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API Gateway is the definite gotcha with serverless architectures. Whenever someone tells me how cheaper serverless is, I figure they haven't actually dived in t
by shaneprrlt 7y ago
API Gateway is the definite gotcha with serverless architectures. Whenever someone tells me how cheaper serverless is, I figure they haven't actually dived in to see how many AWS resources besides Lambda are required for a production deployment.
It is convenient in several use cases, but for an endpoint or even an entire API that is going to receive a lot of load, managing servers is the more economical approach.
If you need to get a one-off endpoint built that won't receive any significant amount of load, I think a serverless solution is great. But I wouldn't use it as my primary API architecture. Like most things in tech, there's no silver bullet. Context matters, and the best approach depends on many factors.
I still recall this article by the creator of ipify on how he's able to receive upwards of 30 billion requests per month on Heroku for a fraction of the cost of API gateway: https://blog.heroku.com/scaling-ipify-to-30-billion-and-beyond https://blog.heroku.com/scaling-ipify-to-30-billion-and-beyo...
- blantonl 7y agoI run 8 different production API endpoints, all on Lambda, directly through Application Load Balancer instead of API Gateway, and they served 510 million requests last month for about $200. Those API endpoints took me about a day to deploy using serverless deployment tools. They economically scale between extremely varied workload requirements. There are no complaints on my end.
- rumanator 7y ago> and they served 510 million requests last month for about $200. In EC2, which is not cheap at all, that's between the monthly cost of one m2.2xlarge and m3.2xlarge instance, or two m2.xlarge instances, or 3 t3.large, or 7 t3.medium. In other words, you can operae a small cluster on AWS for that price tag.
- guitarbill 7y agoI don't know how I'm only hearing about this now, since it's been available since late 2018, but that sounds awesome - unlike API Gateway, which is a horrible, buggy mess that doesn't work well for anyone I've spoken to.