in production
an experience reportan experience report
what you should know before you go to production
ServerlessServerless
Yan Cui
http://theburningmonk.com
@theburningmonk
apr, 2016
hey guys, vote on this post
and I’ll announce a winner at
10PM tonight
10PM
traffic
10PM
traffic
70-100x
low utilisation to leave room for spikes
EC2 scaling is slow, so scale earlier
lots of $$$ for unused resources
up to 30 mins for deployment
deployment required downtime
be small
be fast
have zero downtime
have no lock-step
DEPLOYMENTS SHOULD...
FEATURES SHOULD...
be deployable independently
be loosely-coupled
WE WANT TO...
minimise cost for unused resources
minimise ops effort
reduce tech mess
deliver visible improvements faster
nov, 2016
170 Lambda functions in prod
1.2 GB deployment packages in prod
95% cost saving vs EC2
15x no. of prod releases per month
time
is a good fit
1st function in prod!
time
is a good fit
?
time
is a good fit
1st function in prod!
ALERTING
CI / CD
TESTING
LOGGING
MONITORING
170 functions
? ?
time
is a good fit
1st function in prod!
SECURITY
DISTRIBUTED TRACING
CONFIG MANAGEMENT
evolving the PLATFORM
rebuilt search
Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearch
Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Rebuilt
with Lambda
getting PRODUCTION READY
choose a tried-and-tested
deployment framework,
don’t invent your own
http://serverless.com
https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model
TESTING
amzn.to/29Lxuzu
Level of Testing
1.Unit
do our objects do the right thing?
are they easy to work with?
Level of Testing
1.Unit
2.Integration
does our code work against code we
can’t change?
handler
handler
test by invoking
the handler
Level of Testing
1.Unit
2.Integration
3.Acceptance
does the whole system work?
Level of Testing
unit
integration
acceptance
feedback
confidence
“…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
“…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
Don’t Mock Types You Can’t Change
Services
Paul Johnston
The serverless approach to
testing is different and may
actually be easier.
http://bit.ly/2t5viwK
LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
Unit Tests
LambdaAPI Gateway DynamoDB
Unit Tests
Mock/Stub
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…
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
optimize towards shipping working
software, even if it means slowing
down your feedback loop…
“…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
Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Test Input
Legacy Monolith Amazon Kinesis Amazon Lambda
Amazon CloudSearchAmazon API Gateway Amazon Lambda
Test Input
Validate
integration tests exercise
system’s Integration with its
external dependencies
my code
acceptance tests exercise
system End-to-End from
the outside
my code
integration tests differ from
acceptance tests only in HOW the
Lambda functions are invoked
observation
CI + CD PIPELINE
me
deployment scripts that only
live on the CI box is a disaster
waiting to happen…
Jenkins build config deploys and tests
unit + integration tests
deploy
acceptance tests
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
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
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
build.sh allows repeatable builds on both local & CI
Auto Auto Manual
LOGGING
2016-07-12T12:24:37.571Z 994f18f9-482b-11e6-8668-53e4eab441ae
GOT is off air, what do I do now?
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
me
Logs are not easily searchable
in CloudWatch Logs.
CloudWatch Logs
CloudWatch Logs AWS Lambda ELK stack
DISTRIBUTED TRACING
a user
my followers didn’t receive
my new post!
where could the
problem be?
correlation IDs*
* eg. request-id, user-id, yubl-id, etc.
wrap HTTP client & AWS SDK clients
to forward captured correlation IDs
kinesis client
http client
sns client
Amazon X-Ray
Amazon X-Ray
X-Ray traces do not span over API
Gateway, or async event sources
MONITORING + ALERTING
no place to install agents/daemons
• invocation Count
• error Count
• latency
• throttling
• granular to the minute
• support custom metrics
my code
my code
my code
internet internet
press button something happens
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
CloudWatch Logs AWS Lambda
ELK stack
logs
metrics
CloudWatch
don’t forget to setup dashboards
& CW alarms
CONFIG MANAGEMENT
sensitive data should be encrypted
in-flight, and at-rest
enforce role-based access to
sensitive configuration values
SSM Parameter Store
HTTPS
role-based access
encrypted in-flight
SSM Parameter Store
encrypt
role-based access
SSM Parameter Store
encrypted at-rest
HTTPS
role-based access
SSM Parameter Store
encrypted in-flight
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
@theburningmonk
theburningmonk.com
github.com/theburningmonk

Serverless in Production, an experience report (cloudXchange)