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7 posts tagged with "serverless"

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· 16 min read
Alex DeBrie

Last week, someone emailed me to ask about a potential cost optimization mechanism in DynamoDB. More on the specifics of that situation below, but the basic point is they were thinking about adding some additional application and architectural complexity because they were concerned about high DynamoDB costs for a particular use case.

I responded the way I always respond for these requests -- "have you done the math?"

One of my favorite things about DynamoDB is that you can easily do the math when considering how much it will cost you. I use this all the time in a few different ways, from getting a rough guess at how much DynamoDB will cost for my application to deciding between different approaches to solving a specific access pattern.

· 16 min read
Alex DeBrie

I recently delivered serverless training to some engineers, and there was confusion between two concepts that come up in discussons of serverless architectures.

On one hand, I describe AWS Lambda as event-based compute, which has significant implications for how you write the code and design the architecture in your serverless applications.

On the other hand, many serverless applications use an event-driven architecture that relies on decoupled, asynchronous processing of events across your application.

These two concepts -- event-driven architectures and event-based compute -- sound similar and are often used together in serverless applications on AWS, but they're not the same thing. Further, the patterns you use for one will not necessarily apply if you're not using the other.

· 21 min read
Alex DeBrie

Over the past year or two, I've seen the AWS CDK turn a lot of my friends into converts. And in the very recent past, a few of these people have written up their (mostly positive) experiences with the CDK. See Maciej Radzikowski on why he stopped being a CDK skeptic here or Corey Quinn's list of the CDK's hard edges which, ultimately, is still favorable. For a more skeptical view of the CDK, check out Mike Roberts' excellent thoughts here.

Some of these articles describe similar concerns I have, but none of them quite nails my thoughts on the matter. I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring and describe why I still prefer the Serverless Framework over the CDK.

· 7 min read
Alex DeBrie

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully-managed NoSQL database that's exploding in popularity. It provides low-latency reads and writes via HTTP with low maintenance in a way that fits with high-scale applications.

At re:Invent 2017, AWS announced DynamoDB Global Tables. With Global Tables, you can write to a DynamoDB table in one region, and AWS will asynchronously replicate items to the other regions.

· 8 min read
Alex DeBrie

Serverless is all the rage. Ever since AWS Lambda was announced at re:Invent 2014, there's been an explosion in the serverless space. We've seen more FaaS offerings, more event sources, more managed services, and more pay-per-use pricing models.

Serverless has unlocked a whole new world for developers. But how do you get started? Because serverless is so new, it requires learning new patterns and skills.

In this post, I'll cover a few categories that I see as good entry-level projects with serverless. It's kind of like having your training wheels on -- you get used to the motions and how things work without making a big bet with your core business applications.