Off-by-none: Issue #18

January 1, 2019

Happy (Serverless) New Year! 🎉

Welcome to Issue #18 of Off-by-none. It’s 2019, and it’s going to be a great year for serverless! 🙌

Last week we looked at the new WebSocket support for API Gateway, saw some more serverless love from startups, and I argued that we should Stop Calling Everything Serverless! This week we’re going to reflect back on 2018, I’ll share my 2019 plans for Off-by-none, and we’ve got plenty of great stories from the community.

Let’s jump right in. It’s going to be another busy year! 👨🏻‍💻👨🏻‍🔬👨🏻‍🎨👨🏻‍🏫

When you need to look back so you can look forward… 🔭

2018 was quite a busy year. Being the CTO of a startup certainly keeps my to-do list full, plus I consulted for several additional companies in the serverless space. However, my passion for creating, writing and helping out others (or at least trying to) is too powerful a force to keep contained.

Even though I have been blogging for quite some time, last year was when I started writing almost exclusively about serverless. I also spent time working on some open source projects and thinking about new ones I’d like to create. I thought it would be a proper exercise to look back at all the things I worked on last year, reflect on what was helpful, and then plan to do more of that in 2019.

In January, I launched the first stable version of Lambda API and then wrote How To Build a Serverless API with Serverless, AWS Lambda and Lambda API. Soon thereafter, I created Securing Serverless: A Newbie’s Guide to capture some serverless security best practices for those just starting out.

Then I shared some tips on How To: Manage RDS Connections from AWS Lambda Serverless Functions as well as How To: Stub “.promise()” in AWS-SDK Node.js. I weighed in on Solving the Cold Start Problem and proposed some additional solutions with How To: Optimize the Serverless Optimizer Plugin. I also came up with a list of 10 Things You Need To Know When Building Serverless Applications.

I did some more security research and wrote about Event Injection: A New Serverless Attack Vector and then shared 5 Reasons Why Your Serverless Application Might Be A Security Risk. I ran some experiments using Serverless Consumers with Lambda and SQS Triggers as soon as AWS announced support. I also started to share serverless microservice concepts and published Mixing VPC and Non-VPC Lambda Functions for Higher Performing Microservices.

In July, I met Chris Munns for the first time and wrote 15 Key Takeaways from the Serverless Talk at AWS Startup Day. This gave me more insight into the cold start issue, so I created the open source package, Lambda Warmer, so you could Optimize AWS Lambda Function Cold Starts. I then shared some thoughts on Thinking Serverless (Big and Small) and why serverless is great for workloads of all sizes.

As I converted several workflows over to serverless applications, I started making use of tags to keep things organized. I captured my best practices in How To: Tag Your Lambda Functions for Smarter Serverless Applications. The more I wrote about serverless, the more people I found in the community, so I published my list of Serverless Peeps You Need To Follow. 😃

I put together a guide on How To: Add Test Coverage to your Serverless Applications, and then wrote a fictional story called A Tale of Two Teams, about two startups that made vastly different technology choices (serverless versus containers). It was fun to write and there was a lot of interesting feedback. Next up was Aurora Serverless: The Good, the Bad and the Scalable, an in-depth look at AWS’s new “serverless” MySQL database offering.

In August I published Serverless Microservice Patterns for AWS, which is a really handy resource. It eventually made its way to #7 on Hacker News and crashed my site. FYI: WordPress does not scale. Speaking of scaling, I created a solution for Managing MySQL at Serverless Scale with the open source serverless-mysql NPM package. I’ve been using it in production ever since.

In September I launched Off-by-none! It’s been quite a bit of work, but all of your feedback has been incredibly encouraging (more on this later). I then shared a piece called Serverless Security: Locking Down Your Apps with FunctionShield, and wrote up An Introduction to Serverless Microservices. In What 15 Minute Lambda Functions Tells Us About the Future of Serverless, I shared some thoughts about AWS’s new execution limits and why it’s an important step forward.

I also shared some Takeaways from ServerlessNYC 2018, took a first look at the Aurora Serverless Data API, and then spent a week in Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent. My re:Capping re:Invent: AWS goes all-in on Serverless post explains why AWS is lightyears ahead of other providers in the serverless space. I also shared a serverless tip so you Don’t overpay when waiting on remote API calls, and I finished up the year with my Stop Calling Everything Serverless rant.

I’m exhausted just thinking about all that, but at the same time, I’m super excited for 2019. I received a tremendous amount of constructive feedback, met some really amazing people, and learned a ton in the processes. I’ve got plenty of content planned for this year, most of which will be highly practical so that you can apply the concepts straight away. I’m also working on a course or two, plus some other creative ways to talk about and explore serverless applications and the methodology used to build them. I’m hoping you’ll find all of this useful.

When you’ve heard enough about me and just want some good serverless content… 📚

Gal Bashan over at Epsagon wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Serverless. Earlier this year we talked quite a bit about the serverless echo-chamber and how foreign some of these concepts are to those that are new to serverless. Gal outlines a number of key components that make up serverless applications and explains what they are and when to use them.

Getting started with AWS Lambda Layers for Python is a new post from Adrian Hornsby that lays out the basics for harnessing the power of Lambda Layers. Lots of really good stuff in here.

I also came across Contemporary Views on Serverless and Implications by Subbu Allamaraju the other day. Subbu is an engineer with Expedia and wrote this really interesting piece about the differing views of serverless and the conflicting nature of the term. Another piece that shows just how much further we have to go to bring serverless to the masses.

Syed Jaffry, a solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, wrote a really great article regarding Best practices for securing sensitive data in AWS data stores. When we’re building serverless applications (or any application in the cloud), understanding how to keep sensitive data secure is extremely important. This piece gives you an overview of some general security patterns that you can use. Definitely worth the read.

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 Erik Peterson (@silvexis). Erik is the Founder and CEO of CloudZero (@cloudzeroinc), a startup that helps you monitor your cloud computing costs. Erik has been building on AWS for over a decade, he’s a frequent speaker at conferences and meetups, and is a regular contributor to the CloudZero blog. He’s a big proponent of #FinDevOps, which is all about leveraging cost as a first class metric when designing serverless systems. Serverless applications generally have a lower TCO than most traditional applications, so it’s good to have people like Erik think through how cost affects our organizations up and down the value chain.

Final Thoughts 🤔

Last year was quite a whirlwind. There were so many amazing advancements in the serverless space, that it’s hard to keep track. AWS announced a number of new services that will be available in 2019, plus I’m hoping that other cloud providers will continue to invest heavily in this space as well. I’m thinking that 2019 is going to be a very good year for the serverless community. ⚡️

I plan on producing lots of serverless content this year, plus I’m co-organizing ServerlessDays Boston on March 12, 2019, and I hope to do some speaking as well. I look forward to spending 2019 with all of you!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this issue of Off-by-none. Your feedback and suggestions are always helpful, so please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email and let me know your thoughts, criticisms, and ideas for making Off-by-none even better.

Here’s to 2019, 🍾🥂
Jeremy