Richard Boyd discusses enhancing DevOps using AWS Step Functions, focusing on serverless architecture and problem-solving using a specific use case involving MS SQL database dumps in S3. The presentation covers patterns for reusing AWS Lambdas, the workings of Step Functions, and concludes with a demo of integrating multiple Lambdas within a Step Function. The session aims to simplify state machines and express business processes through automated steps.

1. Stepping Up Your DevOps With
Step Functions

2. HELLO!
I’m Richard Boyd
I’m a Senior Technical Account Manager at AWS.
You can find me at:
@richardboydii
or
https://richardboydii.com
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3. What I’ll Discuss
○ How I Solved a Problem
○ Serverless and Step Functions, Briefly
○ A Pattern for Re-using Lambdas
○ How Step Functions Work
○ Demo Time
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4. Part 1 - How I Solved a
Problem
And stumbled across a solution that
expanded my horizons

5. The Problem
MS SQL database dump is
put in an S3 bucket
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1
MS SQL database dump is
put in an S3 bucket
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DB access needs to be
restored from AD
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The EDW Team needs to
be informed
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6. The Solution
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7. What is Serverless
○ Serverless is a fancy buzzword that means
your code runs in a short-lived execution
environment (in a container)
○ There are still servers, but you don’t have
to worry about them (someone else will,
maybe)
○ Your code executes in response to events
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8. Part 2 - Serverless and
Step Functions, Briefly
A quick overview before we dive in in the
next two sections

9. Lamb(da) Dissection
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10. Step Functions
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11. Part 3 - A Pattern for
Reusing Lambdas
Build them for scale and composability
using this approach

12. Unix-Like Lambdas
○ Most serverless frameworks (SAM,
Spartan, Serverless) focus on creating an
application with other components
○ When it comes to operations-oriented
Lambdas, you need to build them with a
Unix mindset
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13. Build it Like a Function
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14. Part 4 - How Step
Functions Work
Build them for scale and composability
using this approach

15. What is a State Machine
○ A Finite State Machine can express an
algorithm as a number of states, their
relationships, and their input and output
○ That’s a mouthful and very mathy
○ Instead, let’s make it more simple
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16. Something More Concrete
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Express a business process as a logical
sequence of automated steps

17. States
Each step in defines the
action to take and what
step to go to next
State Machine Components
Tasks
The things that do your
work, can be Lambdas or
Activities (daemons that
run on your
infrastructure
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18. Part 5 - Demo Time
Tying it all together

19. The Setup
○ We’re going to use several Lambdas in a
Step Function
○ We’ll use an invoking Lambda to build our
data structure
○ The data structure will drive the rest of the
Step Function execution
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20. The Architecture
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21. The Setup
Demo Gods be kind ...
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22. THANKS!
Any questions?
You can find me at:
@richardboydii
https://richardboydii.com
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