Higher Throughput Workflows for AWS Step Functions

Posted on: May 16, 2018

AWS Step Functions now supports higher throughput workflows, making it easier to coordinate applications with high event rates and variable loads. Starting today, throughput has increased from 400 state transitions per second to 1,000 state transitions per second with burst capacity of 5,000 state transitions. The default start rate for AWS Step Functions state machine executions has also increased from 25 per second to 200 per second, with burst capacity of up to 1,000 starts in select regions.

Higher throughput workflows enable new use cases such as launching data processing workflows from streaming sources like Amazon DynamoDB streams, or starting automated security checks in response to events matching rules in Amazon CloudWatch Events.

AWS Step Functions places limits on the size of state machine parameters by default, such as the number of API actions that you can make during a certain time period, and the number of state transitions processed per second. These limits help prevent a misconfigured state machine from consuming all resources of the system. If the default limits do not meet your needs, you can request a limit increase by contacting AWS Support.

This feature is available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), and EU (Ireland). For a complete list of regions where AWS Step Functions is available, see AWS Regions. To learn more, see our documentation or visit the AWS Step Functions page.