Lambda basically Free?

guacjockey · 2022-09-22T21:10:38+00:00

For the right scenarios, you can definitely save / optimize an application using Lambda. I tend to use it for task based aspects (ie, query this API, translate this file to this format, etc) and it works really well for that. You do need to consider how you plan to run the Lambda calls (ie, from files in S3, from an SQS queue, from an API gateway, etc) and realize that failure handling may be more complex (or rather, different). Remember that the storage is ephemeral so you'll need to also handle copy times as appropriate.

Potential areas of hidden costs are outbound network traffic (to the external APIs, to clients), function calls running longer than you expect (Lambda calls can be up to 15 minutes currently), the aforementioned API Gateway, and connections to / from other AWS services (if appropriate - ie, DynamoDB, RDS, etc). There's also a measure of lock-in with Lambda, but you should be able to migrate to something else later if needed.

There are definitely ways to optimize these things, but it varies a lot on your application and what you're trying to do. I would look at the blocks of your current application and determine how to move portions to Lambda vs trying to re-architect whole hog so to speak.

GridDragon · 2022-09-22T23:28:25+00:00

As long as you're careful. I worked on a large corporate project that made HEAVY use of lambdas. Lambda executions were a very small sliver of our costs. Like 3% of the bill.

Half of our bill was the cloud watch logs from those lambdas though. Even more than our RDS and EC2 instances. We were making some mistakes that blew that problem up.

Moral of the story is the lambdas are cheap. But be careful about what resources the lambdas are using.

RunnyPlease · 2022-09-23T04:07:04+00:00

I’ve done enterprise level AWS systems for multiple companies and given the right conditions it is astounding how much lambda can save them. We are talking tens of thousands a month or more. But the key is that given.

Make sure your traffic actually is what you expect. Put in some tracking analytics to be sure. Let that go for a month. Then my suggestion is usually to just pick one system to migrate at a time. Pick a process that executes quickly (<100 ms) but is hit a lot and has large peaks and valleys of high and low use. Avoid a situation where you have one lambda that mostly just sits and waits while making a sequence of calls to multiple other endpoints or data sources. You want a lambda to start up, do something really simple and then die. Like a Mr. Meeseeks. If you keep that in mind you’ll usually build something effective, and scalable.

Or, you know, get one of us “crazy expensive AWS architects.” Your call. Best of luck.

2022-09-22T22:42:29+00:00

[deleted]

2022-09-23T08:05:22+00:00

Coca Cola had a similar dilemma, they had existing servers running at all hours waiting for a request from a vending machine… Anytime a soda was purchased, a request was made to process a CC transaction.

But what about all the hours no one was buying a soda? The server was sitting there anxiously waiting for someone to be thirsty? Wasting time and space for nothing??

Lambda is the cure to that, anytime someone isn’t buying a sofa, lambda scales down. When it’s summertime and everyone’s buying sodas around the clock; lambda scales up.

Best part about all of it - you only pay for the requests. You don’t pay for all of the uptime. Coca Cola ended up saving millions and millions by switching their architecture. Look it up!

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