Posted On: May 24, 2021
AWS Lambda Extensions are a new way to integrate your favorite operational tools for monitoring, observability, security, and governance with AWS Lambda. Starting today, extensions are generally available with new performance improvements and an expanded set of partners including Imperva, Instana, Sentry, Site24x7, and the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry.
Extensions use the Lambda Runtime Extensions API to integrate deeply into the Lambda environment. They control and participate in all phases of the Lambda lifecycle - function initialization, invocation, and shutdown. Extensions from AWS, AWS Partners, and open-source tools enable a wide range of use cases. For example, you can use extensions to pre-fetch configuration and secrets before your function handler is executed, or send function logs directly to any destination.
With this release, the Lambda service returns the response from the function as soon as the function code is complete without waiting for the included extensions to finish. This enables extensions to perform activities like sending telemetry to a preferred destination after the function’s response has been returned.
Extensions share the same billing model as Lambda functions and you are charged for compute time used in all phases of the Lambda lifecycle. For function invocations, you pay for requests served and the compute time used to run your code and all extensions, together, in 1ms increments. To learn more about billing for extensions, visit the Lambda FAQs page.
AWS Lambda Extensions are generally available in the US East (N. Virginia), EU (Ireland) , and EU (Milano) regions. For more information, see the AWS Regional Services List.
You can deploy extensions with functions packaged as both ZIP archives or as container images. To get started with extensions from AWS and AWS Partners, follow the links provided in the News Blog post. You can build your own extensions as well. To learn how to build extensions, visit the AWS Lambda Developer Guide.