AWS Lambda Reading List

I'm hearing a lot about AWS Lambda these days and "serverless" architectures. By "serverless", I mean the concept, not the product (here). Basically, AWS Lambda is computing power without management. You provide your code, AWS Lambda runs it. You have minimal setup and no responsibility for maintaining servers on which to run that code.

As with all new technology fads, there's a lot of buzz and a flurry of unorganized content. My intent with this entry is to keep a current list of relevant Lambda articles and categorize them. Hopefully, this will streamline your research if you're looking at using AWS Lambda at your organization.

I intend to update this list as new material comes to my attention. If you see articles that are worthy of mention, please add a comment providing a link. I'll take a look.

Getting Started

These articles provide overview material describing what AWS Lambda is.

AWS Lambda -- Run Code in the Cloud (AWS Blog)

• "It’s Amazon’s way of delivering a microservices framework far ahead of its competitors."

A Walk in the Cloud with AWS Lambda (Slideshare)

• Provides detailed overview and possible use cases.

What are the Business Benefits?

These articles highlight business benefits provided by AWS Lambda

It’s Game Over in the Cloud: Some Shocking Ideas About AWS Lambda

• Somewhat biased as it's an Amazon executive describing how they use Lambda internally.
• “No more glue code. No more servers. Just run your code.”

Flies in the Ointment

These articles highlight limitations and issues with AWS Lambda.

3 Reasons AWS Lambda Is Not Ready for Prime Time (Datawire Blog)

• "Lambda is a building block, not a tool"
• "Lambda is not well documented"
• "Lambda is terrible at error handling"
• Pay attention to the discussion below. There's some resistance to the error handling points.

Vendor Lock-in

Many fear becoming relient on AWS Lambda as AWS can raise prices with just a simple edit.  The following products propose solutions to mitigate that risk.

Project Kratos

• Want AWS Lambda without the Amazon lock-in? Meet Project Kratos

Project Serverless

Case Studies

This section details use of AWS Lambda in practice.

Author Interview: AWS Lambda and serverless architecture (Manning)

• Embedded case study for acloud.guru, a AWS education company.
• Also has material on the strategic reasons to consider AWS Lambda

AWS Case Study: VidRoll (VidRoll Blog)

AWS Case Study: Netflix & AWS Lambda (AWS site)

Implementation Issues
This section provides technical assistance for specific issues I''ve had implementing AWS Lambdas.

Running Python with Compiled Code on AWS Lambda (PerryGeo Blog)

• Getting Python Lambdas up and running is a completely aggravating experience.  This blog helped me quite a lot.
• In addition to Mathew's wise guidance, make sure you install/compile any binaries on an instance using the officially supported Lambda AMIs (listed here).  Note that you will likely need to install a compiler (e.g. yum install gcc)