AWS serverless services help organizations build and deploy native cloud applications that utilize a serverless architecture. Serverless applications have become a popular option for companies and development teams because they allow them to focus on the core functionality of their web or mobile applications without spending time maintaining technical infrastructure.
In addition, by using a serverless architecture, organizations can expedite the development process, reduce operational costs, and scale faster. This post will not explain all of the benefits associated with serverless applications. However, it will discuss the most popular AWS serverless services and how they can be used to build powerful serverless applications.
Popular AWS Serverless Services
AWS is the industry leader in serverless services. Your organization can utilize over a hundred different cloud and serverless AWS services. We won’t cover all of these AWS services in this post. Instead, if you want to learn more about AWS and all of the included services, reach out to an experienced AWS partner for help.
Let’s take a closer look at the most popular AWS services for serverless applications. The most popular AWS services include:
- AWS Lambda
- AWS Fargate
- Amazon SNS
- Amazon SQS
- AWS DynamoDB
- Amazon Aurora
- AWS Step Functions
- Amazon API Gateway
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a compute service that enables development teams to run code without provisioning or managing servers. Developers that use AWS Lambda only have to focus on writing code and not any of the tiresome tasks associated with infrastructure management. In addition, AWS Lambda is an event-driven system. This means that your organization only has to pay for the resources it uses.
Common issues like activity spikes, cold starts, or disaster recovery are no problem for organizations that use AWS Lambda because the cloud environment automatically scales to meet demand. In addition, Lambda can be combined with most other AWS services to create a truly powerful and flexible serverless application.
AWS Fargate
AWS Fargate is a serverless compute engine that enables developers to run containers without managing servers or clusters. Fargate makes deploying, managing and scaling large containerized applications simple. AWS Fargate manages all of the infrastructure required to run your application’s containers and ensures that there is always high availability. With this tool, containerization has never been simpler for development teams.
Amazon SNS
Amazon SNS (simple notification service) is a fully managed messaging service. Amazon SNS can be effectively used for both application-to-application and application-to-user messaging. Developers using Amazon SNS can choose the message type from several popular options, including email, SMS, push notifications, etc.
Amazon SNS allows developers to decouple microservices, serverless applications, and distributed systems. In addition, Amazon SNS can be used for message archiving, ordering, analysis, and filtering.
Amazon SQS
Amazon SQS (simple queue service) is a managed, distributed message queueing service. Like Amazon SNS, SQS enables developers to decouple and scale microservices, serverless applications, and distributed systems. However, SQS does not have a user component. Instead, Amazon SQS sends, receives, and caches messages between software components, microservices, applications, etc.
There are a few other highlights of Amazon SQS that should be covered, such as high-security standards and strong reliability. In addition to the security practices employed by AWS services, Amazon SQS locks messages during processing to provide an extra layer of security. In addition, Amazon SQS stores messages and data on multiple servers to ensure nothing is ever lost.
AWS DynamoDB
AWS DynamoDB is a NoSQL document database service. DynamoDB supports key-value pairs and document data structures while delivering single-digit millisecond performance at scale. AWS DynamoDB is a fully-managed service that covers hardware provisioning, setup, configuration, cluster scaling, software patches, and more. In addition, it quickly scales up or down without any dip in performance level.
In addition, AWS DynamoDB meets all compliance requirements and provides data encryption to protect the most sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands. Like AWS Lambda, DynamoDB follows a pay-per-use pricing model, so you only pay for the resources that you actually use. The fact that it can also be combined with a host of other AWS services makes it perfect for serverless applications and cloud app development.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is a fully-managed relational database engine. Aurora automatically scales capacity based on your application’s real-time needs. Amazon Aurora stores data in rows, columns, and tables and is fully compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. If you already have projects that exist in MySQL or PostgreSQL, you can easily export them into Aurora.
As a fully managed AWS service, Aurora handles time-consuming tasks like hardware provisioning, patching, database setup, storage autoscaling, and backup. AWS also offers an adjacent service called Aurora Serverless, which includes autoscaling services for computing capacity. Aurora Serverless is a great option for organizations with unpredictable and infrequent application workloads.
AWS Step Functions
AWS Step Functions gives developers a visual representation of their AWS services and workflows. Step Functions is a visual workflow orchestrator that enables development teams to sequence their AWS services and track application performance in real time. AWS Step Functions greatly simplifies complex serverless applications with several components and enables organizations to build applications one piece at a time.
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway is a fully managed service that simplifies API creation and publication at any scale. APIs rely on consistent communication. AWS is the best platform to ensure that APIs function the way they were intended without fear of failure. This fully managed service takes the mundane, rote responsibilities of API creation and publication out of the hands of your developers and enables them to focus all their efforts on creating great APIs.
Final Thoughts
These are just a few of the most popular AWS serverless services. As previously mentioned, there are over one hundred different AWS services that your business can use to improve HiTech application performance, structure microservices, build serverless applications, and so much more.
If you’re interested in learning more about AWS and the different services your business can utilize, reach out to an experienced app development partner. There are also AWS-certified partners that can help your business with every AWS-related task, issue, or question your organization might have. AWS serverless services are powering new innovations in app development and design, and your business needs to start considering how you can utilize them.
