ICYMI: Serverless Q2 2019

This post is courtesy of Moheeb Zara, Senior Developer Advocate – AWS Serverless

Welcome to the sixth edition of the AWS Serverless ICYMI (in case you missed it) quarterly recap. Every quarter, we 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!

In case you missed our last ICYMI, checkout what happened last quarter here.

Before we dive in to all that happened in Q2, we’re excited about this quarter’s launch of Amazon EventBridge, the serverless event bus that connects application data from your own apps, SaaS, and AWS-as-a-service. This allows you to create powerful event-driven serverless applications using a variety of event sources.

Our very own AWS Solutions Architect, Mike Deck, sat down with AWS Serverless Hero Jeremy Daly and recorded a podcast on Amazon EventBridge. It’s a worthy listen if you’re interested in exploring all the features offered by this launch.

Now, back to Q2, here’s what’s new.

AWS Lambda

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights now allows you to see statistics from recent invocations of your Lambda functions in the Lambda monitoring tab.

Additionally, as of June, you can monitor the Lambda@Edge functions associated with your Amazon CloudFront distributions directly from your Amazon CloudFront console. This includes a revamped monitoring dashboard for CloudFront distributions and Lambda@Edge functions.

AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions now supports workflow execution events, which help in the building and monitoring of even-driven serverless workflows. Automatic Execution event notifications can be delivered upon start/completion of CloudWatch Events/Amazon EventBridge. This allows services such as AWS Lambda, Amazon SNS, Amazon Kinesis, or AWS Step Functions to respond to these events.

Additionally you can use callback patterns to automate workflows for applications with human activities and custom integrations with third-party services. You create callback patterns in minutes with less code to write and maintain, run without servers and infrastructure to manage, and scale reliably.

Amazon API Gateway

Amazon API Gateway now offers tag-based access control for WebSocket APIs using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, allowing you to categorize API Gateway resources for WebSocket APIs by purpose, owner, or other criteria.  With the addition of tag-based access control to WebSocket resources, you can now give permissions to WebSocket resources at various levels by creating policies based on tags. For example, you can grant full access to admins to while limiting access to developers.

You can now enforce a minimum Transport Layer Security (TLS) version and cipher suites through a security policy for connecting to your Amazon API Gateway custom domain.

In addition, Amazon API Gateway now allows you to define VPC Endpoint policies, enabling you to specify which Private APIs a VPC Endpoint can connect to. This enables granular security control using VPC Endpoint policies.

AWS Amplify

Amplify CLI (part of the open source Amplify Framework) now includes support for adding and configuring AWS Lambda triggers for events when using Amazon Cognito, Amazon Simple Storage Service, and Amazon DynamoDB as event sources. This means you can setup custom authentication flows for mobile and web applications via the Amplify CLI and Amazon Cognito User Pool as an authentication provider.

Amplify Console,  a Git-based workflow for continuous deployment and hosting for fullstack serverless web apps, launched several updates to the build service including SAM CLI and custom container support.

Amazon Kinesis

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose can now utilize AWS PrivateLink to securely ingest data. AWS PrivateLink provides private connectivity between VPCs, AWS services, and on-premises applications, securely over the Amazon network. When AWS PrivateLink is used with Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, all traffic to a Kinesis Data Firehose from a VPC flows over a private connection.

You can now assign AWS resource tags to applications in Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. These key/value tags can be used to organize and identify resources, create cost allocation reports, and control access to resources within Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics.

Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US-East), Europe (Stockholm), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and EU (London) regions.

For a complete list of where Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics is available, please see the AWS Region Table.

AWS Cloud9

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud9 integrated development environment (IDE) now has a Quick Start which deploys in the AWS cloud in about 30 minutes. This enables organizations to provide developers a powerful cloud-based IDE that can edit, run, and debug code in the browser and allow easy sharing and collaboration.

AWS Cloud9 is also now available in the EU (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions. For a current list of supported regions, see AWS Regions and Endpoints in the AWS documentation.

Amazon DynamoDB

You can now tag Amazon DynamoDB tables when you create them. Tags are labels you can attach to AWS resources to make them easier to manage, search, and filter.  Tagging support has also been extended to the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.

DynamoDBMapper now supports Amazon DynamoDB transactional API calls. This support is included within the AWS SDK for Java. These transactional APIs provide developers atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable (ACID) operations to help ensure data correctness.

Amazon DynamoDB now applies adaptive capacity in real time in response to changing application traffic patterns, which helps you maintain uninterrupted performance indefinitely, even for imbalanced workloads.

AWS Training and Certification has launched Amazon DynamoDB: Building NoSQL Database–Driven Applications, a new self-paced, digital course available exclusively on edX.

Amazon Aurora

Amazon Aurora Serverless MySQL 5.6 can now be accessed using the built-in Data API enabling you to access Aurora Serverless with web services-based applications, including AWS Lambda, AWS AppSync, and AWS Cloud9. For more check out this post.

Sharing snapshots of Aurora Serverless DB clusters with other AWS accounts or publicly is now possible. We are also giving you the ability to copy Aurora Serverless DB cluster snapshots across AWS regions.

