AWS launches Extension API for Lambda serverless platform.
Introduction
Amazon the biggest conglomerate is always at the peak of RnD to always have a niche over their competitors. Encompassing these efforts, the company has recently showcased an additional feature for its clients to make monitoring, observability, security, and governance tools integration much easier. AWS Lambda has announced new Extension API which allows user to integrate their tools deeply into the AWS Lambda environment. The extension does not require any complex installation or configuration, and this simplified experience makes it easier for the user to use their preferred tool/application across their project. Amazon has also provided some use cases in their documentation such as:
- capturing diagnostic information before, during, and after function invocation
- automatically instrumenting your code without needing code changes
- fetching configuration settings or secrets before the function invocation
- detecting and alerting on function activity through hardened security agents, which can run as separate processes from the function
Overview
Lambda Extensions are created keeping the clients in mind and hence is the easiest way to plug in the tools that are used in the project. Rather than installing or configuring the tool, it is deployed as a lambda layer through the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI. The extension infrastructure can also be used as a code for tools such as AWS Cloud Formation, the AWS Serverless Application Model (AWS SAM), Serverless Framework, and Terraform. Another amazing tool that can be used is Stackery to automate the integration of extensions from Epsagon, New Relic, Lumigo, and Thundra.
The two key components of Lambda extensions are the Extension API and Extensions themselves. The extensions are created using lambda extension API which provides a way for tools to get greater control during function initialization, invocation, and shut down, hence allowing the user to bring custom runtimes to lambda.
What was the need for Lambda Extension?
- Existing APM solutions expect a user to run an operator or daemon on their server, which gathers telemetry about users’ applications and sends them to the vendor. They rely upon the capacity to do their job silently in the background.
Earlier with Lambda, there was no place to introduce these operators/daemons and no proper way to perform background tasks when the Lambda workers were not running/carrying out a process. It was not even conceivable to gather telemetry information without the user making noteworthy improvements to their code, e.g., beginning a partner cycle in users’ code.
2. It’s also not possible to buffer data and send it in batches because when the Lambda worker is garbage collected, buffered data would be lost.
Introducing the Lambda extension solves this problem.
Conclusion
Lambda extensions enable you to extend the Lambda service to more easily integrate with your favorite tools for monitoring, observability, security, and governance.
Today, you can install several available extensions from AWS Lambda Ready Partners. These cover use-cases such as application performance monitoring, secret management, configuration management, and vulnerability detection. Extensions make it easier to use your existing tools with your serverless applications.
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