Serverless is always evolving (faster than any definition) and each year new capabilities simplify existing workloads and enable new applications to be implemented in an easier, more efficient way. At AWS, we have focused on improving observability, configuration management, functions invocations, service integrations, and execution environments. Looking at some of the more recent updates, this session is introducing the reasoning behind the new features, and how to use them to reduce your architecture complexity, including real world examples of what AWS customers are doing, so that you can focus on creating value for YOUR customers.

1. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
Uri Segev
Principal Serverless Solutions Architect
Boaz Ziniman
Principal Developer Advocate
What Can You Do with Serverless
…in 2020 ?

2. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
How does Serverless work?
Storage
Databases
Analytics
Machine Learning
. . .
Your
unique
business
logic
User uploads a picture
Customer data updated
Anomaly detected
API call
. . .
Fully-managed
services
Events
Functions

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Serverless in December 2014… and the first half of 2015
Thumbnails Generators!
S3 Bucket Lambda Function
S3 Bucket

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Serverless in the first half of 2015
Static
Content
Generators!
S3 Bucket Lambda Function
S3 Bucket

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Serverless in the first half of 2015
Dynamic
Websites & Apps!
Browser
JavaScript
DynamoDB
Table
S3 Bucket
Lambda Function
AWS SDK
Lambda Invoke

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Serverless in the second half of 2015… and later on!
APIs!
”Alexa!” & IoT
Microservices
DevOps
Browser
Web APIs
Amazon Echo
IoT Devices
Services
Data Streams
DynamoDB
Table
S3 Bucket
Lambda Function
API
Gateway
Schedule

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Over the years, customers shared some concerns…
New
Paradigm
Scalability Costs
Latency
Language
Support

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Observability Configuration
Management
Function
Invocations
Execution
Environment
Service
Integrations
So what have we been focusing on?

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Latency
Observability
Configuration
Management
Function
Invocations
Execution
Environment
Service
Integrations
Language
Support
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm

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Function
Invocations

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Function
Invocations
AWS Lambda
Asynchronous Invocations
(Event)
Max event age
Max retry attempt
Destinations
(to Lambda, SNS, SQS, EventBridge)
⇣
More controls for async
and event-driven apps
Scalability
New
Paradigm

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Configuring Async Invocations

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AWS Lambda – Destinations for Async Invocations
Amazon S3
Amazon SNS
Amazon SES
Amazon
EventBridge
Amazon
CloudWatch Logs
AWS Config
Amazon
CloudFormation
AWS CodeCommit
AWS Lambda
Amazon SNS
Amazon SQS
Amazon
EventBridge
Lambda
Function
onSuccess
onFailure

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Function
Invocations
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm
Kinesis / DynamoDB Streams
Parallelization factor
(no need for fan-outs)
Failure-handling
⇣
Easier to scale streaming analytics and
manage errors when processing a stream

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Kinesis / DynamoDB Streams Controls

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Function
Invocations
Latency
Costs
Amazon API Gateway
New “HTTP APIs”
⇣
Cheaper and faster APIs
Reduce costs by up to 70%
Reduce latency by up to 50%

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Amazon API Gateway – HTTP APIs
N
EW

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Function
Invocations
Costs
New
Paradigm
Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Weighted Target Groups
⇣
Fine-grained deployments with ALB, too
Stickiness!
Create rules depending on Host, HTTP
header/method, Query string, or Source IP
Simpler migrations to serverless

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ALB Weighted Target Groups

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Execution
Environment
Language
Support
Runtimes
Python 3.8
Java 11
Node.js 12
.NET Core 3.1
Custom Runtimes (Rust, Swift, …)
⇣
Use your favorite programming language
Easier to migrate existing apps

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Execution
Environment
Latency
Scalability
VPC to VPC NAT
⇣
Integrate VPC resources in serverless apps
Use new services with Lambda functions
(e.g. ElastiCache)

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Execution
Environment
Latency
Costs
Scalability
AWS Lambda
Provisioned Concurrency
⇣
No more “cold starts”
Real-time apps and games
Applications with a slow initialization
Download config/data on /tmp

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AWS Lambda – Provisioned Concurrency
We do the initialization,
you are responsible for the
first invocation of the handler
Avoid lazy initializations
Integrated with
CloudWatch
Application Auto Scaling
and AWS CodeDeploy

