Ask HN: What production features have you built using AWS Lambda/Serverless? - sriram_iyengar
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jpetersonmn
I've been using it for lots of things lately. The last thing was to process
ebs volumes that get left behind when leostream deletes instances from it's
pools. (we need fresh machines all the time, so that's why we delete these
instead of re-using) We have it delete the machine from the pool, and the ami
is set to not delete the volume. I use a cloudwatch event to detect this, spin
up a new ec2 instance, attach the available volume, process some logs from it
and then delete the new ec2 instance along with the volume.

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sriram_iyengar
Thanks - that was useful. Low level admin of AWS env can be done via short
lived lambdas, is what i can infer.

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pesfandiar
I use it for a private photo/video sharing application. It has a dozen users,
so may not qualify as "production", but I haven't had to look under the hood
for almost a year now.

I use Lambda specifically for creating thumbnails. My blog post about it:
[http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2017/03/10/serverless-
photo-s...](http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2017/03/10/serverless-photo-
sharing-app-aws)

~~~
sriram_iyengar
Your blog reference is helpful.

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bauerd
Not sure if this counts as a production feature but I use Lambda as a Sendgrid
webhook handler to calculate/update some custom fields in a CRM in response to
email events. Basically Zapier on steroids

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sheraz
1\. Contact forms and newsletter signups for static html sites.

2\. Endpoint for collecting anonymous usage stats in our apps.

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scalesolved
I used AWS Lambda with API Gateway to provide a single API endpoint allowing
other services to exchange authentication keys for new tokens.

The functionality was so small and temporary it was great to be able to not
need to provision anything and not even pay (our usage is under the free
tier).

The regex to deal with error handling and API GW in general were pretty
clunky. The Lambda was a self contained and unit/integration tested Java
project.

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sriram_iyengar
Thanks

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QuinnyPig
I write LastWeekinAWS.com using an entirely serverless workflow. DynamoDB
holds the links, populated through a scheduled Lambda function that pulls them
in from Pinboard. Lambdas handle building out the newsletter from a Jinja2
template, building the archive on a schedule, and injecting static headers
into the CloudFront distribution.

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sriram_iyengar
Your weekly newsletter is very useful. I have subscribed already

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rkwz
I use it to selectively run e2e tests for a particular git feature branch

Add a specific label in Github PR => Listen to Github PR webhook => Trigger
e2e tests in CI for that branch

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human-factor
We built the entirety of the Give to Lincoln day giving day website using AWS
lambda and DynamoDB. This includes tracking nonprofit registration, handling
donations, and an admin area for managing the giving day.

[https://www.givetolincoln.com/](https://www.givetolincoln.com/)

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quickthrower2
Pdf manipulation, e.g. transforms, thumbnails, etc. This is on Azure Functions
which is equivalent to Lambda.

Nice things scalability, not taking down the site if there is a segfault, and
cost. Can run a smaller webserver and PAYG on the functions overall it costs
less.

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iurisilvio
I'm using it as a proxy with IP rotation. It is not a perfect solution, but
solved my problem more than one time.

It is a lot cheaper than a "proxy as a service".

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chatmasta
I thought lambda was configured to use a single exit IP that rotates every 4
hours. How many IP's are you getting via this method, and are you using any
tricks (multiple accounts, etc) to get a wider variety of IPs?

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iurisilvio
To be honest, I have no idea. Maybe I'm even wrong about why it works.

I have a toy service with ~200k requests/day to a public service and I was
blocked all the time.

After I changed to use API Gateway + Lambda as a proxy, never had these
problems again. I just monitor the 4xx and 5xx errors and they are almost zero
now.

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kostarelo
I have two products already running exclusively on AWS Lambda as we speak. One
of them now counts over 200 Lambdas and is being developed by three engineers.

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rpaliwal71
I use Viasocket.com to build the hacks. I use my signup date in Sendgrid,
Google sheet, Alexa API, Woodpeaker, saleshandy and many more.

