Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading

Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by Autowired on Monday December 14, 2020 @09:41AM (#25418054)

Your points are valid if your priority is to reduce cost. Totally agree. That said, Lambda has an API and SDK, and concurrency is managed. Warm up is a nightmare if you don't develop specifically for Lambda, but scalability is easy. There are trade-offs, it sucks for many use cases, but I don't think you should just shrug it off.

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by eloff on Monday December 14, 2020 @09:44AM (#25418094)

If you have to use beefy lambda instances with multi-threaded workloads? I don't think lambda is the right tool for the job there. I'm not saying it has no value - but that's the opposite of playing to its strengths.

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by Autowired on Monday December 14, 2020 @09:56AM (#25418237)

It all depends, I think. I once used multi-threading to speed up the initialization of a Lambda which was just a "port" of a beefy rest service. It was ported to cut costs and for fault isolation. I managed to gain 2-3 seconds of initialization time, but it was something.

A Lambda deployment has the advantage that no one needs to manage it, and faults are isolated between clients. You could argue that if you need these properties your engineering organization has deeper flaws, and you'd be right, but in many companies engineers need to make do with what they get.

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by eropple on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:11AM (#25418403)

> A Lambda deployment has the advantage that no one needs to manage it

I assure you that somebody does need to manage it, and if nobody is you are going to eventually hit the wall at speed.

I've been called into SEV-1 issues where a Lambda-based web app spontaneously disappeared. (Seasoned AWS heads can probably make a guess as to why.)

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by Autowired on Monday December 14, 2020 @10:17AM (#25418471)

Sure, I was perhaps too hyperbolic. In my case, the advantage was specifically fault isolation for a multi-tenant, low traffic, demanding workload that was traditionally deployed as a physical service.

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by vp8989 on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:49PM (#25420620)

"I assure you that somebody does need to manage it"

You can always tell who has had to live with non-trivial serverless systems in Prod and who is just parroting the marketing copy.

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Re:Optimizing Lambda Cost with Multi-Threading by Autowired on Tuesday December 15, 2020 @08:04AM (#25429873)

Let's keep it civilized please. I cited a specific example from my experience, I'm not parroting anything.

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