Off-by-none: Issue #302

October 22, 2024

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The Deprecations Continue 💀

In our previous issue, AI learned to convert ClickOps to IaC, ElastiCache for Valkey got better serverless pricing, and Databricks unveiled Apps. This week, the AWS Lambda Console gets some development workflow upgrades, we learn that evidently CloudWatch Evidently wasn't an evident success, and cloud databases keep getting better. Plus, we have lots of excellent content from the cloud and serverless communities!

This week's issue is sponsored by Kestra, an open-source, event-driven orchestration platform designed to manage large-scale, complex workflows. There are a lot of workflow engines out there, but Kestra lets you easily build, deploy, and manage workflows that seamlessly integrate with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP, as well as tools like Snowflake and Databricks. Check out their Github repository to learn more.

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

Lots of AWS news to get to today! The AWS Lambda console now supports real-time log analytics via Amazon CloudWatch Logs Live Tail and surfaces key function insights via a new built-in Amazon CloudWatch Metrics Insights dashboard. This hopes to simplify Lambda function development by creating a better feedback loop.

There were some helpful database announcements, including the generally availability of Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integrations with Amazon Redshift, the general availability of Amazon DynamoDB zero-ETL integration, AWS DMS Serverless support for MongoDB and DocDB as a source, and an updated Amazon DynamoDB user experience to organize your tables.

Also, Amazon Bedrock Agents now provide a Conversational Builder and Amazon S3 added new Region and bucket name filtering for the ListBuckets API.

We also had a few new AWS deprecations announced, including support for Amazon CloudWatch Evidently ending soon. This is not to be confused with "Support for Amazon CloudWatch, evidently ending soon." Not sure anyone will notice this one since AppConfig (or Launch Darkly 😬) basically do the same thing.

And speaking of not noticing, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics for SQL is also being deprecated, though the announcement was buried in a tutorial explaining how to Migrate to Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink and Amazon Managed Service for Apache Flink Studio. I'm not sure every two pizza team got the "we have to communicate this stuff better" memo.

Finally, in other cloud news, Fauna announced the General Availability of Fauna Schema and added support for Change Data Capture.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Top 50 Questions & One liner Answers : Serverless Cloud Interview Prparation
Sam Atmaramani shares a rather handy list of questions that can teach you more about serverless concepts in 10 minutes than spending hours with the docs can.

Exploring AWS OpenSearch Serverless Pricing: How It Differs from Traditional Serverless Services
As regular Off-by-none readers, you already know my thoughts on AWS OpenSearch Serverless pricing. Just in case you need a reminder, Salam Shaik shares his experience.

7 Amazon SQS Configurations You Should Always Set
Josh Thorne dives a little deeper into SQS to help you beef up your serverless queuing knowledge. I'm not sure these should be "always set", but they are definitely necessary to know.

Serverless APIs? This will help you choose the right one!
Jones Zachariah Noel N reviews the differences between AWS serverless API options. Nice comparison charts at the end, BTW.

Okay, Gitpod Flex is actually pretty cool
Allen Helton uses a Windows machine! 😱 After I recovered from losing nearly all respect for him, I was able to finish reading his review of Gitpod Flex. I've been a big fan of Gitpod for awhile, so something as cool as this doesn't surprise me.

Serverless Observability with X-Ray
Vivek Mishra gives you a detailed overview of X-Ray, what it does, and why you should use it. It's a great service, but be sure to check out the pricing before you turn it on everywhere.

Understanding AWS Availability Zones: Boosting SaaS Resilience and Uptime
If you're planning on building highly available, resilient applications, you should definitely understand AZs. Ran Isenberg explains.

Pay Less For Serverless: Practical Tips
These are actually some really good practical tips from Orel Bello.

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

As always, there were lots of really great serverless tutorials this past week. Here are some of my favorites:

• Deploy a serverless web application to edit images using Amazon Bedrock by Salman Ahmed
• Building a Notification System with AWS EventBridge and Lambda: A Step-by-Step Guide by Shubham Soni
• DynamoDB Transactions with AWS Step Functions by Viktor Ardelean
• How to Integrate a Cross-Account Lambda with a API Gateway REST API by Chanaka Supun
• Organizing AWS CDK with Separated Lambda and Fargate Code in a Monorepo by Oleksandr Hanhaliuk
• How to Set Up AWS CloudFront Edge Lambdas with Practical Examples using AWS SDK v3 for Node.js by Mahtab Haider
• Using Resource-Based Policies to Secure Lambda Access by Souren Stepanyan
• Lambda function with GraalVM Native Image - Part 2 How to develop and deploy Lambda function with Custom Runtime by Vadym Kazulkin
• Hosting apps in the cloud with Google App Engine in 2024 by Wesley Chun
• Using AWS Glue to Stream DynamoDB to Redshift Serverless by Zi Zhao
• Testing EventBridge with Serverless by Seth Orell
• Bespoke CloudFront Edge Metrics by David Behroozi

Serverless Reads 🤓

Serverless is Great — As Long as You Don’t Have Any Traffic
This post is behind a paywall, but I wanted to share it because it (and articles like it) neglect the benefits of the larger serverless ecosystem. I am the first to stand up and say that "serverless compute" for steady state apps can be way too expensive, but that doesn't negate the operational wins on integrating fully managed services.

