential

missing Promise.all

async-await in forEach

not useing AWS SDK’s .promise()

INITIALISE
CONTAINER
INITIALISE
RUNTIME
INITIALISE
HANDLER
YOUR CODE
EXECUTES

INITIALISE
CONTAINER
INITIALISE
RUNTIME
INITIALISE
HANDLER
YOUR CODE
EXECUTES
COLD START

“cold starts only happen to the ﬁrst request”

function invocationconcurrent execution
i.e. a container

function invocationconcurrent execution
i.e. a container
class instance method call

Lambda scales the number of concurrent executions based on trafﬁc

existing “containers” are reused where possible

time
invocation

time
invocation
invocation

time
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation

time
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation

time
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation

time
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation
invocation invocation

FREQUENCY DURATION

FREQUENCY DURATION
dictated by user trafﬁc,
out of your control

FREQUENCY DURATION
optimize this!

if you need good cold start performance
DON’T run express.js in a Lambda

“Lambda is not a suitable solution for me because of cold starts”

“what is your latency requirement?”

cold starts that don’t add to user-facing latency is
generally not worth worrying about

sporadic spikes latency existed before Lambda

GC pauses…

overloaded servers…

slow downstream, databases, etc.

networking issues…

cold starts is generally not an issue if you have a steady trafﬁc pattern

time
req/s

time
req/s
El Classico

time
req/s
lunch dinner

minimise the duration of cold starts so they
fall within acceptable latency range

require speciﬁc clients instead of the full AWS SDK

use webpack to bundle functions during deployment

then, consider using Provisioned Concurrency as a fallback

time
req/s
lunch dinner
Provisioned
Concurrency

time
req/s
lunch dinner
Provisioned
Concurrency
On-Demand
Concurrency

there are no silver bullets

Provisioned Concurrency is a powerful tool
IFF you have a cold start problem
DON’T use it by default

theburningmonk.com/hire-me
AdviseTraining Delivery
“Fundamentally, Yan has improved our team by increasing our
ability to derive value from AWS and Lambda in particular.”
Nick Blair
Tech Lead

homeschool.dev/class/production-ready-serverless
15% OFF WITH “YANPRS15”

@theburningmonk
theburningmonk.com
github.com/theburningmonk
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Serverless a superpower for frontend developers

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