Serverless Architectures on AWS: With examples using AWS Lambda

by Peter Sbarski, Sam Kroonenburg

Overview

Summary

Serverless Architectures on AWS teaches you how to build, secure and manage serverless architectures that can power the most demanding web and mobile apps. Forewords by Patrick Debois (Founder of devopsdays) and Dr. Donald F. Ferguson (Columbia University).

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the Technology

There's a shift underway toward serverless cloud architectures. With the release of serverless computer technologies such as AWS Lambda, developers are now building entirely serverless platforms at scale. In these new architectures, traditional back-end servers are replaced with cloud functions acting as discrete single-purpose services. By composing and combining these serverless cloud functions together in a loose orchestration and adopting useful third-party services, developers can create powerful yet easy-to-understand applications.

About the Book

Serverless Architectures on AWS teaches you how to build, secure, and manage serverless architectures that can power the most demanding web and mobile apps. You'll get going quickly with this book's ready-made real-world examples, code snippets, diagrams, and descriptions of architectures that can be readily applied. By the end, you'll be able to architect and build your own serverless applications on AWS.

What's Inside

• First steps with serverless computing
• Important patterns and architectures
• Writing AWS Lambda functions and using the API Gateway
• Composing serverless applications using key services like Auth0 and Firebase
• Securing, deploying, and managing serverless architectures

About the Reader

This book is for software developers interested in back end technologies. Experience with JavaScript (node.js) and AWS is useful but not required.

About the Author

Dr. Peter Sbarski is a well-known AWS expert, VP of engineering at A Cloud Guru, and head of Serverlessconf.

Table of Contents

PART 1 - FIRST STEPS
1. Going serverless
2. Architectures and patterns
3. Building a serverless application
4. Setting up your cloud
PART 2 - CORE IDEAS
5. Authentication and authorization
6. Lambda the orchestrator
7. API Gateway
PART 3 - GROWING YOUR ARCHITECTURE
8. Storage
9. Database
10. Going the last mile

APPENDIXES

1. Services for your serverless architecture
2. Installation and setup
3. More about authentication and authorization
4. Lambda insider
5. Models and mapping

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781638351146
Publisher:	Manning
Publication date:	04/17/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Dr. Peter Sbarski is a well-known AWS expert, VP of engineering at A Cloud Guru, and head of Serverlessconf.

Table of Contents

Foreword Patrick Debois xi

Foreword Dr. Donald F. Ferguson xii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xvii