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Execution
Environment
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm
AWS Step Functions
Express Workflows
⇣
Build more modular apps
Separate business process flow
from implementation

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AWS Step Functions – Express Workflows

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Service
Integrations
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm
Amazon Relational
Database Service
(RDS)
RDS Proxy
⇣
Using relational databases
in serverless apps is much easier
AWS Secrets Manager stores the user name
and password for the database

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Amazon RDS Proxy – How It Works
Preview

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Service
Integrations
Costs
New
ParadigmAmazon EventBridge
Schema Registry
Rules can now be triggered
by CloudWatch Alarms
⇣
Building event-driven apps with
IDE integration
Integrating PaaS solutions with your apps

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Service
Integrations
Scalability
New
Paradigm
Amazon Athena
Create user defined functions (UDF)
using Lambda functions
Run federated queries
⇣
Using SQL for analyzing… almost anything!

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Amazon Athena – Create your own data connector
Preview

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New
Paradigm
AWS Amplify
Native iOS/Android
Mobile Backends
Amplify DataStore
⇣
Mobile backends for native apps
Persistent on-device storage to write, read,
and observe changes online or offline, and
seamlessly sync to the cloud as well as
across devices
Service
Integrations

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Latency
Scalability
AWS AppSync
Pure WebSockets
GraphQL Info Object (New)
⇣
Real-time apps
More efficient resolvers
Service
Integrations

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Configuration
Management
New
ParadigmAWS AppConfig
For EC2, containers, on-premises, Lambda,
mobile apps, IoT devices
Application
Environment
Configuration Profile
⇣
Releasing configurations changes
with fine-grained controls

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Configuration Management for Lambda Functions
Environment
Variables
Parameter Store
AWS Secrets
Manager
AWS AppConfig
In the function configuration
For function-specific configurations
Part of AWS Systems Manager
Can be shared across multiple functions
For secrets, can automate rotating secrets
Integrated with the new RDS Proxy
Part of AWS Systems Manager
Full control during the roll out of configuration changes

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Observability
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm
Tracing – AWS X-Ray
Trace Maps – for single requests
Simplified identification of service
disruption – in Service Maps
SNS/SQS support (added in July/August)
Amazon API Gateway (since 2018)
AWS AppSync (new)
⇣
More and easier observability

37. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
Observability
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm
Monitoring
CloudWatch Embedded Metric Format
Percentiles on CloudWatch metrics
CloudWatch Synthetics
CloudWatch ServiceLens
CloudWatch Anomaly Detection
(added in September)
⇣
More visibility into your
application behavior

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Using CloudWatch Embedded Metric Format

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CloudWatch Synthetics – Monitor Application Endpoints

40. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
Observability
Configuration
Management
Function
Invocations
Execution
Environment
Service
Integrations
Latency
Language
Support
Costs
Scalability
New
Paradigm

41. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
Observability Configuration
Management
Function
Invocations
Execution
Environment
Service
Integrations
Lots of concerns have been addressed…

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More tooling available

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Savings plan
Simplify purchasing with a flexible pricing model applying to Amazon EC2,
AWS Fargate & Lambda usage
Recommendations in AWS Cost Explorer
Any instance family—any region
AWS Fargate and Lambda
Flexibility
N
EW

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Serverless Lens in AWS Well-Architected Tool
N
ew

45. SCALING CHALLENGES
350
DONATIONS PER SECOND
Case
Study

46. OLD VS NEW
March 2019 cost*
$5,393
March 2015 cost*
$83,908
*All hosting costs are paid for through corporate partnerships.
100% of public donations go to the projects we fund.
Case
Study

47. WE COULD DO
IT ALL AGAIN TOMORROW
Serverless services cost
$92
Case
Study

48. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
So, what can you do with serverless, now?
✓ Web/Mobile/IoT backends
✓ Batch/streaming analytics
✓ DevOps & IT automation
✓ Voice/text chat interfaces
✓ Real-time apps, multi-player games
✓ Complex async jobs/tasks/activities
✓ Reduce costs even more
✓ Reduce complexity
✓ And much, much more!

49. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
What Can You Do with Serverless
…in 2020 ?

50. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
What Are You Going to Build
…in 2020 ?

51. © 2020, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates.
Thank you!
Uri Segev
Principal Serverless Solutions Architect
Boaz Ziniman
Principal Developer Advocate