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While this is an impressive technical achievement, it's worth taking a step back to ask why IAM needs to serve 400M API calls every second when AWS has between
by anurag 5y ago
While this is an impressive technical achievement, it's worth taking a step back to ask why IAM needs to serve 400M API calls every second when AWS has between one and two million active users. How would this number change if IAM were less complex?
Edit: I understand how every machine needs to invoke IAM APIs and how temporary credentials and other uses increase the number super-linearly with every active user. Still, 400M RPS (nearly 35B requests/day) could be reduced significantly by improving the underlying object model so it scales down better. Right now, even a simple Lambda function that needs to access other AWS resources requires 3 API calls: create a policy, create a role, and connect the two.
- orf 5y ago> it's worth taking a step back to ask why IAM needs to serve 400M API calls every second when AWS has between one and two million active users The thought process that would lead to such a statement intrigues me. IAM activity scales with total aggregate activity across all workloads that run on AWS, which I would assume scales with the total activity of the billions of people who interact with AWS directly or indirectly each day.
- sofixa 5y agoIAM isn't only used for users. Every API call needs to do auth/authz, including cross-service.
- snak 5y agoJust for clarity: 3.456 × 10^13 34 560 000 000 000 ~35 long-scale, european billions (10^12) ~35000 short-scale, american/english billions (10^9)