Off-by-none: Issue #277

April 30, 2024

Only have a few minutes? Check out this week's MOST POPULAR links as chosen by our email subscribers.

IBM is Terraforming the Cloud 🌩️

In our previous issue, Amazon Bedrock launched some impressive updates, Powertools got a parser, and Vercel rolled back Edge rendering. This week, IBM tries to become cloud relevant again, Amazon Bedrock keeps adding features, and there's a new Serverless Handbook. Plus, we have lots of awesome serverless content from the community!

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

The big news this week is that IBM is to acquire HashiCorp with the goal of creating a comprehensive end-to-end hybrid Cloud Platform. Hard to say "no" to $6.4B, but I am very curious to see how this all plays out (especially for Pulumi).

In some AWS news, which yes, is mostly around GenAI, Cohere Command R and Command R+ are now available in Amazon Bedrock. This is actually pretty cool.

And a few other ones from last week: Knowledge Bases for Amazon Bedrock now simplifies asking questions on a single document, Knowledge Bases for Amazon Bedrock now supports multiple data sources, and Amazon Bedrock Agents simplifies agent creation and launches Return of Control capability.

In more serverless news, the team at Serverless Guru just published The Serverless Handbook. It's a free resource that shares best practices and real-world applications for top-tier companies.

⚠️ Hackathon Alert: Build an app on AWS, win cash prizes, learn new tech
Diagrid is thrilled to invite you to the Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon—a four-week, virtual event where you can unleash your creativity and showcase your coding skills by building or modernizing a cutting-edge application using the powerful serverless Catalyst platform, powered by open source Dapr. Get ready to collaborate, compete, and win cash prizes! Find out more and register here. Sponsored

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Navigating through failures, build resilient serverless systems
Jimmy Dahlqvist shares an excellent overview of this topic. Great post to share with those new to serverless or interested in learning about it.

I also found a ton of other excellent posts this week that drop some serious serverless knowledge:

• Serverless Postgres with Neon - My first impression by Allen Helton
• Experiencing Multiple triggers for Amazon SQS by Omid Eidivandi
• Boost Your Lambdas with Powertools by Kasun de Silva
• Mastering DynamoDB: Essential Techniques for Modern Data Modeling by Tudor Ioan Marin
• Neon: Does Going Serverless Solve Fixed Expenses for Postgres? by Alexey Lark
• Know how you read: Insights about DynamoDB read consistency models by Gabriel Barreras
• AWS SnapStart - Part 19 Measuring cold starts and deployment time with Java 17 using different Lambda memory settings by Vadym Kazulkin

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

So many amazing tutorials this week. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Surprisingly Powerful – Serverless WASM with Rust Article 1 by Benjamen Pyle
• Secure AWS Lambda: JWT Token Authentication Using Node JS by Shubham Chavan
• Claude Function calls with AWS Step Functions
• Serverless Event Sourcing & CQRS (Part 1) by Lee Gilmore
• A Quick Guide to GraphQL for REST developers by Rich Buggy
• AI Serverless Applications with Amazon Bedrock: A Step-by-Step Guide by AlamedaDev
• Scalable Web Scraping with Serverless — Part 1 by Lev Gelfenbuim
• Enhancing existing APIs with Generative AI: A Low-Code approach with Bedrock and AWS AppSync by Emanuel Russo
• Creating AWS CloudWatch Dashboards and Alarms with CDK by Brett Andrews
• Rightsizing Your Lambdas: Lambda Power Tuning & Compute by Vaibhav Malhotra
• How to fix connection timeout issues with AWS Lambda in VPCs by Michael Landis

Serverless Reads 🤓

Lambda Internals: Why AWS Lambda Will Not Help With Machine Learning
Kiryl Anoshka explores the constraints of AWS Lambda in machine learning and how GPU-accelerated serverless computing on Cloudflare addresses the gap. Interesting read.

Do you need to repatriate from the cloud?
I agree with Matt Butcher that improved development patterns are a better cost saving answer than repatriation, but I wouldn't bet solely on WebAssembly.

