Off-by-none: Issue #216

January 10, 2023

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Keeping stateful and stateless resources together 🍰

In our previous issue, we looked at how JavaScript has taken the edge by storm, why you don’t have to worry about the end of programming, and what we can expect from serverless in 2023. This week, S3 objects get automatically encrypted, we get an action-packed Q4 serverless recap, and we look at why keeping stateful and stateless resources together makes a whole lotta good sense. Plus, there’s loads of awesome content from the serverless community.

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

Amazon S3 now automatically encrypts all new objects at no additional cost and with no impact on performance, which is pretty cool. Plus, there is nothing you need to change in your applications, which is one of those self-upgrading features of serverless we like to talk about so much. More details on this in the official post by Sébastien Stormacq.

Paweł Piwosz has started a Serverless Game if you want to supercharge your serverless skills and have some fun at the same time.

And, a lot happened with serverless at AWS in Q4. Marcia Villalba recaps everything you need to know in her Serverless ICYMI Q4 2022 post.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Avoid becoming bankrupt while using serverless MongoDB Atlas
Grigorii Ovchinnikov shares the (potential) perils of searching on unindexed keys with on-demand pricing models. Write it off as a rookie mistake, but certainly an easy one for anyone to make.

Designing Event-Driven Architecture
If you want your post to show up in this newsletter, just dazzle me with serverless patterns and architecture drawings. Santhoshkumar Ravi apparently knows how to follow the formula.

AWS Introduces Step Functions Distributed Map for Large-Scale Parallel Data Processing
Old news, but I always appreciate Renato Losio’s round ups with insights from experts on the frontlines.

Redirects and rewrites with Edge computing
Helpful post from Almeida de Almeida on when and why to use CloudFront Functions versus Lambda@Edge.

About Amazon EventBridge Scheduler
Awedis Keofteian shares some examples and use cases of the new Amazon EventBridge Scheduler. I still feel like people don’t realize how amazingly powerful this feature is.

Slashing serverless API latency with AppSync JavaScript resolvers
Interesting post from Rawad Haber that shows how he used JavaScript resolvers in AppSync to eliminate cold starts. Does this actually work? Going to need to try this out.

Serverless Security — Challenges and Best Practices
Another path straight into this newsletter is a good post on serverless security. Akanksha Rana covers all the bases here.

Measuring Java 11 Lambda cold starts with SnapStart – Part 4 Using Spring Boot Framework
Part 4 of Vadym Kazulkin’s series on SnapStart performance. Looks like cold starts are still close to 2 seconds (which is painfully slow), but much better than the 6+ second baselines.

Out-caching DAX with the serverless solution DynamoDB deserves
Definitely love the idea of serverless caches, and Momento has a great product. When you need one in front of DDB depends on your use case and workload, but exploring solutions beyond DAX will be worth your time.

The AWS Serverless Badge
Conor Shirren shares what to expect when you’re expecting…to get your AWS Serverless Badge.

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

Event-driven automation for alerting log findings. Part 1.
Lorenzo Campo shares some solutions for implementing alerts that generate actionable events based on log activity. He followed it up with a post on input transformation in AWS EventBridge to modify the data before it’s sent to the target.

Is EventBridge Pipes the Missing Piece in Your Event-Driven Puzzle?
Mario Bittencourt teaches you all about EventBridge Pipes along with some examples you can follow along with.

Build AWS Lambda Layers with AWS CDK
Ran Isenberg covers some AWS Lambda Layers basics and how to build them with Docker and AWS CDK using Python.

Create Lambda Function with Layers using AWS SAM and Node.js
If you’d rather use AWS Lambda Layers with SAM and Node instead, Waleed Rafi has you covered.

Automatic Lambda Layer Deployment via AWS CodePipeline
While we’re on the subject of Lambda Layers, check out Çağrı Bayram’s approach to automating their deployment.

From Zero to Hero… Send AWS SES Emails Like a Pro!
Most likely every app needs to send an email at some point, and Pierre Chollet provides a very in-depth explanation on handling sender reputation, avoiding spam folders, and even designing responsive emails.

Hands On! — AWS Step Functions Workflow with AWS SAM
Marco Mercado sets up, deploys, and tests a Step Function workflow to teach you the basics in this excellent walkthrough.

Build your infrastructure from a diagram
Ildar Sharafeev posits a future for “Infrastructure as Diagram” as he walks us through building a serverless app using AWS’s new Application Composer service.

Serverless Reads 🤓

The Serverless Craic team chats about Serverless Espresso, a pop up coffee shop that allows you to order coffee from your phone that’s backed by AWS serverless services. ☕️

Does the Serverless Edge Live Up to the Hype?
Brian Rinaldi shares his thoughts on serverless edge computing and what it can, can’t, and probably won’t do for you.

Is Serverless Worth the Risks?
This wasn’t what I was expecting. Mahmood Sayeed adroitly answers this silly question by outlining some solid benefits backed by well-researched reference material. Kudos to you, sir!

A second look at Amazon CodeCatalyst
Johannes Koch spends some more time playing with the new CodeCatalyst and shares his overall thoughts. Seems as though there’s still a long way to go here.

Serverless In 2023 – A Shift In Focus
Allen Helton thinks we need to shift our focus to observability in 2023 so that maintaining serverless applications becomes easier. I’m still betting on a better developer experience.

WebAssembly: 5 Predictions for 2023
If you listen to Matt Butcher, 2023 is going to be a big year for WebAssembly, and I tend to agree. I also think his prediction that serverless will be WASM’s sweet spot is dead on. And JavaScript as its most popular language, hard to disagree with that one as well.

This is why you should keep stateful and stateless resources together
Yan Cui argues that keeping all your resources together in a single stack makes development and testing a lot easier, despite “best practices” that might say otherwise. I have to agree with him, and I explain why in the premium edition.

New from AWS 🆕

Here are a few other interesting announcements from AWS. I particularly like the CloudFront update.

• Amazon Kinesis Data Streams for Amazon DynamoDB is now available in 11 additional AWS Regions
• Introducing Amazon EMR Serverless Custom images: Bring your own libraries and application dependencies
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs removes Log Stream transaction quota and SequenceToken requirement
• Amazon S3 Storage Lens introduces tiered pricing for cost-effective monitoring at scale
• Amazon CloudFront now supports the removal of response headers
• Amazon Neptune announces graph-explorer, an open-source visual exploration tool for low-code users
• AWS App Runner now supports retrieving secrets and configuration from AWS Secrets Manager and AWS Systems Manager

Serverless Tools 🛠

StepFunctions Workflow Studio Sync
Very cool Chrome extension from Lars Jacobsson that supercharges your StepFunction productivity.

Introducing mongo-http.js
Patrick Chiu gives us a thin wrapper on top of MongoDB Atlas’s Data API using the native fetch API.

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

February 28, 2023 – ServerlessDays Belfast

March 10, 2023 – ServerlessDays ANZ

June 7, 2023 – ServerlessDays Paris

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

This week’s star is Antonia Otter (@TrustInAntonia). Antonia leads the EU DevOps team at Trust in SODA where covers DevOps, Platform, SRE & Architecture. She also runs Women in DevOps DACH. Antonia works to help businesses attract and retain underrepresented and diverse technologists into their communities and ensure work environments are safe spaces that breed innovation. She has been a speaker at DevOps Experience and DevOps Con. Thank you, Antonia, for helping to create a more inclusive and diverse community!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Thank you all for being patient during this transition away from the Revue platform. I think we finally have most of the kinks worked out, so now I can spend more time digging into serverless topics rather than debugging newsletter issues. Lots more to come in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.

Until 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, or email.