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Contributed on September 21, 2021

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What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda eliminates the need for traditional computing services and aids in the creation of serverless applications, lowering operating expenses, speeding up the development process, simplifying operational administration, and increasing scalability and productivity. It is an important AWS service you need to know. So, in this blog, let’s discuss what exactly AWS Lambda is and how it works. The following are the topics we are going to cover in this blog. 

• What is AWS Lambda?
• Why is AWS Lambda crucial for Serverless architecture?
• AWS Lambda Features
• How Does AWS Lambda work?
• Best Practices of Amazon Lambda Function
• Advantages of AWS Lambda
• AWS Lambda Use Cases
• Limitations of AWS Lambda
• Conclusion

Watch this YouTube tutorial video on AWS for Beginners: 

What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven computing technology offered by Amazon as part of Amazon Web Services (AWS). This means Amazon Lambda handles all of your infrastructure requirements such as which AWS services to deploy and also how to maintain them.

Rather, place a program on Lambda, which is written in one of the programming languages and runtimes, and submit them to AWS Lambda, which then executes them quickly and flexibly.

In AWS Lambda, code is run in reaction to events in AWS services such as adding/deleting files in an S3 bucket, making an HTTP call to the Amazon API gateway, and so on. Amazon Lambda, on the other hand, should only be utilized to do background activities.

It allows you to concentrate on your core product development and business functionality rather than handling operating system (OS) access management, updating, right-sizing, provision, scalability, and so on. Deriving multiple data outputs from a single source is one of the live AWS Lambda examples.

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Why is AWS Lambda Crucial for Serverless Architecture?

The concept of being “serverless” might be intimidating for many businesses. Many serverless apps may be completely functioning with only a few lines of code and the proper tools if best practices are followed and the right tools are used.

AWS Lambda Architecture is one of the major choices for running the application code while developing Serverless apps since it supports many of the most common languages and runtimes.

In a typical, server-based context, using AWS Lambda layers as the primary logic of a serverless application can enable quicker development speed, greater experimentation, and creativity.

With a Lambda service in AWS for computing, a database management system, and a service that provides an HTTP gateway an AWS Lambda Serverless stack can be built easily. Amazon Lambda also interfaces with a variety of other AWS services along with API Gateway, DynamoDB, and RDS.

AWS Lambda Features

In this section, we are going to discuss some essential features of AWS Lambda which assist in the development of scalable, secure, and readily extendable Lambda applications. The following are some features:

• It offers features like concurrency limits to provide you great control over your production applications which is very helpful in scalability.
• It has a feature named container image tooling, which helps in creating, testing, deploying the Lambda functions.
• Lambda offers a code signing feature that only allows the unmodified code from an authorized developer that adds your trust and security restrictions.
• It has an extension tool known as Lambda extension for its function to make it easier to connect Lambda with respective tools.
• It has a feature that offers sample code that helps the users to integrate Lambda without any other help.
• Database Proxy is a feature of Lambda that controls a pool of database connections and redirects requests from one function to another.
• Amazon Elastic File System is used to securely read, write and persist huge amounts of data of any size.

These are the features of AWS Lambda. Now, Let’s talk about how AWS Lambda works. And what is the Lambda function in AWS?

How Does AWS Lambda Work?

First, you need to upload the  AWS Lambda code or you can directly write it in the Lambda code editor in any language that Lambda supports. It supports a variety of AWS Lambda languages, including Java, Python, Go, and C#. AWS Lambda assists you in uploading code as well as the event information that should be used to trigger it.  You need to mention the triggering conditions that activate the code.

An AWS Lambda function is a piece of code that runs on the Lambda runtime environment. The AWS Lambda function is basically used when you just require a function for a short time.

AWS Lambda’s whole infrastructure layer is controlled by AWS. So, when an event occurs, Lambda executes the related code by selecting the finest resources available in the infrastructure ecosystem to execute the event. As a result, organizations can manage their IT infrastructure more efficiently.

The control plane component of the Amazon Web Service  Lambda run-time environment is made up of APIs that make using AWS resources for application execution easier. Several instances of the same function, or separate functions from the same AWS account, can be performed concurrently, which is one of AWS Lambda’s unique architectural characteristics. Other functions never have access to this execution environment.

Consumers are then charged based on the quantity of allocated memory and the length of time it takes for the operation to execute. AWS Lambda pricing is very reasonable. AWS Lambda costs you when the Lambda code runs, not if it doesn’t.

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Best Practices of Amazon Lambda Function

Here are the top AWS Lambda function recommended practices:

• Reduce the size of your deployment bundle to the bare minimum. This will cut down on the time it takes for your deployment package to download and unpack before being invoked.
• In your Lambda function, avoid employing recursive code, which causes the function to call itself until some arbitrary criterion is fulfilled.
• To get the best timeout value for your Lambda function, load test it.
• Remove any AWS Lambda functions that are no longer in use. By doing so, you may avoid counting unneeded functions against your deployment package size limit.
• Instead of establishing or changing a metric from within your Lambda function code, use Working with AWS Lambda function metrics and CloudWatch Alarms.
• Experiment with varying batch and record sizes to ensure that each event source’s polling frequency is optimized for how soon your function can perform its work.

Advantages of AWS Lambda

Here we will see some key benefits of AWS Lambda:

• It executes your code without needing you to manage or supply infrastructure.
• It grows your application automatically by executing code directly to every event.
• You only pay for every millisecond your code runs as well as the number of times it’s triggered with AWS Lambda.
• The applications can be used on the website or on a mobile device.
• You may speed up the execution of your code with AWS Lambda by selecting the appropriate memory size for your function.
• It interacts with AWS services such as DynamoDB, S3, and API Gateway, allowing you to create fully functional apps using Lambda functions.

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AWS Lambda Use Cases

Now, in this section, let’s discuss some use cases of AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda is used for a variety of applications, some are mentioned below:

1. It assists with the ETL procedure
2. Data can be filtered and transformed using AWS Lambda.
3. Data processing (real-time streaming analytics) can be done with AWS Lambda
4. It may be used to create web apps.
5. Backends that can scale (mobile apps, loT devices)
6. It enables us to do real-time file and stream processing.
7. Backups of routine operations that are automated
8. Use in Amazon goods such as Alexa Chatbots and Alexa/Amazon Echo

Limitations of AWS Lambda

Below are some limitations of AWS Lambda: 

1. The AWS Lambda service is not appropriate for small projects.
2. The maximum size of an event request is 128 KB.
3. Its memory capacity ranges from 128 to 1536 MB
4. AWS Lambda limits the code execution timeout to 5 minutes.
5. The number of concurrent executions is capped at 100.
6. Lambda functions allow you to write logs to CloudWatch alone. This is the only way to keep track of or debug your functions.
7. Because AWS Lambda relies solely on AWS for infrastructure, you won’t be able to install any extra software if your code requires it.
8. AWS Lambda is totally reliant on AWS for infrastructure; if your code requires it, you won’t be able to install anything else.

Conclusion

Therefore we have come to an end to this blog. We hope you have understood- what exactly is Amazon Lambda? and how it works along with the use cases and limitations of AWS Lambda. It is a versatile and very useful service of Amazon. It offers various features that make the designing of serverless applications easy and simple.

It is a valuable resource tool for the project of development stack. However, in order to get the most out of this service, one should be familiar with its best practices.

Head to our AWS Community if you face any doubt regarding this topic.

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