AWS Lambda Powertools is an open-source library to help organizations discover and incorporate serverless best practices early and quickly. In two years, Powertools went from a tiny pilot program to a fast-growing project. This rapid growth led to challenges ranging from balancing new features with operational excellence, triaging bug reports and RFCs, and scaling and redesigning documentation, to lowering the bar for contribution and providing a public road map. In this session, learn about the current state of Lambda Powertools, how this growth was supported, key lessons learned in the past two years, and what’s next on the horizon.

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AWS Lambda Powertools:
Lessons from the road to
10 million downloads
O P N 3 0 6
Heitor Lessa (he/him)
Principal Solutions Architect, Developer Acceleration (DevAx)
AWS

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Serverless Lens in AWS WA Tool

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Serverless Lens in AWS WA Tool
Most common risks

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Findings come in late
Plan/design Build Ship Operate

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Findings come in late
Plan/design Build Ship Operate
Readiness assessment

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Findings come in late
Plan/design Build Ship Operate
Readiness assessment

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Findings come in late
Plan/design Build Ship Operate
Today, let’s fix here

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AWS Lambda Powertools
Logger
Metrics
Tracer
+ Many more
A toolkit to ease
leading practices adoption

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AWS Lambda Powertools
OPS1 solution
OPS 1: How do you evaluate your Serverless application’s health?

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AWS Lambda Powertools:
Lessons from the road to 10
million downloads
O P N 3 0 6
Heitor Lessa (he/him)
Principal Solutions Architect, Developer Acceleration (DevAx)
AWS

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Agenda
Today Lessons Up next

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Today

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Today: Serverless Lens mapping (51%)
Question Practice
SEC 1 Scope access based on identity’s metadata
SEC 2 Design smaller, single-purpose functions
SEC 2 Use temporary credentials between resources and components
SEC 3 Store secrets that are used in your code securely
REL 1 Use mechanisms to protect nonscalable resources
REL 2 Manage transaction, partial, and intermittent failures
REL 2 Manage duplicate and unwanted events
REL 2 Orchestrate long-running transactions
OPS 1 Use distributed tracing, and code is instrumented with additional context
OPS 1 Use structured and centralized logging
OPS 1 Use application, business, and operations metrics
OPS 2 Use infrastructure as code (IaC) and stages isolated in separate environments
OPS 2 Use configuration management
PERF 1 Measure and optimize function startup time
PERF 1 Take advantage of concurrency via async and stream-based function invocations
PERF 1 Optimize access patterns and apply caching where applicable
COST 1 Minimize external calls and function code initialization
COST 1 Optimize logging output and its retention
COST 1 Use cost-aware usage patterns in code
Total 19
Powertools assistance

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Today: Scale in numbers
6.5 billion 161%
invocations MoM growth YoY

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Today: How did we get here?
Our customers grew
Observability

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Today: How did we get here?
Batch partial failure
REST/GraphQL API
Input/Output validation
Config management
Handling secrets
Idempotency
Observability
BYO middleware
Self-documented schemas Feature flags
Data extraction
Caching
Our customers grew
The community
grew too
~40% came from the community
Streaming

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Today: How did we get here?
Our customers grew
The community
grew too
Data engineers
Developers
Platform eng.
Security eng.
APIs, event-driven architecture
ETL, data validation
Automation, abstractions
AppSec, guardrails

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Lessons: I am because
we are

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Lessons
Release notes
Challenge

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Lessons
Release notes
Lesson

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Lessons
Release notes
Lesson

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Lessons
Release notes
Lesson

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Lessons
Ambiguity
Language idioms?
Breaking changes?
Can I run on Fargate too?
What about X dependency?
When to cut your losses?
Best vs. emerging vs. leading practice
When too many opinions are harmful
Challenge

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Lessons
Ambiguity
Lesson
Tenets
AWS Lambda only
Eases the adoption of best practices
Keep it lean
We strive for backwards compatibility
We work backwards from the community
Progressive

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Lessons
Ambiguity
Lesson
Thanks to our OpenSearch friends

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Lessons
Ambiguity
Lesson

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Lessons
Ambiguity
Lesson

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Lessons
Contribution
Bugfix?
Sample apps?
New features?
What about docs?
hacktoberfest?
What is a contribution after all?
Challenge
Case study?
Automation improvements?
Discussion?

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Lessons
Contribution
Lesson

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Lessons
Contribution
Lesson
pre-commit
make pr
+
Shortened feedback loop and consistency at scale

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Lessons
Contribution
lesson
Expose conventions and definitions early in the process

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Lessons
Tech writing
Challenge
Like coding, it’s another competency
. . . that can be learned

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Lessons
Tech writing
Lesson
Co-authorship & editing mechanisms
Line editing, copywriting, 1:1, etc.

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Lessons
Tech writing
Lesson
Strategic Writing for UX
by Torrey Podmajersky
Voice chart, style guide, diverse audience, etc.

