104. Explaining Lambda Runtimes

In this episode, we celebrate AWS Lambda's 9th birthday by taking a deep dive into Lambda runtimes. We discuss how Lambda works, compare official runtimes vs. custom runtimes, and explain when and why building a custom runtime might be worth the effort. We talk through how custom runtimes work, options for deploying them, and potential use cases where they could be beneficial over standard runtimes.
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🔖 Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and overview of serverless and AWS Lambda.
01:04 Recapping serverless and AWS Lambda.
01:43 The magic of Lambda is managing compute infrastructure.
02:32 What is a Runtime in the context of AWS Lambda?
04:09 Comparing built-in runtimes vs. custom runtimes.
06:23 How does a custom runtime work?
09:16 The Lambda Runtime API.
11:19 Deploying custom Lambda Runtimes to production.
14:49 Using container image deployments for custom runtimes.
18:38 Recommendations: when are custom runtimes beneficial?
24:12 Closing notes
In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:
- The original announcement launching AWS Lambda in 2014: aws.amazon.com/about-aws/what...
- List of official Lambda runtimes: docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/la...
- Library implementing the Rust runtime: github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda...
- Library implementing the Go runtime: github.com/aws/aws-lambda-go/
- Library implementing the C++ runtime: github.com/awslabs/aws-lambda...
- Third-party PHP runtime (Bref): bref.sh/
- Third-party Swift runtime: github.com/swift-server/swift...
- Official documentation on how to build a custom runtime: docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/la...
- An official tutorial on how to build a custom runtime: docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/la...
- List of all the environment variables available to a runtime: docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/la...
- Lambda Response Streaming official docs: docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/la...
- Our previous episode on Lambda Response Streaming: awsbites.com/77-how-do-you-us...
- On-demand Container Loading in AWS Lambda (paper): arxiv.org/abs/2305.13162
- Deep dive on container support for AWS Lambda (Eoin's article): dev.to/eoinsha/container-imag...
- When is the Lambda Init Phase Free, and when is it Billed? (article by Luc van Donkersgoed): lucvandonkersgoed.com/2022/04...
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