Heard about Function as a Service or FAAS? Here's an overview of what AWS Lambdas are and how it helped Oath. We also review external use cases of FAAS.

1. Using AWS Lambdas
in the Real World

2. Hi! My name is Eliot.
Are you a backend, frontend engineer, or some other cool
specialization?
Do you have any cloud experience?
Has anyone worked with Lambdas before?
2
Before We Start

3. Tell you about myself
Tell you about Oath
Tell you what I do at Oath
Explain Function as a Service
Challenges at Oath
Challenges others are facing
3
Goals

4. I’m a husband and a dad from Baltimore
I’m a Principal Architect at Oath
I’ve been with Ad.com, Aol, and Verizon for 11 years
I’m an inventor
After hours: Board Member, Advisor, Volunteer, and Mentor
4
About Me

5. Twitter: @eliotpearson
LinkedIn: eliotpearson
Email: eliot.pearson@gmail.com
Github: eliotpearson
Medium: @eliotpearson
5
About Me

6. 6
About Oath
Source

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About Oath
Did you know Yahoo created Hadoop in 2006?
Need to process a big data set
efficiently?
You should take a look at Vespa!

8. 8
About Oath
Here are some
cool projects
worth checking
out!

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What I do at Oath
{{Advertising}}
&
{{API}}

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*AAS Models
Source: Abstracting the Back-end with FaaS by John McKim

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FaaS or Serverless Computing
You may hear people refer to Function as a Service or FAAS as Serverless. The core idea is that you are
not concerned about the hosting infrastructure. You only care about the function.
Source: https://blog.alexellis.io/introducing-functions-as-a-service/
A perspective of a thought leader on the topic.

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Lambdas @ Oath
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13. How Painful Are Your
Scheduled Jobs?
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Use Case - Scheduled Jobs

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Use Case - Scheduled Jobs

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Use Case - Scheduled Jobs

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Use Case - Scheduled Jobs
A Pain Point - We had a lot idle hardware not being fully utilized
A Pro - Solution is cheaper than previous incarnation
A Con - This solution only worked on our cloud components

18. How Are You Dealing
with External Data?
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Use Case - External Data

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Use Case - External Data

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Use Case - External Data
A Pain Point - Trouble communicating arrival of external data
A Pro - Didn’t touch the existing flow to increase communication
A Con - Easily becomes a one-off

22. Can I have a lookup
API?
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Use Case - Looking API
Coding Example

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Use Case - Lookup API
A Pain Point - A customer needs data we don’t manage
A Pro - Very flexible and easy to setup
A Con - Becomes more infrastructure to manage

25. Before moving on,
a few things...
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Potential Pitfalls
We have many one-off Lambdas
Don’t treat a Lambda like a long lived process
Dependencies aren’t updated as much as other code
Security can be a challenge

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External Lambdas
27

28. It’s November 1971, and
it’s a snow day.
How do you let
everyone know school
is closed?
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29Source: Flickr

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Use Case - Phone Tree
Who has the most work and who has the least?

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Use Case - Phone Tree
Who has the most work?

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Use Case - Phone Tree
Does this cost less than other solutions?

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Use Case - Phone Tree
Source: http://www.costowl.com/b2b/call-center-autodialer-cost.html
Why is education so expensive? Stuff like this!

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Use Case - Phone Tree
A Pain Point - Some schools are plagued with this problem
A Pro - Alert parents on multiple channels with ease
A Con - A very custom solution

35. Will Lambdas Work for
Advertising?
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Use Case - Vidroll

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Use Case - Vidroll
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/vidroll/

38. Did You Know Accepting
Payments Can Be Expensive?
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Source: https://www.highsnobiety.com/2015/07/27/most-expensive-sneakers-2015-q2/
This is the second most expensive. Do you know the most expensive?

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Use Case - Dirt Cheap
Recurring Payments

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Use Case - Dirt Cheap
Recurring Payments
Source: http://normal-extensions.com/2017/05/05/simple-recurring/
{{LAMBDA}} +

42. Wait, we only talked about
cloud based solutions. What if
I run my own data center?
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43. Use Case - Running
Functions in O & O DCs

44. Use Case - Running
Functions in O & O DCs
Open FAAS give you an abstraction layer
You can run on existing hardware, public, or private cloud
I’m looking into this one in the future

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Cool Stuff to Check Out
Code in the Schools - Teaching Computer Science to kids
through gaming
Digital Harbor Foundation - Dedicated to fostering learning,
creativity, productivity, and community through education
Baltimore Robotics Center - Robots+Kids+STEM=Cool
Code for the Demo - Examples I walked through

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Thank you for your time!
I really do appreciate you taking the time to listen me. Do you
have any questions?