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Running Serverless
Introduction to AWS Lambda and the Serverless Application Model
This book will help you get started with AWS Lambda and the Serverless Application Model. Lambda is Amazon’s engine for running event-driven functions, and SAM is an open-source toolkit that greatly simplifies deploying Lambda services. Together, they make it easy to create auto-scaling APIs and cloud services designed for serverless...
This book will help you get started with AWS Lambda and the Serverless Application Model. Lambda is Amazon’s engine for running event-driven functions, and SAM is an open-source toolkit that greatly simplifies deploying Lambda services. Together, they make it easy to create auto-scaling APIs and cloud services designed for serverless...
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Published June 1, 2019
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138 people want to read
About the author
Gojko Adzic
15 books153 followersGojko Adzic is a partner at Neuri Consulting LLP, winner of the 2016 European Software Testing Outstanding Achievement Award, and the 2011 Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Award. Gojko's book Specification by Example won the Jolt Award for the best book of 2012, and his blog won the UK Agile Award for the best online publication in 2010.
Gojko is a frequent keynote speaker at leading software development conferences and one of the authors of MindMup and Narakeet.
Gojko is a frequent keynote speaker at leading software development conferences and one of the authors of MindMup and Narakeet.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 8, 2019
Quite a decent read.
Practical, based on actual experience with a real, popular app.
Focused on real engineering, not advertising a particular product in some sort of "benchmarketing".
All the examples are based on AWS Lambda & JavaScript, but the actual architectural considerations are more generic & based on facts, not myths or non-validated opinions.
The picture presented is quite comprehensive - spans across deployment, performance, constraints, cost efficiency & other most crucial aspects - in a properly balanced way.
I loved practical details, e.g. about "tax" of connecting Lambda to VPC - such details may not be 100% foreseeable before you encounter them IRL.
To summarize: fair 4.5-5 stars - one of serverless-related books which is actually not an anthem of hype, but a practical, engineering guide. Thumbs up.
Practical, based on actual experience with a real, popular app.
Focused on real engineering, not advertising a particular product in some sort of "benchmarketing".
All the examples are based on AWS Lambda & JavaScript, but the actual architectural considerations are more generic & based on facts, not myths or non-validated opinions.
The picture presented is quite comprehensive - spans across deployment, performance, constraints, cost efficiency & other most crucial aspects - in a properly balanced way.
I loved practical details, e.g. about "tax" of connecting Lambda to VPC - such details may not be 100% foreseeable before you encounter them IRL.
To summarize: fair 4.5-5 stars - one of serverless-related books which is actually not an anthem of hype, but a practical, engineering guide. Thumbs up.
April 17, 2021
I don't rightly know what to do with this one.
On one hand, it's obviously just an introductory material to the world of cloud functions and serverless and should be judged as such, meaning one shouldn't expect advanced topics and considerations within. Taken like that, Running Serverless is a resounding success - it starts from the simplest hello world example and proceeds to incrementally build a tiny website that, while still extremely simple, actually does something you may actually see in practice. Step by step, you are shown the basic concepts behind AWS Lambda and SAM and taught not to make typical rookie mistakes.
On the other hand, Gojko Adžić is a prominent voice in IT, and the book also promised to showcase emergent serverless patterns, best practices and pitfalls - on that aspect it, unfortunately, barely gets a passing grade. I know I can sometimes be a bit of a pedantic (yes, an understatement - I'm allowed a bit of poetic freedom so shush, you) but there's plenty of things that would have irked a lesser nitpicker as well. First, the frequent unguarded advice, much of which would present a horrible idea to most mid-sized to large systems - the absolute worst of these being the promotion of a pattern that breaks database encapsulation in order to cut operational costs without much discussion of the dangers and tradeoffs of doing so. Second, the claims made without any data or references to back them up; for instance, saying that an AWS system X is better than Y for such and such use case - maybe true but it would have been nice to see the arguments and data behind those assertions. Or saying that not loading an image into memory within your Lambda function saves money - true in some cases but probably not in all of them given the fact that AWS and other cloud providers use fairly coarse granularity for memory use - it used to be 64MB for AWS, meaning a function that uses 65MB costs the same as the one that uses 127MB. Granted, the final chapter does go back and review some of the recommendations but to me that felt too little, too late.
And finally, one more thing bothered me - among the listed drawbacks, dos and don'ts of Lambda, not a single mention was made of the fact that Lambdas tend to bind you to AWS almost completely, which makes building large, multi-provider, resilient systems harder since you can't just port the code over with just minor changes. And, perhaps more importantly given the cost-saving obsession of the book - being bound to AWS prevents you from cutting your costs by moving to another cloud provider, just like Zoom did with Oracle Cloud (for a reportedly 5-10x reduction of operational costs). Just sayin'.
On one hand, it's obviously just an introductory material to the world of cloud functions and serverless and should be judged as such, meaning one shouldn't expect advanced topics and considerations within. Taken like that, Running Serverless is a resounding success - it starts from the simplest hello world example and proceeds to incrementally build a tiny website that, while still extremely simple, actually does something you may actually see in practice. Step by step, you are shown the basic concepts behind AWS Lambda and SAM and taught not to make typical rookie mistakes.
