Off-by-none: Issue #175

February 8, 2022

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Lighting up Firecracker! 🧨

Welcome to Issue #175 of Off-by-none. This issue is sponsored by our friends at Upstash.

Last week, Serverless Framework v3 launched, Kinesis pointed the Data Firehose at Honeycomb, and we entered the Golden Age of full-stack JavaScript. This week, Firecracker reaches 1.0, Serverless Chats is back, and Netlify turns on crons. Plus, there’s plenty of great content from the serverless community.

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

The big news (at least for me) was that MicroVM virtualization solution Firecracker reached 1.0. For those that need a quick history lesson, Firecracker was developed and released by AWS to power Lambda Functions. While the average serverless user doesn’t need to think about Firecracker at all, MicroVMs, IMO, are primed to be the best path forward for future serverless platforms.

In other big news, Netlify acquired Quirrel and launched scheduled function in beta. Plus, Dynatrace said they were bringing observability to multi-cloud serverless architectures.

Marco Troisi introduced “The Serverless Mindset” newsletter, Serverless Inc. posted their February Community Call Recap, and I created a fun video to help you get started with Serverless Cloud.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

There were some interesting DynamoDB posts this week, including Wojciech Matuszewski's DynamoDB showdown that compared the SDK API to PartiQL. There have been a few small updates to PartiQL lately that have helped, and yes, you can mix batch inserts and updates, but there are still no UPSERTS. 🙁

Also, Vidip Malhotra explains the logic behind DynamoDB throttling and Leeroy Hannigan gives some tips for optimizing DynamoDB queries using key sharding.

This post shows you how to turn Node.js apps “up to eleven” with serverless. It’s also the only article I’ve ever seen compare JavaScript to Rodney Dangerfield. 😀

Ran Isenberg shares his AWS Lambda Cookbook – Part 1 focusing on logging, Xavyr Rademaker discusses how to orchestrate workflows with AWS Step Functions, and Salvatore Cozzubo shows you four ways to improve your AWS Lambda Functions.

Senthil Kumar and Aditya Pendyala shared an interesting post about automating anomaly detection in ecommerce traffic patterns, plus Enes Akar gives a rundown of the best databases for Next.js.

Finally, Russ Schick shares part 2 of How Serverless Cloud Works. This one focuses on the Serverless Development Kit (SDK) and how it helps speed up serverless development.

Serverless Data for Redis and Kafka
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Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

Always plenty of excellent tutorials from the community!

This post shows you how to use a Lambda Function to create an xlsx file from JSON data and store it in S3 using Node.js/TypeScript.

Benjamin Ajewole shares how to setup CI/CD for your AWS Lambda Function with Serverless Framework and GitHub Actions, Muhammad Shakeel explains how to use AWS AppSync GraphQL APIs to invoke a Lambda function, and Igor Anic shares a Dummy Guide to AWS Lambda for Go developers.

Paul Mowat walks you through setting up CloudWatch RUM with a Cognito Identity Pool for SAM/CloudFormation.

Jones Zachariah Noel teaches you how to create users in DynamoDB with Step Functions using the SDK integrations.

And Saeed Moqadam show serverless PHP developers how to use an Amazon S3 trigger to create thumbnail images.

Serverless Reads 🤓

Filip Pýrek explains why the AWS Console desperately needs some competition. When you try to build something for everyone, you end up building it for no one. 🤷‍♂️

Matthew Wilson shares CDK lessons learned.

Ken Collins discusses getting started with GitHub Codespaces from a serverless perspective.

And Mukul Attavania gives us an introduction to serverless architecture. I’m not sure of the distinction made between microservices and serverless, but there’s a lot to chew on in there.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Serverless Chats is back! On Episode #123: APIs and the Evolution of Serverless, Rebecca and I chat with Dorian Smiley about how Brainly used serverless to turn 4 developers into 50, how the API economy could reshape cloud architecture, what the next evolution of serverless and cloud development looks like, and a whole lot more.

The Serverless Craic team shares their guide to the AWS Performance Pillar, and the AWS Serverless DAs hosted Serverless Office Hours discussing Amazon EventBridge Tooling and mocking service integrations with Step Functions Local.

Marcia Villalba explains what to DO when a message fails to process and reviews SQS Dead Letter Queues and SQS DLQ redrive policies.

And Itay Rozenman spoke at GOTO 2021 and gave a talk about Serverless Security: New Risks Require New Approaches.

New from AWS 🆕

Just a few AWS specific announcements, including the post about how to demonstrate your AWS Cloud Storage knowledge and skills with new digital badges!

Also, Amazon ElastiCache now supports AWS PrivateLink, as does Amazon MemoryDB for Redis. And Amazon Comprehend launched model copy for custom Comprehend.

Serverless Tools 🛠

James Miller wrote up a post explaining his Wrapper.js framework and how it works with NextJS, Serverless Framework and Terraform Monorepos.

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

If you have an event, webinar, etc. that you’d like me to mention, please email me.

February 16, 2022 – The Serverless Mindset with Matt Morgan #vBrownBag

April 4–6, 2022 – Serverless Architecture Conference

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

There is a very long list of people who 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 nominate them.

This week’s star is Andy Kimball (@kimball_andy). Andy is the Director of Engineering at Cockroach Labs. Over the last 20 months, he led the Engineering team that built CockroachDB Serverless and was part of every key decision made along the way. He has also contributed to the Cockroach Labs blog to share how CockroachDB Serverless works. Andy’s experience also includes engineering roles at Square, Viewfinder, and Microsoft. Thank you, Andy, for bringing your expertise to serverless!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Is your organization interested in sharing your message with our readers and helping to support Off-by-none? We always welcome new sponsors, so please reach out if you're interested.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming DynamoDB modeling course!

See you next week,
Jeremy

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. We’re always looking for ideas and feedback to make it better and more inclusive, so please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email.