ICYMI: Serverless Q4 2021

Welcome to the 16th edition of the AWS Serverless ICYMI (in case you missed it) quarterly recap. Every quarter, we share all of the most recent product launches, feature enhancements, blog posts, webinars, Twitch live streams, and other interesting things that you might have missed!

In case you missed our last ICYMI, check out what happened last quarter here.

AWS Lambda

For developers using Amazon MSK as an event source, Lambda has expanded authentication options to include IAM, in addition to SASL/SCRAM. Lambda also now supports mutual TLS authentication for Amazon MSK and self-managed Kafka as an event source.

Lambda also launched features to make it easier to operate across AWS accounts. You can now invoke Lambda functions from Amazon SQS queues in different accounts. You must grant permission to the Lambda function’s execution role and have SQS grant cross-account permissions. For developers using container packaging for Lambda functions, Lambda also now supports pulling images from Amazon ECR in other AWS accounts. To learn about the permissions required, see this documentation.

The service now supports a partial batch response when using SQS as an event source for both standard and FIFO queues. When messages fail to process, Lambda marks the failed messages and allows reprocessing of only those messages. This helps to improve processing performance and may reduce compute costs.

Lambda launched content filtering options for functions using SQS, DynamoDB, and Kinesis as an event source. You can specify up to five filter criteria that are combined using OR logic. This uses the same content filtering language that’s used in Amazon EventBridge, and can dramatically reduce the number of downstream Lambda invocations.

Amazon EventBridge

Previously, you could consume Amazon S3 events in EventBridge via CloudTrail. Now, EventBridge receives events from the S3 service directly, making it easier to build serverless workflows triggered by activity in S3. You can use content filtering in rules to identify relevant events and forward these to 18 service targets, including AWS Lambda. You can also use event archive and replay, making it possible to reprocess events in testing, or in the event of an error.

AWS Step Functions

The AWS Batch console has added support for visualizing Step Functions workflows. This makes it easier to combine these services to orchestrate complex workflows over business-critical batch operations, such as data analysis or overnight processes.

Additionally, Amazon Athena has also added console support for visualizing Step Functions workflows. This can help when building distributed data processing pipelines, allowing Step Functions to orchestrate services such as AWS Glue, Amazon S3, or Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose.

Synchronous Express Workflows now supports AWS PrivateLink. This enables you to start these workflows privately from within your virtual private clouds (VPCs) without traversing the internet. To learn more about this feature, read the What’s New post.

Amazon SNS

Amazon SNS announced support for token-based authentication when sending push notifications to Apple devices. This creates a secure, stateless communication between SNS and the Apple Push Notification (APN) service.

SNS also launched the new PublishBatch API which enables developers to send up to 10 messages to SNS in a single request. This can reduce cost by up to 90%, since you need fewer API calls to publish the same number of messages to the service.

Amazon SQS

Amazon SQS released an enhanced DLQ management experience for standard queues. This allows you to redrive messages from a DLQ back to the source queue. This can be configured in the AWS Management Console, as shown here.

Amazon DynamoDB

The NoSQL Workbench for DynamoDB is a tool to simplify designing, visualizing and querying DynamoDB tables. The tools now supports importing sample data from CSV files and exporting the results of queries.

DynamoDB announced the new Standard-Infrequent Access table class. Use this for tables that store infrequently accessed data to reduce your costs by up to 60%. You can switch to the new table class without an impact on performance or availability and without changing application code.

AWS Amplify

AWS Amplify now allows developers to override Amplify-generated IAM, Amazon Cognito, and S3 configurations. This makes it easier to customize the generated resources to best meet your application’s requirements. To learn more about the “amplify override auth” command, visit the feature’s documentation.

Similarly, you can also add custom AWS resources using the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) or AWS CloudFormation. In another new feature, developers can then export Amplify backends as CDK stacks and incorporate them into their deployment pipelines.

