From functions to containers to databases, serverless is a huge paradigm shift. The ability to only pay for what we use and not worry about underlying infrastructure is very tempting to developers and DevOps engineers, and the rate of innovation in this area has been very rapid across all major public cloud providers. Serverless architectures are the natural evolution of microservices design. While Lambda has become synonymous with serverless in AWS, there are several new and upcoming patterns that take serverless architectures to the next level. Manish Pandit explains how to identify these patterns and put them to use. Using Marqeta’s efforts to move its payments infrastructure to the public cloud as an example, Manish explores the services that Marqeta considered, customized, hacked around, and successfully implemented as a part of this move.

1. Serverless
Architectures on AWS
in practice
Manish Pandit
07/19/2018

6. If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said: “faster horses”
-Henry Ford

7. The Journey

8. About Me
Manish Pandit
Director of Platform Engineering @marqeta
@lobster1234
lobster1234.github.io

12. Why?
Scale technology to support the growing business
Use public cloud capabilities so we can focus on product innovation

13. Break down the monolith

14. Shrink the Infrastructure

15. Cloud-Native-First Mindset
..and many more

16. Microservices
Independent development, deployment, and scaling of functionally isolated
services.

17. Microservices
“Loosely coupled, yet highly aligned”

18. Microservices
You can have microservices without containers and serverless!
Containers and Serverless are the most optimal way to package and deploy
microservices.

19. Abstractions
Bare Metal
O/S
Application
Fn
Serverless
Containers
VMs
Hardware

20. Containers
Distributed Applications/Services
Economics of Scale - Optimal Resource Utilization
Being lightweight, they’re fast to deploy and run

21. Serverless
Function as a unit of deployment (FaaS)
Pay for what you use, never for idle resources
100% abstraction from underlying resources

22. Serverless Components
1. Functions themselves
2. Events that trigger these functions, or handlers
Event driven programming - Functions are event handlers
You only pay when the handler runs

23. Lambda
Amazon’s FaaS
Supports Node, Python, Java 8, C#, Go
Billed as GB-seconds

24. Lambda Pricing
First 1M requests per month are free
400,000 GB-seconds per month are free
START RequestId: 6bd9cf60-7e2b-11e8-9f4a-ebdea81e794d Version: $LATEST
END RequestId: 6bd9cf60-7e2b-11e8-9f4a-ebdea81e794d
REPORT RequestId: 6bd9cf60-7e2b-11e8-9f4a-ebdea81e794d Duration: 646.26 ms Billed Duration: 700 ms
Memory Size: 128 MB Max Memory Used: 31 MB

25. Use Cases

26. Consul Backups
GET /v1/catalog/service/mqapi
PutObject
trigger

27. Database Replication Jobs
Get updates
PutObject
trigger apply

28. Async Events
publish
publish
trigger
trigger
Service A
Service B
Service C
ECS

29. File Processing Pipeline
Split PGP &
Transfer
Payment
Networks
Banks
trigger
trigger
N 1
Object + Metadata

30. Lambda limits
Memory : 128-3008 MB with 64 MB increments
Time : 300 seconds

31. Batch Jobs

32. AWS Batch : Managed Compute
https://.. Submitter
Job
Job
Job
Batch
Cloudwatch Event

33. Containers not Serverless Enough?
= ECS minus the Cluster

34. Logging
For Lambdas, Cloudwatch logs
For ECS, filebeat agent on the host
For Fargate, LogStashTcpSocketAppender

35. Monitoring and Alerting

36. Testing
Docker Compose
Localstack
Use environment variables for configuration (12-Factor App)

37. Gotchas..
- Lambda Cold start on both Python and Java
- Due to VPC and ENI
- Be aware of the retries
- Async invocation gets two retries
- Sync invocation gets no retries
- Apply the Principle of Least Privilege to the Lambda and ECS Roles
- S3 triggers - source and destination buckets

39. Tips
- Declare connection pools outside of the handler’s scope
- Write tests!
- Test locally - the only error you should be expecting is IAM Permissions error.
<role> is not authorized to perform: <operation> on resource: <resource>
- Do not create Microliths
- Set up billing alerts

40. Tips
- Pick the best tool for the job
- Do not pick the tool and try to fit the job into it
- Beware of the shiny object syndrome
- Take measured risks
- Production is (mostly) unforgiving

42. “You’re free to choose, but you’re not free from the consequences of your choice”
- Universal Paradox

43. Fin
Manish Pandit
Director of Platform Engineering @marqeta
@lobster1234
lobster1234.github.io