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AWS Lambda vs AWS Step Functions: What are the differences?
AWS Lambda: Automatically run code in response to modifications to objects in Amazon S3 buckets, messages in Kinesis streams, or updates in DynamoDB. AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security; AWS Step Functions: Build Distributed Applications Using Visual Workflows. AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows. Building applications from individual components that each perform a discrete function lets you scale and change applications quickly.
AWS Lambda belongs to "Serverless / Task Processing" category of the tech stack, while AWS Step Functions can be primarily classified under "Cloud Task Management".
9GAG, Asana, and CircleCI are some of the popular companies that use AWS Lambda, whereas AWS Step Functions is used by Clever, Froothaus, and MessageMedia. AWS Lambda has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1023 company stacks & 614 developers stacks; compared to AWS Step Functions, which is listed in 19 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.
When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:
- Developer Experience trumps everything.
- AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
- If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.
Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:
- Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
- Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
- Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
- Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
- Heroku
- Lambda
It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?
I chopped that question up into the following categories:
- Developer Experience / DX 🤓
- Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
- Cost 💵
- Lock in 🔐
Read the full post linked below for all details
Pros of AWS Lambda
- No infrastructure128
- Cheap82
- Quick69
- Stateless58
- No deploy, no server, great sleep47
- AWS Lambda went down taking many sites with it11
- Event Driven Governance6
- Easy to deploy6
- Extensive API6
- Auto scale and cost effective6
- VPC Support5
- Integrated with various AWS services3
Pros of AWS Step Functions
- Integration with other services6
- Pricing4
- Easily Accessible via AWS Console4
- Complex workflows3
- High Availability2
- Workflow Processing2
- Scalability2
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Cons of AWS Lambda
- Cant execute ruby or go6
- Compute time limited2
- Can't execute PHP w/o significant effort0
Cons of AWS Step Functions
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What is AWS Lambda?
What is AWS Step Functions?
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