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Become an AWS pro with insights from a seasoned Amazon engineer. Get hands-on with essential AWS services like DynamoDB, S3, and EC2. No setup, no cleanup, no hassle.

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InfrastructureAsCode

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LoadBalancing1

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This is not your typical AWS reference course. You won’t find most of the knowledge that's shared here in the AWS docs. The goal here is to help you realize which AWS features you’d be foolish not to use — features that have passed the test of time by being at the backbone of most things on the Internet.

In this course, you'll learn a technique used to help make reliable technical choices without getting paralyzed in the face of so many options. You’ll start by going through the most fundamental services AWS offers such as DynamoDB, S3, EC2. Each section breaks down how it’s used, the pros and cons, why you should (or shouldn't) be using it, and more.

This course was written by a former Amazon engineer with 15 years of experience working on AWS.

The Good Parts of AWS: Cutting Through the Clutter

## Code runner in the cloud

If EC2 is a complete computer in the cloud, Lambda is a code runner in the cloud. With EC2 you get an operating system, a file system, access to the server’s hardware, etc. But with Lambda, you just upload some code and Amazon runs it for you. The beauty of Lambda is:
- It’s the simplest way to run code in the cloud. 
- It abstracts away everything except for a function interface, which you get to fill in with the code you want to run.

# Misuse of Lambda

We think Lambda is great—definitely one of the good parts of AWS—as long as you treat it as the simple code runner that it is. A problem we often see is that people sometimes mistake Lambda for a general-purpose application host. Unlike EC2, it is very hard to run a sophisticated piece of software on Lambda without making some very drastic changes to your application and accepting some significant new limitations from the platform.

# Lambda as a plugin system for other AWS services

Lambda is most suitable for small snippets of code that rarely change. We like to think of Lambda functions as part of the infrastructure rather than part of the application. In fact, one of our favorite uses for Lambda is to treat it as a plugin system for other AWS services. Let's look at a few examples of it.

## S3

- S3 doesn’t come with an API to resize an image after uploading it to a bucket, but with Lambda, you can add that capability to S3. 

## Application Load Balancer (ALB)

- Application load balancers come with an API to respond with a fixed response for a given route, but they can’t respond with an image. Lambda lets you make your load balancer do that. 

## CloudFront

- CloudFront can’t rewrite a request URL based on request cookies (which is useful for A/B testing), but with Lambda, you can make CloudFront do that with just a little bit of code. 

## CloudWatch

- CloudWatch doesn’t support regex-based alerting on application logs, but you can add that feature with a few lines of Lambda code. 

## Kinesis

- Kinesis doesn’t come with an API to filter records and write them to DynamoDB, but this is very easy to do with Lambda. 

## CloudFormation

- CloudFormation’s native modeling language has many limitations and, for example, it can’t create and validate a new TLS certificate from the AWS Certificate Manager. Using Lambda, you can extend the CloudFormation language to add (almost) any capability you want. 

And so on—you get the idea. Lambda is a great way to extend existing AWS features.

# Limitations 




Lambda service as a code runner in the cloud or a plugin service for other AWS services is discussed in this lesson together with our rule of thumb in using Lambda service.

Compute: Lambda

Before Getting Started

Part 1: The Good Parts

Part 2: The Bootstrap Guide

Host Our Application on EC2 Instance

Infrastructure as Code

Automatic Deployments: Create a CI/CD Pipeline

Load Balancing: Add an Application Load Balancer

Scaling: Add an Auto Scaling Group

Conclusion

Compute: Lambda

Code runner in the cloud

Misuse of Lambda