On the other hand, Gojko Adžić is a prominent voice in IT, and the book also promised to showcase emergent serverless patterns, best practices and pitfalls - on that aspect it, unfortunately, barely gets a passing grade. I know I can sometimes be a bit of a pedantic (yes, an understatement - I'm allowed a bit of poetic freedom so shush, you) but there's plenty of things that would have irked a lesser nitpicker as well. First, the frequent unguarded advice, much of which would present a horrible idea to most mid-sized to large systems - the absolute worst of these being the promotion of a pattern that breaks database encapsulation in order to cut operational costs without much discussion of the dangers and tradeoffs of doing so. Second, the claims made without any data or references to back them up; for instance, saying that an AWS system X is better than Y for such and such use case - maybe true but it would have been nice to see the arguments and data behind those assertions. Or saying that not loading an image into memory within your Lambda function saves money - true in some cases but probably not in all of them given the fact that AWS and other cloud providers use fairly coarse granularity for memory use - it used to be 64MB for AWS, meaning a function that uses 65MB costs the same as the one that uses 127MB. Granted, the final chapter does go back and review some of the recommendations but to me that felt too little, too late.
And finally, one more thing bothered me - among the listed drawbacks, dos and don'ts of Lambda, not a single mention was made of the fact that Lambdas tend to bind you to AWS almost completely, which makes building large, multi-provider, resilient systems harder since you can't just port the code over with just minor changes. And, perhaps more importantly given the cost-saving obsession of the book - being bound to AWS prevents you from cutting your costs by moving to another cloud provider, just like Zoom did with Oracle Cloud (for a reportedly 5-10x reduction of operational costs). Just sayin'.
August 1, 2019
Solid introduction into AWS lambda and serverless architectures. Probably, the best you can get at the moment. Way better than AWS official documentation on the topic.
The larger part of the book is focused around AWS:
- aws lambda ecosystem in details.
- API, CLI tooling,
- testing, debugging, monitoring
- deployment schemes (aws cloudformation and SAM)
- restrictions and limits (some of which are not really official, like cold starts in VPC environments)
The book provides good coverage of serverless design patterns & architecture patterns, but I can't say it's the most exhaustive coverage that's possible. More like a decent intro.
I give it 5 stars not because it's a life-changing book, but because the topic coverage is superb.
The larger part of the book is focused around AWS:
- aws lambda ecosystem in details.
- API, CLI tooling,
- testing, debugging, monitoring
- deployment schemes (aws cloudformation and SAM)
- restrictions and limits (some of which are not really official, like cold starts in VPC environments)
The book provides good coverage of serverless design patterns & architecture patterns, but I can't say it's the most exhaustive coverage that's possible. More like a decent intro.
I give it 5 stars not because it's a life-changing book, but because the topic coverage is superb.
January 27, 2022
Great book for anyone starting with AWS lambda. Instead of wasting time with tutorials and piecing different parts together from multiple sources, read it as it covers a big deal of the most common scenarios and problems.
August 23, 2019
Good book about building Serverless applications using SAM. The chapters are actually a tutorial for building a sample application - an image resizing app. But there are also examples from a real system too - MindMup - which give the book more weight. It also mentions service limits and restrictions, which might not be immediately obvious for someone just starting out (and some of them are not officially documented. Some examples are: API Gateway timeout, maximum number of concurrent Lambda executions, maximum number of IAM users, how putting a Lambda in a VPC affects cold starts.
The book covers all aspects of building and running a serverless application: designing, coding, testing, building, packaging, deploying, monitoring. It also gives you some very good tips on how to build cost efficient apps (for example, moving gatekeeper and workflow orchestration responsibilities from Lambda functions to the platform or client).
There is a very good chapter on how to make the application more robust by using the ports and adapters pattern in order to keep the domain code clean.
The last chapter is pure gold. It gives some good design practices about how to structure a serverless app (aggregating code around data ownership and code that needs to be consistent, dividing code around security boundaries, CPU/memory usage needs and timing restrictions).
In conclusion, a good, practical book that can help you get started with building production ready serverless applications.
The book covers all aspects of building and running a serverless application: designing, coding, testing, building, packaging, deploying, monitoring. It also gives you some very good tips on how to build cost efficient apps (for example, moving gatekeeper and workflow orchestration responsibilities from Lambda functions to the platform or client).
There is a very good chapter on how to make the application more robust by using the ports and adapters pattern in order to keep the domain code clean.
The last chapter is pure gold. It gives some good design practices about how to structure a serverless app (aggregating code around data ownership and code that needs to be consistent, dividing code around security boundaries, CPU/memory usage needs and timing restrictions).
In conclusion, a good, practical book that can help you get started with building production ready serverless applications.
September 2, 2019
Gojko explains in this book all you need to know about Serverless. The technological focus is on AWS Lambda but should be applicable to the serverless concepts of other big cloud vendors. I was surprised by the possibilities you can get from this technology, especially from the financial side that is based on only paying for the time your code is executed. That allows you to create identical environments for test and production (and every developer who wants an environment) and it will cost you only a fraction of a $ - you will not run those extra environments for long. That opens great opportunities that will have a significant impact on how we write software. This book explains all that in enough details so that you can understand the impact it may have on your company.
July 21, 2019
Great book for getting to know the philosophy of Serverless applications. Uses an example application to introduce concepts and a chapter on how to structure more complex programs.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews