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> I've used Lambda and I fear maintenance burdens due to the underlying environments migrating; they'll keep the runtime for a running function for you but if i

> I've used Lambda and I fear maintenance burdens due to the underlying environments migrating; they'll keep the runtime for a running function for you but if it's old I don't think you can update that without having to upgrade runtimes. AWS supports runtimes as long as there are upstream support security updates available [1]. If there are no security updates anymore, it's a good idea anyway to update to a newer version. If course you don't have to do that if you host it on your own, but it's a good idea nevertheless. Also mind that most of the runtimes AWS deprecated already are old NodeJS versions. That's apparently because NodeJS only offers 30 months of support for their LTS versions [2]. So choosing a language which offers longer support (for example Python which offers 5 years of support [3]), might be a better choice if you don't want to update your software regularly. Also you could still provide your own runtime, which wouldn't be deprecated at all via custom runtimes [4]. > Also you get billed in 50ms increments at minimum, and so beyond that there's little incentive to make a function faster / a lot of incentive to stuff more logic into a function and make it less composable. You get billed in 100ms increments [5]. While I'd like to see smaller increments as well, I encountered more money thrown out of the window by overprovisioning memory (and therefore CPU) for AWS Lambda functions, than you could possibly save by optimizing for billable duration. [1]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtime-support-policy.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtime-support... [2]: https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/ https://nodejs.org/en/about/releases/ [3]: https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches https://devguide.python.org/#status-of-python-branches [4]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-custom.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/runtimes-custom... [5]: https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/

yingw787 6y ago
Hmm, you make some good points w.r.t. the custom runtime. I do kind of wish that AWS would maintain its own LTS releases of things like node.js, but I guess it's difficult to say whether that would require source mutation from the user. I do wish there were more examples of Lambda functions, like a marketplace of some sort. I'm using NodeJS only because certain tutorials offer examples in node.js (like static site authentication): https://douglasduhaime.com/posts/s3-lambda-auth.html https://douglasduhaime.com/posts/s3-lambda-auth.html I actually logged into CloudWatch just to see that point on 50ms vs. 100ms and yeah you're right, it's 100 not 50. I'm pretty new to Lambda, and wonder whether the billing insights dashboard will give me the breakdown b/w duration and memory. Thanks!
- Dunedan 6y ago
  If you want to figure out if you overprovisioned memory for your AWS Lambda functions: There is a pretty handy pre-defined query in CloudWatch Insights for that.

yingw787 6y ago

Hmm, you make some good points w.r.t. the custom runtime. I do kind of wish that AWS would maintain its own LTS releases of things like node.js, but I guess it's difficult to say whether that would require source mutation from the user. I do wish there were more examples of Lambda functions, like a marketplace of some sort. I'm using NodeJS only because certain tutorials offer examples in node.js (like static site authentication): https://douglasduhaime.com/posts/s3-lambda-auth.html https://douglasduhaime.com/posts/s3-lambda-auth.html I actually logged into CloudWatch just to see that point on 50ms vs. 100ms and yeah you're right, it's 100 not 50. I'm pretty new to Lambda, and wonder whether the billing insights dashboard will give me the breakdown b/w duration and memory. Thanks!

Dunedan 6y ago
If you want to figure out if you overprovisioned memory for your AWS Lambda functions: There is a pretty handy pre-defined query in CloudWatch Insights for that.