What I Learned About DynamoDB from My Recent Project
Suraj Mazar shares their experience realizing that DynamoDB requires a bit more planning than your traditional RDBMS. We were all there at some point.

No EC2 or Kubernetes Allowed: Insights from Building Serverless-Only Architecture at PostNL
Rafal Gancarz covered Luc van Donkersgoed's recent post about PostNL's Serverless Journey, reiterating the capabilities of a "serverless-only" organization.

The story of web framework Hono, from the creator of Hono
I ❤️ Hono. It has become my favorite web framework by far and the first thing I reach for with any new project. Yusuke Wada, the creator, shares its history and philosophy in this post.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

I came across the Amazon OpenSearch Service YouTube channel the other day. Lots of interesting videos here.

Serverless Craic Ep61 Finding your North Star
The Serverless Craic team discusses Chapter Five of "The Value Flywheel Effect" that focuses on the North Star framework.

Stateful Cloud Services at Neon: Navigating Design Decisions and Trade-Offs
John Spray discusses the complexities of stateful cloud service design using Neon Serverless Postgres as a case study.

AWS Bites #133: Building Businesses in the Cloud with Fiona McKenna
Eoin is joined by Fiona McKenna, co-founder and CFO of fourTheorem, to discuss startup advice, hiring and growing teams, creating an environment for success, and managing cloud costs.

Queueing Up Success: The Art of Async on Cloudflare Workers
James Eastham teaches you how to leverage the power of queuing to handle background processes in your applications without affecting the user experience.

The Serverless Scoop: Updates, Discussions, and More
Catch the latest happenings in the community on the Believe In Serverless podcast hosted this week by Danielle Heberling and Andres Moreno.

An Introduction to Amazon Q for the Discerning Developer
AWS Machine Learning Hero, Cyril Bandolo, dives into the benefits of AWS's new generative AI coding assistant.

The Believe in Serverless community has been sharing some production horror stories. Perhaps you'll take some comfort in these, knowing you're not the only one. 😂

• I took the network down for the ENTIRE company 🤦‍♀️
• Secretly changing production configuration 🫠
• I deleted the only production server 😱
• Breaking changes in external APIs took us DOWN

New from AWS 🆕

• Amazon Bedrock Custom Model Import now generally available
• Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL zero-ETL integration with Amazon Redshift now generally available
• Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports local write forwarding
• AWS CodePipeline supports automatic retry on stage failure
• AWS CodePipeline introduces skipping stage
• Amazon Bedrock Model Evaluation now supports evaluating custom model import models
• Amazon EFS now supports up to 60 GiB/s (a 2x increase) of read throughput
• Amazon Redshift now supports refresh interval in a zero-ETL integration
• Amazon QuickSight expands integration with Amazon EventBridge
• AWS announces a seamless link experience for the AWS Console Mobile App
• Amazon Transcribe now supports streaming transcription in 30 additional languages
• Amazon SES enhances configurability with maximum delivery time for emails
• Amazon RDS Multi-AZ deployment with two readable standbys now supports AWS IAM database authentication

Serverless Tools 🛠

Scaffoldly - A new framework for packaging and deploying applications to AWS Lambda.

Upcoming Events 🗓

December 2-6, 2024 - AWS re:Invent 2024

December 3, 2024 - Believe In Serverless Party

December 13, 2024 - ServerlessDays Rome

February 20, 2025 - ServerlessDays Manchester 2025

Please send me your serverless events!

Take the latest Off-by-none Cloud Quiz 🧑‍🏫

What did Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman recently say about employees who don't want to return to the office?
Click an answer below to start the quiz.

• They should be fired immediately
• They can continue working remotely
• They should quit
• They will be given a warning
• They can work part-time in the office

Star of the Week ⭐️

This week's star is Jason Wadsworth (@quizout). Jason is a chief architect at Armanino LLP and an AWS Community Builder. Jason has been part of the serverless community for quite some time, sharing insightful posts on this blog, speaking at conferences, and helping others navigate the complexities of the cloud and serverless. Thanks for your continued commitment to the community, Jason!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Huge thanks to Lee Gilmore for mentioning me in the Spotlight section of his most recent Serverless Advocate Newsletter. I've been part of the serverless community since early 2018, and it's been an honor to collaborate with and learn from so many amazing people. I hope I've inspired you as much as you've all inspired me.

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 X, LinkedIn, or email.