AWS Compute Blog

Serverless ICYMI Q4 2023

Welcome to the 24th edition of the AWS Serverless ICYMI (in case you missed it) quarterly recap. Every quarter, we share all the most recent product launches, feature enhancements, blog posts, webinars, live streams, and other interesting things that you might have missed!

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

2023 Q4 Calendar

2023 Q4 Calendar

ServerlessVideo

ServerlessVideo at re:Invent 2024

ServerlessVideo at re:Invent 2024

ServerlessVideo is a demo application built by the AWS Serverless Developer Advocacy team to stream live videos and also perform advanced post-video processing. It uses several AWS services including AWS Step Functions, Amazon EventBridge, AWS Lambda, Amazon ECS, and Amazon Bedrock in a serverless architecture that makes it fast, flexible, and cost-effective. Key features include an event-driven core with loosely coupled microservices that respond to events routed by EventBridge. Step Functions orchestrates using both Lambda and ECS for video processing to balance speed, scale, and cost. There is a flexible plugin-based architecture using Step Functions and EventBridge to integrate and manage multiple video processing workflows, which include GenAI.

ServerlessVideo allows broadcasters to stream video to thousands of viewers using Amazon IVS. When a broadcast ends, a Step Functions workflow triggers a set of configured plugins to process the video, generating transcriptions, validating content, and more. The application incorporates various microservices to support live streaming, on-demand playback, transcoding, transcription, and events. Learn more about the project and watch videos from reinvent 2023 at video.serverlessland.com.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda enabled outbound IPv6 connections from VPC-connected Lambda functions, providing virtually unlimited scale by removing IPv4 address constraints.

The AWS Lambda and AWS SAM teams also added support for sharing test events across teams using AWS SAM CLI to improve collaboration when testing locally.

AWS Lambda introduced integration with AWS Application Composer, allowing users to view and export Lambda function configuration details for infrastructure as code (IaC) workflows.

AWS added advanced logging controls enabling adjustable JSON-formatted logs, custom log levels, and configurable CloudWatch log destinations for easier debugging. AWS enabled monitoring of errors and timeouts occurring during initialization and restore phases in CloudWatch Logs as well, making troubleshooting easier.

For Kafka event sources, AWS enabled failed event destinations to prevent functions stalling on failing batches by rerouting events to SQS, SNS, or S3. AWS also enhanced Lambda auto scaling for Kafka event sources in November to reach maximum throughput faster, reducing latency for workloads prone to large bursts of messages.

AWS launched support for Python 3.12 and Java 21 Lambda runtimes, providing updated libraries, smaller deployment sizes, and better AWS service integration. AWS also introduced a simplified console workflow to automate complex network configuration when connecting functions to Amazon RDS and RDS Proxy.

Additionally in December, AWS enabled faster individual Lambda function scaling allowing each function to rapidly absorb traffic spikes by scaling up to 1000 concurrent executions every 10 seconds.

Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate

In Q4 of 2023, AWS introduced several new capabilities across its serverless container services including Amazon ECS, AWS Fargate, AWS App Runner, and more. These features help improve application resilience, security, developer experience, and migration to modern containerized architectures.

In October, Amazon ECS enhanced its task scheduling to start healthy replacement tasks before terminating unhealthy ones during traffic spikes. This prevents going under capacity due to premature shutdowns. Additionally, App Runner launched support for IPv6 traffic via dual-stack endpoints to remove the need for address translation.

In November, AWS Fargate enabled ECS tasks to selectively use SOCI lazy loading for only large container images in a task instead of requiring it for all images. Amazon ECS also added idempotency support for task launches to prevent duplicate instances on retries. Amazon GuardDuty expanded threat detection to Amazon ECS and Fargate workloads which users can easily enable.

Also in November, the open source Finch container tool for macOS became generally available. Finch allows developers to build, run, and publish Linux containers locally. A new website provides tutorials and resources to help developers get started.

Finally in December, AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator added new capabilities for replatforming applications to Amazon ECS using guided workflows. App Runner also improved integration with Route 53 domains to automatically configure required records when associating custom domains.

