1. The document discusses best practices for making serverless applications production ready, including practices around testing, monitoring, logging, configuration management, and continuous integration/deployment. 2. It recommends integrating serverless applications with services like API Gateway, Kinesis, DynamoDB, and SSM Parameter Store and considering practices like centralized logging, distributed tracing, role-based access controls, and parameterizing configurations. 3. The document emphasizes the importance of testing at the unit, integration, and end-to-end/acceptance levels and having automated testing and deployment pipelines to catch errors and deploy changes quickly and reliably.

1. in production
an experience reportan experience report
what you should know before you go to production
ServerlessServerless

2. Yan Cui
http://theburningmonk.com
@theburningmonk
AWS user since 2009

3. Yan Cui
http://theburningmonk.com
@theburningmonk

4. Domas Lasauskas

5. Domas Lasauskas
AWS user since 2012

8. apr, 2016

10. hey guys, vote on this post
and I’ll announce a winner at
10PM tonight

11. 10PM
traffic

12. 10PM
traffic
70-100x

13. low utilisation to leave room for spikes
EC2 scaling is slow, so scale earlier

14. lots of $$$ for unused resources

15. up to 30 mins for deployment
deployment required downtime

16. - Dan North
“lead time to someone saying
thank you is the only reputation
metric that matters.”

18. “what would good
look like for us?”

19. be small
be fast
have zero downtime
have no lock-step
DEPLOYMENTS SHOULD...

20. FEATURES SHOULD...
be deployable independently
be loosely-coupled

21. WE WANT TO...
minimise cost for unused resources
minimise ops effort
reduce tech mess
deliver visible improvements faster

22. nov, 2016

23. 170 Lambda functions in prod
1.2 GB deployment packages in prod
95% cost saving vs EC2
15x no. of prod releases per month

24. time
is a good fit

25. 1st function in prod!
time
is a good fit

26. ?
time
is a good fit
1st function in prod!

27. ALERTING
CI / CD
TESTING
LOGGING
MONITORING

28. Practices ToolsPrinciples
what is good? how to make it good? with what?

29. Principles outlast Tools

30. 170 functions
? ?
time
is a good fit
1st function in prod!

31. SECURITY
DISTRIBUTED TRACING
CONFIG MANAGEMENT

32. evolving the PLATFORM

33. rebuilt search

34. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearch

35. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda

36. new analytics pipeline

37. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Google BigQuery

38. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Google BigQuery
1 developer, 2 days
design production
(his 1st serverless project)

39. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Google BigQuery
“nothing ever got done
this fast at Skype!”
- Chris Twamley

40. - Dan North
“lead time to someone saying
thank you is the only reputation
metric that matters.”

41. Rebuilt
with Lambda

49. Rebuilt
with Lambda

50. BigQuery

51. BigQuery

52. grapheneDB
BigQuery

53. grapheneDB
BigQuery

54. grapheneDB
BigQuery

55. getting PRODUCTION READY

56. choose a tried-and-tested
deployment framework,
don’t invent your own

57. http://serverless.com

58. https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model

59. http://apex.run

60. https://apex.github.io/up

61. https://github.com/claudiajs/claudia

62. https://github.com/Miserlou/Zappa

63. http://gosparta.io/

64. TESTING

65. amzn.to/29Lxuzu

66. Level of Testing
1.Unit
do our objects do the right thing?
are they easy to work with?

68. Level of Testing
1.Unit
2.Integration
does our code work against code we
can’t change?

69. handler

70. handler
test by invoking
the handler

71. Level of Testing
1.Unit
2.Integration
3.Acceptance
does the whole system work?

72. Level of Testing
unit
integration
acceptance
feedback
confidence

73. “…We find that tests that mock external
libraries often need to be complex to
get the code into the right state for the
functionality we need to exercise.
The mess in such tests is telling us that
the design isn’t right but, instead of
fixing the problem by improving the
code, we have to carry the extra
complexity in both code and test…”
Don’t Mock Types You Can’t Change

74. “…The second risk is that we have to be
sure that the behaviour we stub or mock
matches what the external library will
actually do…
Even if we get it right once, we have to
make sure that the tests remain valid
when we upgrade the libraries…”
Don’t Mock Types You Can’t Change

75. Don’t Mock Types You Can’t Change
Services

76. Paul Johnston
The serverless approach to
testing is different and may
actually be easier.
http://bit.ly/2t5viwK

77. LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB

78. LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
Unit Tests

79. LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
Unit Tests
Mock/Stub

80. is our request correct?
is the request mapping
set up correctly?is the API resources
configured correctly?
are we assuming the
correct schema?
LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
is Lambda proxy
configured correctly?
is IAM policy set
up correctly?
is the table created?
what unit tests will not tell you…

82. most Lambda functions are simple
have single purpose, the risk of
shipping broken software has largely
shifted to how they integrate with
external services
observation

84. optimize towards shipping working
software, even if it means slowing
down your feedback loop…

85. …if a service can’t provide
you with a relatively easy
way to test the interface in
reality, then you should
consider using another one.
Paul Johnston

86. “…Wherever possible, an acceptance
test should exercise the system end-to-
end without directly calling its internal
code.
An end-to-end test interacts with the
system only from the outside: through
its interface…”
Testing End-to-End

87. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda

88. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Test Input

89. Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Test Input
Validate

90. integration tests exercise
system’s Integration with its
external dependencies
my code

