Off-by-none: Issue #11

November 13, 2018

After this, there is no turning back

Welcome to Issue #11 of Off-by-none. I’m happy that you’re here! 🙌

Last week we recapped ServerlessNYC and talked quite a bit about serverless adoption. This week we’re going to point out some more resources for those getting started, as well as offer up plenty of options if you’re looking to take the red pill and go down the serverless rabbit hole. 🐇

Here we go! 🕺

What to read when you want to amp up your serverless knowledge… 🔈

Danilo Poccia has written a free ebook, Agile Development for Serverless Platforms. This book is over 100 pages and has a great section on architectural patterns. There is plenty to learn from this free resource and it is well worth a look. 📖

The team over at Financial Engines wrote a guide to help us with managing disaster recovery with DynamoDB. AWS DynamoDB: Backup and Restore Strategies looks at both Point-in-Time Recovery and On-Demand Backups. Lots of useful information here including configuration and pricing. 👨🏻‍💻

Finally, Thundra published a great piece that shows us how to Debug AWS Lambda Node.js Functions in Production Without Code Change. I really like the idea of automated instrumentation as it cuts down the burden on developers and keeps your code a bit cleaner. It can also ensure we don’t lock ourselves in to a specific software vendor. 📈

When you want to get started with serverless… 🏋️‍♂️

There have been a lot of new “Getting Started with Serverless” posts this week. I really like that more people are starting to create this type of content. The more that’s out there, the more likely someone is to come across it and get to that serverless “aha” moment. If you’re new to serverless, here are a few posts to get you started:

• Serverless Backend using AWS Lambda: Hands-on Guide
• Building a Node.js Service with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, and Serverless Framework
• Up and Running with the Serverless Framework

And don’t forget that the #NoServerNovember Challenge (hosted by Serverless, Inc.) is still going on. These challenges will give you something interesting to work on and let you go beyond the standard “Hello World” tutorial.

When you’re not ready to give up RDBMS with serverless… 🤓

In our inaugural issue we introduced the serverless-mysql package with my Managing MySQL at Serverless Scale post. David Zhang (@Zigzhang) has taken this even further and created a five part series to help others get started. In his first post, Serverless & RDBS (Part 1) — Set up AWS RDS Aurora and Lambda with serverless, David lays out some background, then gives you full examples to get you up and running.

He’s also published Part 2 (Set up EC2 instance to securely connect to your Aurora DB) and Part 3 (Set up database migrations with umzug) with the final two parts (Set up continuous deployment to migrate database with CircleCI and Set up local development environment with serverless-offline and Docker) coming soon. These are sure to be helpful guides for anyone looking to build serverless apps with RDBS backends.

Of course, re:Invent is right around the corner, so let’s hope we get HTTP endpoints for RDS! 😬

When you feel like there are a lot of conferences… ✈️

Speaking of re:Invent, it is less than two weeks away! 🎉 This is the first year that I’m attending so I’ve been looking for tips like this and this. I’m excited for some of the sessions I’m attending and will be at several events as well. If we haven’t connected already, please contact me so we can meet up.

In other conference news, Serverless Computing London is happening right now and it is chockfull of great speakers. Follow their Twitter feed to see some snippets from the event. Some of the slide decks have been posted as well, so check those out. I was looking at Timirah James’ Function Composition in a Serverless World talk, good stuff. Hopefully we’ll see the videos posted soon. ⚡️

Also, ServerlessDays BOSTON finally has a date! The event is scheduled for March 12, 2019 at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center. More information about our call for papers and sponsorship opportunities is coming soon. 🎊

When you realize that AWS has no plans to slow down their serverless innovations… 🚀

AWS has released several new features recently that could have a profound impact on our serverless applications. Some of these are pretty exciting. Now just imagine what they are going to announce at re:Invent! Here are just a few of the recent updates:

• Amazon API Gateway Adds Support for AWS WAF
• Amazon API Gateway Announces Tiered Pricing
• Overriding request/response parameters and response status in Amazon API Gateway
• AWS CloudFormation coverage updates for Amazon Secrets Manager, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route53, Amazon Cloudwatch alarms and more

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

There is a very long list of people that are doing #ServerlessGood and contributing to the Serverless community. These people deserve recognition for their efforts. So each week, I will mention someone whose recent contribution really stood out to me. I love meeting new people, so if you know someone who deserves recognition, please let me know.

This week’s star is Alex Casalboni (@alex_casalboni). Alex is an AWS Technical Evangelist, Serverless champion, co-organizer of ServerlessDays Milan and the serverless meetup there, contributor to serverless open source projects, and a regular conference speaker spreading the serverless gospel. He also helps coordinate ServerlessDays conferences around the word, including helping me and the Boston team. Thanks for all you do, Alex!

Final Thoughts 🤔

As much as I still worry that serverless adoption will be slower than I had hoped, the amount of innovation and new faces in the community is really encouraging. I’m already aware of a few announcements planned for re:Invent, but I also know that there will be a ton more. Other cloud providers are also pushing serverless innovations, and I expect Google and Azure to be announcing new things soon as well.

Serverless still has a long way to go, but all of these new tools, platforms, cloud provider features, conferences, and enthusiasm from the community, is helping to expose this paradigm to a much larger audience. I’m going to continue to write and promote it as much as I can, because there is little doubt in my mind that this is the future of application development.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this issue of Off-by-none. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated. It helps me make this newsletter better each week. Please feel free to contact me via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email and let me know your thoughts, criticisms, and if you’d like to contribute to Off-by-none.

Go build some great serverless apps and spread the word. 📣

See you next week,
Jeremy

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