AWS Step Functions

In Q4 2023, AWS Step Functions announced the redrive capability for Standard Workflows. This feature allows failed workflow executions to be redriven from the point of failure, skipping unnecessary steps and reducing costs. The redrive functionality provides an efficient way to handle errors that require longer investigation or external actions before resuming the workflow.

Step Functions also launched support for HTTPS endpoints in AWS Step Functions, enabling easier integration with external APIs and SaaS applications without needing custom code. Developers can now connect to third-party HTTP services directly within workflows. Additionally, AWS released a new test state capability that allows testing individual workflow states before full deployment. This feature helps accelerate development by making it faster and simpler to validate data mappings and permissions configurations.

AWS announced optimized integrations between AWS Step Functions and Amazon Bedrock for orchestrating generative AI workloads. Two new API actions were added specifically for invoking Bedrock models and training jobs from workflows. These integrations simplify building prompt chaining and other techniques to create complex AI applications with foundation models.

Finally, the Step Functions Workflow Studio is now integrated in the AWS Application Composer. This unified builder allows developers to design workflows and define application resources across the full project lifecycle within a single interface.

Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge announced support for new partner integrations with Adobe and Stripe. These integrations enable routing events from the Adobe and Stripe platforms to over 20 AWS services. This makes it easier to build event-driven architectures to handle common use cases.

Amazon SNS

In Q4, Amazon SNS added native in-place message archiving for FIFO topics to improve event stream durability by allowing retention policies and selective replay of messages without provisioning separate resources. Additional message filtering operators were also introduced including suffix matching, case-insensitive equality checks, and OR logic for matching across properties to simplify routing logic implementation for publishers and subscribers. Finally, delivery status logging was enabled through AWS CloudFormation.

Amazon SQS

Amazon SQS has introduced several major new capabilities and updates. These improve visibility, throughput, and message handling for users. Specifically, Amazon SQS enabled AWS CloudTrail logging of key SQS APIs. This gives customers greater visibility into SQS activity. Additionally, SQS increased the throughput quota for the high throughput mode of FIFO queues. This was significantly increased in certain Regions. It also boosted throughput in Asia Pacific Regions. Furthermore, Amazon SQS added dead letter queue redrive support. This allows you to redrive messages that failed and were sent to a dead letter queue (DLQ).

Serverless at AWS re:Invent

Serverless videos from re:Invent

Serverless videos from re:Invent

Visit the Serverless Land YouTube channel to find a list of serverless and serverless container sessions from reinvent 2023. Hear from experts like Chris Munns and Julian Wood in their popular session, Best practices for serverless developers, or Nathan Peck and Jessica Deen in Deploying multi-tenant SaaS applications on Amazon ECS and AWS Fargate.

EDA Day Nashville

EDA Day Nashville

EDA Day Nashville

The AWS Serverless Developer Advocacy team hosted an event-driven architecture (EDA) day conference on October 26, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. This inaugural GOTO EDA day convened over 200 attendees ranging from prominent EDA community members to AWS speakers and product managers. Attendees engaged in 13 sessions, two workshops, and panels covering EDA adoption best practices. The event built upon 2022 content by incorporating additional topics like messaging, containers, and machine learning. It also created opportunities for students and underrepresented groups in tech to participate. The full-day conference facilitated education, inspiration, and thoughtful discussion around event-driven architectural patterns and services on AWS.

Videos from EDA Day are now available on the Serverless Land YouTube channel.

Serverless blog posts

October

November

December

Serverless container blog posts

October

November

December

Serverless Office Hours

Serverless office hours: Q4 videos

October

November

December

Containers from the Couch

Containers from the Couch

October

November

December

FooBar

FooBar

October

November

December

Still looking for more?

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

You can also follow the Serverless Developer Advocacy team on Twitter to see the latest news, follow conversations, and interact with the team.

And finally, visit the Serverless Land and Containers on AWS websites for all your serverless and serverless container needs.