Amazon Lambda

AWS Lambda – An AWS Computing Tool

AWS Lambda gives your organization the ability to run code serverless. Serverless does not mean there are no servers involved, it means servers and the entire infrastructure are taken care of, so the code is your only worry. Taking this approach will allow your organization to only pay for the compute times that are consumed. So, when your code is not being used, you won’t have to pay. This can be done because Lambda scales automatically. The Lambda easily allows you to upload your code and from there, everything is taken care of that is required to run and scale your code. This can be done automatically from other AWS services or directly from any application.

When Should I Use AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda compute platform should be used when you have written the code in languages that are supported by Lambda. In addition, you will need to run within the standard runtime environment and resources provided by Lambda. This will balance the memory, CPU and network allowing Lambda to perform operational and administrative activities on your behalf.

Below you will find some common use cases for Lambda:
*    Scalable APIs
*    Data processing
*    Task Automation

How AWS Lambda Works

Lambda fills the primary role of the compute service on AWS. There are 5 keys concepts to understand how Lambda works.

1.    Function – This is the resource you can call on to run your code.
2.    Runtime – This will allow functions in different coding languages to run in the same environment.
3.    Event – This is a JSON formatted document that contains data for a function to process.
4.    Concurrency – This is the number of requests that your function is serving at any given time.
5.    Trigger – This is a resource or configuration that invokes a Lambda function.

So, think of it as your organization will run functions to process events. In addition, this is a fully managed service and is a great fit for deploying highly scalable cloud computing solutions.

Benefits of Using AWS Lambda

Making the business case to move from maintaining your own servers in the cloud to Lambda will come with some unique benefits.
*    Automatic Scaling
*    Fully managed infrastructure
*    Pay per use
*    Integration with other AWS services

AWS Lambda Limits

AWS Lambda limits the amount of compute and storage resources that you can use to run and store functions. The resources are limited to 1000 concurrent executions, 75GB of function and layer storage, and 250 elastic network interfaces per VPC. These items can be increased. In addition, there are limits that apply to function configuration, deployments, and execution. They cannot be changed.