AWS Serverless Diversity: Multi-Language Strategies for Optimal Solutions
Ran Isenberg shares his experience developing a high-performance-oriented serverless service as well as insights into exploring multi-language strategies and how embracing diversity in programming languages can lead to more robust solutions.

How serverless security shifts to the left
I like a good security post. Ike Gabriel Yuson lays out some things for serverless developers to consider when building apps, without overdoing the FUD.

AWS Credentials for Serverless
Another great security post by Seth Orell, this one focusing on credential management.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Ready, Set, Cloud Podcast! S2:E7 - The life-changing tech boom in Nigeria
Allen Helton talks with Tobenna Nwokike about how technology is transforming Nigeria into something completely new. They discuss the cultural and economic changes brought on by tech, how easy it is to break into the field, the assistance the Nigerian government is providing for those who want to get into it, and much more.

Unveiling the Role of AWS Solutions Architect
Marcia Villalba is joined again by Nahia and Slavik, continuing to explore the diverse responsibilities and functions of AWS Solution Architects (SAs).

Real-time web and mobile backends | Serverless Office Hours
Josh Kahn joins Julian Wood to show patterns to enable asynchronous, event-driven integrations with the frontend and how to rethink integrations between frontend and backend which are often built synchronously using a request/response pattern.

Real-World Serverless Podcast - Episode 101: Faster serverless APIs
Yan Cui chats with Brian LeRoux, co-founder of begin.com and creator of the Architect framework, about Lambdaliths, a faster AWS SDK, Web components, WASM, and even IfC frameworks such as Ampt.

How to Add Paid Features to Your Serverless Apps with Jason Wadsworth
Jason Wadsworth, Chief Architect at Armanino LLP, explaines how to implement tier-based features into your serverless SaaS applications to provide premium experiences.

New from AWS 🆕

Here are a few more AWS announcements that might interest you:

• Amazon Aurora supports PostgreSQL 16.2, 15.6, 14.11, 13.14, and 12.18
• AWS CodeBuild now supports managed GitHub Action runners
• NoSQL Workbench for Amazon DynamoDB launches a revamped operation builder user interface
• AWS CodePipeline supports stage level manual and automated rollback
• Agents for Amazon Bedrock add support for Anthropic Claude 3 Haiku and Sonnet
• AWS supports dynamically removing and adding auto assigned public IPv4 address
• Restore running applications to pre-update state in Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink

Thoughts from Social 🐦

Congrats! You successfully founded, funded, found market fit, and had an incredible exit, with Lambda. You scaled rapidly and with little operational overhead. That’s a Lambda win.

Now you’ve got economies of scale challenges. Jump ahead and just squeeze every raw cycle from EC2

— Chris Munns (@chrismunns) April 30, 2024

I'm a fan of Boris and am incredibly excited for him and the Baselime team to be joining Cloudflare. But Chris Munns is 100% right here. Would they have been able to iterate as quickly and scale their product as fast as they did if they started on EC2 instances? 🤷‍♂️

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

May 10, 2024 - Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon - Project Submissions Open.

May 21, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Sydney, AU

May 23, 2024 - ServerlessDays Belfast 🗣️

May 24, 2024 - ServerlessDays ANZ - Auckland, NZ

June 13, 2024 - ServerlessDays Milano 2024 🗣️

Please send me your serverless events!

Star of the Week ⭐️

This week's star is Khawaja Shams (@ksshams). Khawaja is the co-founder and CEO at Momento, a real-time serverless data platform. Khawaja has become a true hero in the serverless community. He's not only an advocate for serverless that supports and sponsors others in the community (including #BelieveInServerless), but he has built an incredibly exciting serverless-focused company that delivers on the true meaning of the word. As a former DynamoDB Lead at AWS and someone who worked on the Mars Rover projects at NASA, he also brings the technical acumen that continues to push the limits of serverless. Thank you, Khawaja, for all you've done to support and grow serverless.

Final Thoughts 🤔

That was a lot! Don't forget to check out the Diagrid Catalyst AWS Hackathon!

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 X, LinkedIn, or email.