About this book xix

About the author xxi

About the cover xxii

Part 1 First Steps 1

1 Going serverless 3

1.1 How we got to where we are 4

Service-oriented architecture and microservices 6

Software design 7

1.2 Principles of serverless architectures 9

Use a. compute service to execute code on demand 9

Write single-purpose stateless functions 10

Design push-based, event-driven pipelines 10

Create thicker, more powerful front ends 10

Embrace third-party services 12

1.3 Transitioning from a server to services 12

1.4 Serverless pros and cons 12

Decision drivers 12

When to use serverless 14

1.5 Summary 15

2 Architectures and patterns 16

2.1 Use cases 16

Application back end 17

Data processing and manipulation 17

Real-time analytics 18

Legacy API proxy 18

Scheduled services 18

Bots and skills 19

2.2 Architectures 19

Compute as back end 19

Legacy API proxy 24

Hybrid 25

GraphQL 27

Compute as glue 28

Real-time processing 30

2.3 Patterns 31

Command pattern 32

Messaging pattern 33

Priority queue pattern 34

Fan-out pattern 35

Pipes and filters pattern 36

2.4 Summary 38

3 Building a serverless application 39

3.1 24-Hour Video 40

General requirements 41

Amazon Web Services 42

Creating your first Lambda function 44

Naming your Lambda 46

Testing locally 46

Deploying to AWS 48

Connecting S3 to Lambda 50

Testing in AWS 51

Looking at logs 52

3.2 Configuring Simple Notification Service 54

Connecting SNS to S3 54

Getting email from SNS 57

Testing SNS 57

3.3 Setting video permissions 57

Creating the second function 57

Configuring and securing 58

Testing the second function 59

3.4 Generating metadata 60

Gyrating the third function and FFprobe 60

3.5 Finishing touches 63

3.6 Exercises 64

3.7 Summary 65

4 Setting up your cloud 66

4.1 Security model and identity management 67

Creating and managing IAM users 67

Creating groups 70

Creating roles 73

Resources 74

Permissions and policies 74

4.2 Logging and alerting 76

Setting up logging 77

Log retention 78

Filters, metrics, and alarms 78

Searching log data 80

S3 and logging 80

More on alarms 81

CloudTrail 85

4.3 Costs 87

Creating billing alerts 87

Monitoring and optimizing costs 88

Using the Simple Monthly Calculator 89

Calculating Lambda and API Gateway costs 90

4.4 Exercises 92

4.5 Summary 93

Part 2 Core Ideas 95

5 Authentication and authorization 97

5.1 Authentication in a serverless environment 98

A serverless approach 98

Amazon Cognito 100

Auth0 101

5.2 Adding authentication to 24-Hour Video 102

The plan 102

Invoking Lambda directly 104

24-Hour Video website 104

Auth0 configuration 106

Adding Auth0 to the website 108

Testing Auth0 integration 113

5.3 Integration with AWS 114

User profile Lambda 115

APT Gateway 118

Mappings 121

Invoking Lambda via API Gateway 124

Custom authorizer 125

5.4 Delegation tokens 129

Real-world examples 130

Provisioning delegation tokens 130

5.5 Exercises 130

5.6 Summary 131

6 Lambda the orchestrator 133

6.1 Inside Lambda 133

Event models and sources 134

Push and pull event models 135

Concurrent executions 136

Container reuse 137

Cold and warm Lambda 137

6.2 Programming model 139

Function handler 139

Event object 139

Context object 140

Callback function 141

Logging 142

6.3 Versioning, aliases, and environment variables 142

Versioning 142

Aliases 144

Environment variables 146

6.4 Using the CLI 148

Invoking commands 148

Creating and deploying functions 149

6.5 Lambda patterns 151

Async waterfall 152

Series and parallel 157

Using libraries 158

Move logic to another file 161

6.6 Testing Lambda functions 161

Testing locally 161

Writing tests 162

Testing in AWS 164

6.7 Exercises 166

6.8 Summary 166

7 API Gateway 168

7.1 API Gateway as the interface 169

Integration with AWS services 170

Caching, throttling, and logging 170

Staging and versioning 171

Scripting 171

7.2 Working with the API Gateway 171

The plan 173

Creating the resource and method 174

Configuring method execution 177

The Lambda function 180

Updating the website 184

7.3 Optimizing the gateway 187

Throttling 187

Logging 189

Caching 191

7.4 Stages and versions 194

Creating a stage variable 195

Using stage variables 195

Versions 196

7.5 Exercises 198

7.6 Summary 198

Part 3 Growing Your Architecture 199

8 Storage 201

8.1 Smarter storage 201

Versioning 202

Hosting a static website 204

Storage classes 206

Object lifecycle management 207

Transfer acceleration 209

Event notifications 209

8.2 Secure upload 211

Architecture 212

Upload policy Lambda 213

S3 CORS configuration 218

Uploading from the website 219

8.3 Restricting access to files 223

Removing public access 223

Generating presigned URLs 224

8.4 Exercises 225

8.5 Summary 225

9 Database 227

9.1 Introduction to Firebase 228

Data stricture 228

Security rules 230

9.2 Adding Firebase to 24-Hour Video 230

Architecture 231

Setting up Firebase 233

Modifying Transcode Video Lambda 234

Transcode Video Firebase Update 239

Connecting Lambda 241

Website 242

End-to-end testing 248

9.3 Securing access to files 248

Signed URL Lambda 249

API Gateway settings 250

Updating the website again 251

Improving performance 251

Improving Firebase security 254

9.4 Exercises 259

9.5 Summary 259

10 Going the last mile 260

10.1 Deployment and frameworks 260

10.2 Toward better micro services 261

Handling errors 264

10.3 Step Functions 266

Image-processing example 267

10.4 AWS Marketplace 272

10.5 Where from here 274

Appendix A Services for your serverless architecture 277

Appendix B Installation and setup 282

Appendix C More about authentication and authorization 293

Appendix D Lambda insider 299

Appendix E Models and mapping 305

Appendix F S3 event message structure 321

Appendix G Severless Framework and SAM 323

Index 345