Experiences in Architecting Platforms Using Serverless

Experiences in Architecting &
Implementing Platforms Using
Serverless
Srushith Repakula
Head of Engineering, KonfHub
AWS Serverless Hero

Srushith Repakula
AWS Serverless Hero
Head of Engineering at KonfHub
AWS UG Tirupati Lead
Host of ServerlessSaturdays

Amazon SNS
Amazon
EventBridge
AWS Step
Functions
Amazon
Aurora
Serverless AWS
AppSync
RDS Proxy
AWS
Lambda
Amazon Kinesis
Data Streams
AWS Fargate
Amazon
Athena
Amazon
Elastic
File System
Amazon
Simple
Queue Service
Amazon S3
AWS Glue
Amazon Managed
Streaming for Kafka
Amazon
Timestream
Amazon Neptune

https://konf.me/sls-poll
@SrushithR
https://konf.me/sls-poll

Serverless URL Shortener
https://github.com/SrushithR/Serverless-URL-Shortener

@SrushithR
Highly
scalable
GraphQL APIs
Data Sync, Real Time
and offline capabilities
Fine grained
access control
Key Features

Lambda
RDS
DynamoDB
REST API
AppSync
Data Sources @SrushithR

Best Practices & Things to Remember
● There can be no public access - for the good!
● The maximum limit for expiry of API key is 365 days
● Quotas and limits
● Security best practices - using the correct authorization mode
based on the access patterns
● WAF in front of AppSync
● Turn off introspection - Schema not discoverable

The Pain Points
Network
accessibility
Cold starts Connection
management &
pooling
@SrushithR

@SrushithR
On demand, auto
scaling DB
Use of Data API* -
No problem of
Connection pooling
Cost saving*!
Key Features

Best Practices and Things to Remember!
● Limitation on the number of connections: 1000 per second and 500 concurrently
● Understand Scaling Point and enable “Force Scaling” if needed
● Data API has a default timeout of 45 seconds. This can be increased
● Each transaction should run within 3 minutes
● Data size limitations - 64 KB per row and 1 MiB overall. Always account for pagination to
ensure the query doesn’t fail

So, does Aurora
Serverless V1 solve
everything
@SrushithR
Enter Aurora
Serverless V2

● Multi AZ support
● Read Replicas
● Much improved & granular
scaling
● Global databases
● Compatible with RDS
Proxy
What does Aurora Serverless V2 offer?
@SrushithR

● Missing Data API support
● Inability to scale down to 0
● Costlier in comparison
So, does V2 solve everything?
@SrushithR

Amazon EventBridge is a
serverless event bus that
makes it easier to build
event-driven applications

Design Patterns - Hub & Spoke Model
User Management
Checkout
Event &
Registrations
App Data
Payments
@SrushithR

Payments
Checkout
Users
Management
App Data
Registrations
Notifications
@SrushithR

Design Patterns - Static Event Flow
Checkout
“Registration
Successful!”
@SrushithR

Design Patterns - Filtered Event Flow
Payments
Settlements Service
Registrations
Management Service
Amount details,
payment status
Registration details -
name, email etc
Failure notification
with order details
@SrushithR

Design Patterns - Transformed Event Flow
Checkout
Events &
Registrations
App Data
Payments
Trigger external
webhooks
@SrushithR

Best Practices and Things to Remember!
● Configure events (Matched, Part of matched, Constant, Transformed) based on the
downstream consumers
● Filter out data that is passed over to the consumers - especially payment or PII data
● Standardise event structuring for better filtering and routing - “metadata” and “data”
● At least once delivery with a 24 hour retry - build for idempotency
● Use EventBridge for microservices communications and SNS for internal service
communications
● Look at functionless integrations wherever possible
@SrushithR

AWS Step Functions is a
serverless orchestration service
that lets you combine AWS
Lambda functions and other AWS
services to build business-critical
applications
@SrushithR

Orchestration Parallel Processing Retry, time wait,
conditional execution
@SrushithR
Key Features

Best Practices and Points to Remember!
● Choosing between standard and express workflows
● Leverage S3 instead of passing large payloads
● Use timeouts to avoid stuck executions
● Move out the retry, time wait, conditional execution from the application layer to step
function configuration
● Use task tokens to await for responses from 3rd party APIs
@SrushithR

Challenges & Lessons Learnt
● Lot of context in the architecture - a boon or a bane?
● Loosely coupled, difficult to get started and debug
● Keep an eye out for silent failures, especially in asynchronous invocations - use Lambda
Destinations
● Lambda functions can scale, but can your downstream services?
● DDoS* can happen, and you might not even know!
@SrushithR

Srushith Repkaula
Head of Engineering, KonfHub
AWS Serverless Hero
@SrushithR

Resources
1. https://medium.com/lego-engineering/the-power-of-amazon-eventbridge-is-in-its-detail-
92c07ddcaa40
2. https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/how-to-integrate-your-workload-with-slack-usin
g-amazon-eventbridge-api-destinations
3. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/using-amazon-rds-proxy-with-aws-lambda
4. https://acloudguru.com/blog/engineering/how-to-integrate-your-workload-with-slack-usin
g-amazon-eventbridge-api-destinations
5. https://github.com/SrushithR/realtime-polling-app
6. https://github.com/dabit3/this-or-that
7. https://serverlessland.com/patterns/eventbridge-sqs
8. https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/features/
9.
@SrushithR

Image and Icon Credits
1. API cartoon - https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-an-api-how-apis-work-for-non-developers/
2. Rest vs GraphQL - https://twitter.com/Rapid_API/status/1517497279145459712/photo/1
3. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/flow_1160137" title="Kiranshastry">Kiranshastry</a> from <a
href="https://www.flaticon.com/" title="Flaticon"> www.flaticon.com</a>
4. <a href='https://www.freepik.com/vectors/music'>Music vector created by stories - www.freepik.com</a>
5. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/smashicons" title="Smashicons">Smashicons</a> from <a
6. Icons made by <a href="https://creativemarket.com/eucalyp" title="Eucalyp">Eucalyp</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/"
title="Flaticon"> www.flaticon.com</a>
7. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/rocket_788195" title="prettycons">prettycons</a> from <a
8. Icons made by <a href="http://www.freepik.com/" title="Freepik">Freepik</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/" title="Flaticon">
www.flaticon.com</a>
9. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/becris" title="Becris">Becris</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/"
10. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik" title="Freepik">Freepik</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/"
11. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/ddara" title="dDara">dDara</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/"
12. Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/geotatah" title="geotatah">geotatah</a> from <a
13. DB security - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/server" title="server icons">Server icons created by Freepik - Flaticon</a>
14. Cold start - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/temperature" title="temperature icons">Temperature icons created by
Smashicons - Flaticon</a>
15. DB connectivity - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/network" title="network icons">Network icons created by pmicon -
Flaticon</a>

Image and Icon Credits
1. Webhook - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/webhook" title="webhook icons">Webhook icons created by Freepik -
Flaticon</a>
2. Rest API - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/api" title="api icons">Api icons created by berkahicon - Flaticon</a>
3. User - <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/user" title="user icons">User icons created by Freepik - Flaticon</a>

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