AWS Amplify UI has launched a new Authenticator component for React, Angular, and Vue.js. Aside from the visual refresh, this provides the easiest way to incorporate social sign-in in your frontend applications with zero-configuration setup. It also includes more customization options and form capabilities.

AWS launched AWS Amplify Studio, which automatically translates designs made in Figma to React UI component code. This enables you to connect UI components visually to backend data, providing a unified interface that can accelerate development.

AWS AppSync

You can now use custom domain names for AWS AppSync GraphQL endpoints. This enables you to specify a custom domain for both GraphQL API and Realtime API, and have AWS Certificate Manager provide and manage the certificate.

To learn more, read the feature’s documentation page.

News from other services

Serverless blog posts

October

Oct 4 – Simplifying B2B integrations with AWS Step Functions Workflow Studio
Oct 6 – Operating serverless at scale: Implementing governance – Part 1
Oct 7 – Using Okta as an identity provider with Amazon MWAA
Oct 11 – Avoiding recursive invocation with Amazon S3 and AWS Lambda
Oct 12 – Operating serverless at scale: Improving consistency – Part 2
Oct 14 – Using JSONPath effectively in AWS Step Functions
Oct 14 – Accepting API keys as a query string in Amazon API Gateway
Oct 14 – Visualizing AWS Step Functions workflows from the AWS Batch console
Oct 18 – Building dynamic Amazon SNS subscriptions for auto scaling container workloads
Oct 19 – Operating serverless at scale: Keeping control of resources – Part 3
Oct 21 – Creating AWS Serverless batch processing architectures
Oct 25 – Building a difference checker with Amazon S3 and AWS Lambda
Oct 26 – Monitoring and tuning federated GraphQL performance on AWS Lambda
Oct 27 – Accelerating serverless development with AWS SAM Accelerate
Oct 28 – Creating AWS Lambda environment variables from AWS Secrets Manager

November

Nov 1 – Build workflows for Amazon Forecast with AWS Step Functions
Nov 2 – Choosing between storage mechanisms for ML inferencing with AWS Lambda
Nov 4 – Introducing cross-account Amazon ECR access for AWS Lambda
Nov 8 – Implementing header-based API Gateway versioning with Amazon CloudFront
Nov 9 – Creating static custom domain endpoints with Amazon MQ for RabbitMQ
Nov 9 – Token-based authentication for iOS applications with Amazon SNS
Nov 11 – Understanding how AWS Lambda scales with Amazon SQS standard queues
Nov 17 – Modernizing deployments with container images in AWS Lambda
Nov 18 – Deploying AWS Lambda layers automatically across multiple Regions
Nov 18 – Publishing messages in batch to Amazon SNS topics
Nov 19 – Introducing mutual TLS authentication for Amazon MSK as an event source
Nov 22 – Expanding cross-Region event routing with Amazon EventBridge
Nov 22 – Offset lag metric for Amazon MSK as an event source for Lambda
Nov 23 – Visualizing AWS Step Functions workflows from the Amazon Athena console
Nov 26 – Filtering event sources for AWS Lambda functions

December

AWS re:Invent breakouts

AWS re:Invent was held in Las Vegas from November 29 to December 3, 2021. The Serverless DA team presented numerous breakouts, workshops and chalk talks. Rewatch all our breakout content:

We also launched an interactive serverless application at re:Invent to help customers get caffeinated!

Serverlesspresso is a contactless, serverless order management system for a physical coffee bar. The architecture comprises several serverless apps that support an ordering process from a customer’s smartphone to a real espresso bar. The customer can check the virtual line, place an order, and receive a notification when their drink is ready for pickup.

You can learn more about the architecture and download the code repo at https://serverlessland.com/reinvent2021/serverlesspresso. You can also see a video of the exhibit.

Videos

Serverless Office Hours – Tues 10 AM PT

Weekly live virtual office hours. In each session we talk about a specific topic or technology related to serverless and open it up to helping you with your real serverless challenges and issues. Ask us anything you want about serverless technologies and applications.

YouTube: youtube.com/serverlessland
Twitch: twitch.tv/aws