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Lessons
Challenge
Docs growth
Gatsby Apollo theme💔

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Lessons
Challenge
Docs growth
mkdocs-material ❤

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Lessons
Challenge
From a few to 300+
Examples growth

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Lessons
Gradual lint and realistic uplift
Lesson
Examples growth

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Lessons
Challenge
Consistency
Table of contents inconsistency

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Lessons
Lesson
Consistency
Gradual and sustainable consistency

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Lessons
Balancing act
Challenge
“Why don’t you just”

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Lessons
Challenge
Open source Work
Personal
life
Balancing act

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Lessons
Challenge
New features Operational excellence
Documentation Community
Balancing act

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Lessons
Challenge
New features Operational excellence
Documentation Community
Balancing act

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Lessons
Challenge
New features Operational excellence
Documentation Community
Help!
Balancing act

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Lessons
Lesson
Balancing act
Working in Public
The Making and
Maintenance of Open
Source Software
by Nadia Eghbal

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Lessons
Lesson
The Hard Parts of
Open Source
“Everything is done in haste, at fever pitch.”
Balancing act

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Lessons
Lesson
Ops excellence
Roadmap
Contribution guidelines
Balancing act

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Lessons
Lesson
Balancing act

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Lessons
Lesson
Balancing act

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Lessons
Transparency
Challenge

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Lessons
Transparency
Lesson

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Lessons
Roadmap and daily operations revamped
Transparency
Lesson
CloudWatch
Feature request: Data Class for CloudWatch Logs passed through Kinesis Data Streams #1488

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Lessons
Migration to Discord led to a healthier community
Transparency
Lesson

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Lessons
Release overhead
Challenge
Source Build Tests PyPi Docs SAR
GitHub PyPi pipeline
Security
Complexity
Perf
Test
Prod
API
User guide
Beta
Prod
Extras

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Lessons
Release overhead
Challenge
Source Build Beta
Wave N
Beta
Canary
Prod
Wave N
Prod
Canary
Test Test
Lambda layer pipeline for 16 Regions
Internal pipeline was disconnected from GitHub processes

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Lessons
Release overhead
Challenge
Source Build Beta
Wave N
Beta
Canary
Prod
Wave N
Prod
Canary
Lambda Layer pipeline for 16 regions
GitHub/Internal sync Trigger internal pipeline
Source Build N tests PyPi Docs
GitHub actions – PyPi pipeline
SAR
~3 hours
5 minutes
50 Lambda layer deployments per release (stage + canary + SAR)

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Lessons
Lesson
Release overhead
178 Lambda Layer deployments per release (stage + canary + SAR)

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Challenge
Speed?
Step-through debugging?
Parallelization? Isolated test runs?
Entry bar for infrastructure as code?
Frequency?
Cost?
Run a single test/infra?

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Lesson

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Lesson

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Lesson

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Lesson
Data fetchers are not customer-facing (yet!)

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Lessons
End-to-end test
Lesson
Parallelization
workflow

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Lessons
Impact
Stars?
# of case studies?
How can we track unobtrusively?
Downloads? Forks?
Challenge
# of language bindings?

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Lessons
Impact
Lesson
Community
Lambda layer
Belonging
Unobtrusive tracking
~40% of Powertools features
Customer and Partner’s feedback

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Lessons
Impact
Lesson

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Up next: What the near
future holds

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Up next
Feature parity
Java
Python TypeScript .NET

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Up next Python Java TypeScript .NET
Tracer x x x x
Logger x x x x
Metrics x x x x
Event handler (REST) x
Event handler (GraphQL) x
Idempotency x x
Parameters x x
Batch processing x x
Validation x x
Event source data classes x x x
Parser x
Feature flags x
Streaming x
JMESPath (data extraction) x x
Amazon SQS large
message handling
x
Feature parity

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Amazon CloudWatch
X-Ray
Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray
Up next
Observability providers

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Up next
Event source JSON schema

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Up next: Long-term
Lambda Powertools Testing
Beyond Lambda AWS Fargate, AWS Glue, etc.
Event Builder, data fetcher (E2E test)
/You tell us/ Making your experience smoother

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Summary

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Summary
Key lessons learned
Customers grew So did the community
Balancing act Ops excellence is business as usual
Empathy Practice and refine what we preach

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Resources
All links here

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Thank you!
Please complete the session
survey in the mobile app
Heitor Lessa (he/him)
@heitor_lessa

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Appendix

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Structured logging

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Structured logging: Recap
Raw Semi-structured Canonical Structured

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Structured logging: Without Powertools
Raw
[INFO] 2022-12-02T22:.. 1c8df7d3… Hello world

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Structured logging: Without Powertools
[INFO] 2022-12-02T22:.. … {“message”: “Hello world”}
Semi
structured

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Structured logging: Without Powertools
Canonical
at=INFO msg=Aha! request_latency=0.1

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Structured logging: Without Powertools
Structured

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Structured logging: Without Powertools
Structured

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Structured logging: Powertools
Structured

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Structured logging: Powertools
Structured

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Structured logging: Powertools
Structured

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Structured logging: Powertools
Structured

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Distributed tracing

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API Gateway Lambda Fargate
DynamoDB
API Gateway
S3 bucket
Distributed tracing: Recap

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Trace
API Gateway Lambda Fargate
DynamoDB
API Gateway
S3 bucket
Distributed tracing: Recap
Legend

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Trace
API Gateway Lambda Fargate
DynamoDB
API Gateway
S3 bucket
Distributed tracing: Recap
Legend
Segment

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Trace
API Gateway Lambda Fargate
DynamoDB
API Gateway
S3 bucket
Distributed tracing: Recap
Legend
Segment
Sub-segment

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Trace
API Gateway Lambda Fargate
DynamoDB
API Gateway
S3 bucket
Distributed tracing: Recap
Legend
Segment
Sub-segment
Type Key Value Namespace
Annotation UserId a1c8k...
Metadata Cart {….} Checkout
Trace metadata

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Without Powertools
Tracing

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Distributed tracing: Powertools
Tracing

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Metrics

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Metrics: Recap
Namespace
Metric
Unit
Dimensions
Metrics

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Metrics: Without Powertools
Metrics

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Metrics: Powertools
Metrics

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Metrics: Powertools
Metrics

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Metrics: Powertools
Metrics

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Lambda Powertools: Humble beginnings
Recap