91. acceptance tests exercise
system End-to-End from
the outside
my code

92. integration tests differ from
acceptance tests only in HOW the
Lambda functions are invoked
observation

95. CI + CD PIPELINE

96. me
the earlier you consider CI/CD
the more time you save in
the long run

97. “…We prefer to have the end-to-end
tests exercise both the system and the
process by which it’s built and
deployed…
This sounds like a lot of effort (it is), but
has to be done anyway repeatedly
during the software’s lifetime…”
Testing End-to-End

98. me
deployment scripts that only
live on the CI box is a disaster
waiting to happen…

99. Jenkins build config deploys and tests
unit + integration tests
deploy
acceptance tests

100. if [ "$1" = "deploy" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE 'node_modules/.bin/sls' deploy -s $STAGE -r $REGION
elif [ "$1" = "int-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run int-$STAGE
elif [ "$1" = "acceptance-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run acceptance-$STAGE
else
usage
exit 1
fi

101. if [ "$1" = "deploy" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE 'node_modules/.bin/sls' deploy -s $STAGE -r $REGION
elif [ "$1" = "int-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run int-$STAGE
elif [ "$1" = "acceptance-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run acceptance-$STAGE
else
usage
exit 1
fi
install Serverless framework
as dev dependency

102. if [ "$1" = "deploy" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE 'node_modules/.bin/sls' deploy -s $STAGE -r $REGION
elif [ "$1" = "int-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run int-$STAGE
elif [ "$1" = "acceptance-test" ] && [ $# -eq 4 ]; then
STAGE=$2
REGION=$3
PROFILE=$4
npm install
AWS_PROFILE=$PROFILE npm run acceptance-$STAGE
else
usage
exit 1
fi
install Serverless framework
as dev dependency
mitigate version conflicts

104. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Hexagonal+architecture

105. build.sh allows repeatable builds on both local & CI

107. Auto Auto Manual

109. LOGGING

111. 2016-07-12T12:24:37.571Z 994f18f9-482b-11e6-8668-53e4eab441ae
GOT is off air, what do I do now?

112. 2016-07-12T12:24:37.571Z 994f18f9-482b-11e6-8668-53e4eab441ae
GOT is off air, what do I do now?
UTC Timestamp API Gateway Request Id
your log message

113. me
Logs are not easily searchable
in CloudWatch Logs.

114. CloudWatch Logs

115. CloudWatch Logs AWS Lambda ELK stack

116. …

117. CloudWatch Events

120. DISTRIBUTED TRACING

122. a user
my followers didn’t receive
my new post!

123. where could the
problem be?

124. correlation IDs*
* eg. request-id, user-id, yubl-id, etc.

125. wrap HTTP client & AWS SDK clients
to forward captured correlation IDs

126. kinesis client
http client
sns client

127. use X-Ray for performance tracing

128. Amazon X-Ray

129. Amazon X-Ray

130. X-Ray traces do not span over API
Gateway, or async event sources

131. MONITORING + ALERTING

132. no place to install agents/daemons

133. • invocation Count
• error Count
• latency
• throttling
• granular to the minute
• support custom metrics

134. • same metrics as CW
• better dashboard
• support custom metrics
https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/monitoring-lambda-functions-datadog/

138. my code

139. my code

140. my code
internet internet
press button something happens

141. those extra 10-20ms for
sending custom metrics
would compound when
you have microservices
and multiple APIs are
called within one slice
of user event

142. Amazon found every 100ms of latency
cost them 1% in sales.
http://bit.ly/2EXPfbA

143. no more background processing,
other than what the platform provides

144. console.log(“hydrating yubls from db…”);
console.log(“fetching user info from user-api”);
console.log(“MONITORING|1489795335|27.4|latency|user-api-latency”);
console.log(“MONITORING|1489795335|8|count|yubls-served”);
timestamp metric value
metric type
metric namemetrics
logs

145. CloudWatch Logs AWS Lambda
ELK stack
logs
metrics
CloudWatch

146. don’t forget to setup dashboards
& CW alarms

147. CONFIG MANAGEMENT

148. design for easy & quick
propagation of config changes

150. me
Environment variables make it
hard to share configurations
across functions.

151. me
Environment variables make it
hard to implement fine-grained
access to sensitive info.

152. config service
goes here

156. SSM
Parameter
Store

157. sensitive data should be encrypted
in-flight, and at-rest

158. enforce role-based access to sensitive
configuration values

159. SSM Parameter Store
HTTPS
role-based access
encrypted in-flight

160. SSM Parameter Store
encrypt
role-based access

161. SSM Parameter Store
encrypted at-rest

162. HTTPS
role-based access
SSM Parameter Store
encrypted in-flight

163. invest into a robust client library

164. fetch & cache at cold-start

165. invalidate at interval & weak signals

166. That’s it, folks!
Thank you all :-D

167. API Gateway and Kinesis
Authentication & authorisation (IAM, Cognito)
Testing
Running & Debugging functions locally
Log aggregation
Monitoring & Alerting
X-Ray
Correlation IDs
CI/CD
Performance and Cost optimisation
Error Handling
Configuration management
VPC
Security
Leading practices (API Gateway, Kinesis, Lambda)
Canary deployments
http://bit.ly/production-ready-serverless
get 40% off
with: ytcui

168. @theburningmonk
theburningmonk.com
github.com/theburningmonk