You can now set the minimum capacity of your Aurora Serverless DB clusters to 1 Aurora Capacity Unit (ACU). With Aurora Serverless, you specify the minimum and maximum ACUs for your Aurora Serverless DB cluster instead of provisioning and managing database instances. Each ACU is a combination of processing and memory capacity. By setting the minimum capacity to 1 ACU, you can keep your Aurora Serverless DB cluster running at a lower cost.

AWS Serverless Application Repository

The AWS Serverless Application Repository is now available in 17 regions with the addition of the AWS GovCloud (US-West) region.

Region support includes Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central), EU (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm), South America (São Paulo), US West (N. California, Oregon), and US East (N. Virginia, Ohio).

Amazon Cognito

Amazon Cognito has launched a new API – AdminSetUserPassword – for the Cognito User Pool service that provides a way for administrators to set temporary or permanent passwords for their end users. This functionality is available for end users even when their verified phone or email are unavailable.

Serverless Posts

April

• Build and automate a serverless data lake using an AWS Glue trigger for the Data Catalog and ETL jobs
• From Poll to Push: Transform APIs using Amazon API Gateway REST APIs and WebSockets
• Amplify Framework announces new Amazon Aurora Serverless and GraphQL Transform features for building AWS AppSync APIs
• Using AWS Serverless Technology as an Enabler for Cloud Adoption
• How Heimdall’s Database Proxy Improves Website Response Times with No Code Changes

May

• New – Data API for Amazon Aurora Serverless
• Migrating Applications from Monolithic to Microservice on AWS
• Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Cost Tracking for Serverless Applications
• Build a Twitch Extension With an AWS Serverless Backend
• Building Serverless Pipelines with Amazon CloudWatch Events

June

• Build a voting website that doesn’t crash — part two. Now with Amplify.
• Configuring user creation workflows with AWS Step Functions and AWS Managed Microsoft AD logs
• Increasing real-time stream processing performance with Amazon Kinesis Data Streams enhanced fan-out and AWS Lambda
• How to Design Your Serverless Apps for Massive Scale
• Analyzing Performance and Cost of Large-Scale Data Processing with AWS Lambda
• Updates to Serverless Architectural Patterns and Best Practices
• Keeping the Security and Scalability of Serverless Apps Problem-Free with AWS Secrets Manager
• Getting started with serverless

Events

Senior Developer Advocates for AWS Serverless spoke at several conferences this quarter. Here are some recordings worth watching!

• AWS Summit Washington, DC • Twelve-Factor Serverless Applications
• GOTO 2019 • What Does THIS Button Do? Serverless and IoT

Tech Talks

We hold several AWS Online Tech Talks covering serverless tech talks throughout the year, so look out for them in the Serverless section of the AWS Online Tech Talks page. Here are the ones from Q2.

• Mastering Amazon DynamoDB ACID Transactions: When and How to Use the New Transactional APIs
• Deploying and Consuming Serverless Functions with AWS Amplify
• Building Event-Driven Serverless Apps with AWS Event Fork Pipelines
• Serverless E-commerce Application Using AWS AppSync
• Serverless Streams, Topics, Queues, & APIs! How to Pick the Right Serverless Application Pattern

Twitch

In April, we started a 13-week deep dive into building APIs on AWS as part of our Twitch Build On series. The Building Happy Little APIs series covers the common and not-so-common use cases for APIs on AWS and the features available to customers as they look to build secure, scalable, efficient, and flexible APIs.

There are also a number of other helpful video series covering Serverless available on the AWS Twitch Channel.

Serverless expert and AWS Specialist Solutions architect, Heitor Lessa, has been hosting a weekly Twitch series since April. Join him and others as they build an end-to-end airline booking solution using serverless. The final episode airs on August 7th at Wednesday 8:00am PT.

Here’s a recap of the last quarter:

• Build On AWS | Rendering Websites at the Edge with Lambda@Edge
• Build On | Securing Serverless Apps on AWS
• Build On Serverless: Integration and E2E Testing: Part 1
• Build On Serverless: Testing the Loyalty Service
• Building Serverless Solutions with Stackery
• Build with DynamoDB | A Data Modeling Use Case Deep Dive
• Build with DynamoDB | Advanced NoSQL Data Modeling with Amazon DynamoDB
• Database Deep Dive | Aurora Storage: Scalability and Reliability for Relational Data

AWS re:Invent

AWS re:Invent 2019 is around the corner! From December 2 – 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada, join tens of thousands of AWS customers to learn, share ideas, and see exciting keynote announcements. Be sure to take a look at the growing catalog of serverless sessions this year.

Register for AWS re:Invent now!

What did we do at AWS re:Invent 2018? Check out our recap here: AWS re:Invent 2018 Recap at the San Francisco Loft

AWS Serverless Heroes

We urge you to explore the efforts of our AWS Serverless Heroes Community. This is a worldwide network of AWS Serverless experts with a diverse background of experience. For example, check out this post from last month where Marcia Villalba demonstrates how to set up unit tests for serverless applications.

Still looking for more?

The Serverless landing page has lots of information. The Lambda resources page contains case studies, webinars, whitepapers, customer stories, reference architectures, and even more Getting Started tutorials.