ICYMI: Serverless Q1 2018

This post courtesy of Paul Johnston, AWS Senior Developer Advocate – Serverless

Welcome to the first edition of the AWS Serverless ICYMI (In case you missed it) quarterly recap! Every quarter we’ll share all of the most recent product launches, feature enhancements, blog posts, webinars, Twitch live streams, and other interesting things that you might have missed!

So, what might you have missed? Here’s the recap…

Serverless Application Repository

In February, we moved Serverless Application Repository out of preview and into General Availability (GA).  This means that you can now search for, configure, and deploy serverless applications directly to your AWS account. Publishers include DataDog, Splunk (see related blog post Introducing Splunk AWS Serverless Applications), and New Relic.

Some example applications include:

• Alexa Random Restaurant – Python-based backend for an Alexa skill that returns an open restaurant in a specified city using the Yelp API. Published by: Harsha Warrdhan Sharma
• Podless – A serverless application that downloads podcasts to an S3 bucket. Published by: Stilvoid
• Crypto-monitor – Collect and store crypto currency prices and send yourself an alert if one changes significantly. Published by: Drew Dresser
• DailyDoggo – Send a daily link to a random dog picture to a phone number, via AWS Lambda and SNS. Published by: Kevin McCandless

We also published a bunch of our own applications to help build financial applications:

Connect with developers and customers everywhere by publishing your serverless applications. For more information, see Publishing Applications to the Repository.

New features

We announced two new runtimes for AWS Lambda:

• Go Support for AWS Lambda
• .NET Core 2.0 Support for AWS Lambda

These runtimes give Lambda developers and development teams even greater options for coding serverless, on-demand, compute solutions.

The AWS SAM 1.4.0 release was one of its biggest. The release added features for configuring many aspects of Amazon API Gateway, including CORS support, regional endpoints, binary media types, and stage settings. It also included per function concurrency support, tags and TableName for SimpleTable, and many documentation updates. Check out the release notes for the full list!

AppSync came out of the whitelisted preview and added a whole bunch of new features:

• New AWS AppSync features and whitelist removal
• AWS AppSync region expansion and new features for API keys

Cloud9 launched support for debugging Python Lambda functions.

Lambda@Edge added more header support for S3 origins.

Serverless posts

January:

• How to Create an AWS IAM Policy to Grant AWS Lambda Access to an Amazon DynamoDB Table
• A serverless solution to schedule your Amazon DynamoDB On-Demand Backup
• Invoking AWS Lambda from Amazon MQ
• Authorization@Edge – How to Use Lambda@Edge and JSON Web Tokens to Enhance Web Application Security

February:

• Reactive Microservices Architecture on AWS
• New AWS X-Ray .NET Core Support
• Sharing Secrets with AWS Lambda Using AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store
• Twelve-Factor App Methodology to Serverless Applications
• Running APIs Written in Java on AWS Lambda

March:

• Building a serverless real-time chat application with AWS AppSync
• How to create custom AWS Config rules with AWS CodeStar
• Serverless Dynamic Web Pages in AWS: Provisioned with CloudFormation
• Managing Cross-Account Serverless Microservices
• Innovation Flywheels and the AWS Serverless Application Repository

Webinars

Here are the three webinars we delivered in Q1. We hold several Serverless webinars throughout the year, so look out for them in the Serverless section of the AWS Online Tech Talks page:

• Overview of Serverless Application Deployment Patterns
• Become a Serverless Black Belt – Optimizing Your Serverless Applications
• Operating Your Serverless API in Production at Scale

Twitch

In February, we started a Serverless series on Twitch with our first video looking at the Well Architected Framework Serverless Lens. We also had Salman and James from the Serverless Application Repository team talking about what it takes to deploy and publish applications.

Keep an eye on AWS on Twitch for more Serverless videos and on the Join us on the Twitch AWS page for information about upcoming broadcasts and recent live streams.

Case studies

We’ve published several new case studies this quarter to help you with understanding how other organizations are using serverless technologies:

• FINRA Adopts AWS to Perform 500 Billion Validation Checks Daily
• iRobot Ready to Unlock the Next Generation of Smart Homes Using the AWS Cloud
• Autodesk Goes Serverless in the AWS Cloud, Reduces Account-Creation Time by 99%
• Financial Engines Cuts Costs 90% Using AWS Lambda and Serverless Computing

Worthwhile reading

If you haven’t read the AWS Well Architected Framework Serverless Application Lens document, then it’s worth taking the time to do so. The document covers common serverless applications scenarios and identifies key elements to ensure that your workloads are architected according to best practices.

In other news

AWS Documentation is now open source and on GitHub, which is awesome!

From now on, if you find issues with documentation we have open-sourced, you can tell us via a Pull Request rather than tweeting or emailing us. The current available serverless repositories are here:

• AWS Lambda https://github.com/awsdocs/aws-lambda-developer-guide/blob/master/doc_source/welcome.md
• AWS Step Functions https://github.com/awsdocs/aws-step-functions-developer-guide
• AWS Serverless Application Repository https://github.com/awsdocs/aws-serverlessrepo-developer-guide

Looking to get hands-on with serverless?

We’re always looking to help people start learning how to build serverless applications. Our serverless web application workshops are online and you can do the hands-on labs yourself:
Build a Serverless web application

Still looking for more?

The Serverless landing page has lots of information including a resources page containing case studies, webinars, whitepapers, customer stories, reference architectures, and even more Getting Started tutorials. Check it out!