AWS Serverless Architecture Services

Why Serverless?

Serverless computing flips the traditional infrastructure model. Instead of provisioning servers, estimating capacity, and paying for idle resources, serverless lets you write code and deploy it. AWS handles provisioning, scaling, patching, and availability automatically. You pay only when your code runs.

This is not just a deployment model — it changes how you think about architecture. Serverless applications are naturally event-driven, modular, and scalable. They cost almost nothing at low traffic and scale to handle millions of requests without any infrastructure changes.

At FactualMinds, we design and build serverless applications that take full advantage of this model. As an AWS Select Tier Consulting Partner, we bring deep experience in serverless architecture patterns, performance optimization, and cost management across diverse industries.

Core AWS Serverless Services

AWS Lambda

Lambda is the foundation of serverless computing. You upload your code, define a trigger, and Lambda runs it in response to events. No servers, no clusters, no capacity planning.

Key capabilities:

• Runtime support — Node.js, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby, and custom runtimes via container images
• Memory/CPU scaling — Configure 128 MB to 10 GB of memory; CPU scales proportionally
• Execution duration — Up to 15 minutes per invocation
• Concurrency — Scales to thousands of concurrent executions automatically
• Deployment — ZIP packages or container images up to 10 GB
• Layers — Shared libraries and dependencies across functions

Amazon API Gateway

API Gateway provides managed REST, HTTP, and WebSocket APIs:

• HTTP API — Low-latency, low-cost API proxy for Lambda and HTTP backends (recommended for most use cases)
• REST API — Full-featured API management with request/response transformation, caching, API keys, and usage plans
• WebSocket API — Persistent connections for real-time communication (chat, notifications, live updates)
• Authorization — Cognito user pools, Lambda authorizers, IAM, and JWT validation
• Throttling — Per-route rate limiting and burst control

Amazon DynamoDB

DynamoDB is a serverless NoSQL database that scales to any workload:

• Single-digit millisecond latency at any scale
• On-demand capacity — Pay per read/write request with automatic scaling
• Provisioned capacity — Reserved throughput for predictable workloads at lower cost
• Global Tables — Multi-Region, active-active replication
• DynamoDB Streams — Change data capture for event-driven architectures
• DAX — In-memory caching for microsecond read latency

AWS Step Functions

Step Functions orchestrate complex workflows as state machines:

• Standard workflows — Long-running processes (up to 1 year) with exactly-once execution
• Express workflows — High-volume, short-duration (up to 5 minutes) with at-least-once execution
• Visual workflow designer — Design, debug, and monitor workflows in the AWS console
• Error handling — Built-in retry, catch, and fallback patterns
• Parallel execution — Fan-out processing across multiple branches
• Service integrations — Direct integration with 200+ AWS services without Lambda glue code

Amazon EventBridge

EventBridge is the serverless event bus for building event-driven architectures:

• Custom events — Publish events from your applications and consume them across services
• AWS service events — React to events from EC2, S3, CodePipeline, and other AWS services
• SaaS events — Receive events from Zendesk, Auth0, Stripe, and other partners
• Rules and filtering — Route events to targets based on content patterns
• Schema registry — Discover and manage event schemas with code bindings

Serverless Architecture Patterns

Pattern 1: REST API with CRUD Operations

The most common serverless pattern — a REST API backed by Lambda and DynamoDB:

Client → API Gateway (HTTP API) → Lambda → DynamoDB
                                ↓
                          Cognito (auth)

When to use: Web and mobile application backends, microservices APIs, internal tools.

Key design decisions:

• Use HTTP API (not REST API) unless you need REST API-specific features — HTTP API is 70% cheaper and lower latency
• One Lambda function per API route (single-purpose) for independent scaling and deployment
• DynamoDB single-table design for efficient access patterns

Pattern 2: Asynchronous Processing

Decouple request handling from heavy processing:

API Gateway → Lambda (accept request) → SQS Queue → Lambda (process) → DynamoDB/S3
                                                    ↓
                                              Dead Letter Queue (failures)

When to use: File processing, image/video transformation, order processing, any operation that takes longer than an API response timeout.

Key design decisions:

• SQS provides durability, retry logic, and backpressure
• Dead Letter Queues capture failed messages for investigation
• Lambda batch processing reads multiple SQS messages per invocation for efficiency

Pattern 3: Event-Driven Microservices

Loosely coupled services that communicate through events:

Service A → EventBridge → Service B (Lambda)
                        → Service C (Lambda)
                        → Service D (Step Functions)

When to use: Complex business domains with multiple bounded contexts, systems that need to react to business events (order placed, user registered, payment processed).

Key design decisions:

• EventBridge rules route events to the right consumers based on event content
• Each service owns its data store (DynamoDB, S3, or RDS)
• Schema registry ensures event contracts are maintained across services

Pattern 4: Data Processing Pipeline

Serverless ETL for data analytics:

S3 (file upload) → EventBridge → Step Functions → Lambda (validate)
                                                → Lambda (transform)
                                                → Lambda (load to Redshift/Athena)

When to use: File processing, data analytics pipelines, log aggregation, report generation.

Key design decisions:

• Step Functions orchestrate multi-step processing with error handling and retry
• Lambda processes individual files or batches
• S3 event notifications trigger processing automatically when new data arrives

Pattern 5: Scheduled Tasks and Cron Jobs

Replace cron servers with serverless scheduling:

EventBridge Scheduler → Lambda (execute task)
                      → Step Functions (complex workflow)

When to use: Nightly reports, data synchronization, cleanup jobs, health checks, any recurring task.

Advantages over EC2 cron: No server to maintain, automatic retry on failure, CloudWatch logging, no idle compute cost.

Serverless Performance Optimization

Cold Start Mitigation

Cold starts are the most discussed serverless performance concern. Here is how we address them:

Our recommendation: For latency-sensitive APIs, use Provisioned Concurrency on the critical path. For background processing, cold starts are irrelevant — do not pay to optimize them.

Memory and CPU Optimization

Lambda CPU scales linearly with memory. A function with 1,769 MB gets one full vCPU. Our approach:

1. Benchmark at multiple memory settings — Run the function at 128 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, 1024 MB, and 1769 MB
2. Find the cost-optimal point — More memory means faster execution but higher per-ms cost. The sweet spot is where total cost (price × duration) is minimized
3. Use AWS Lambda Power Tuning — Open-source tool that automates this analysis

Often, doubling the memory halves the execution time and results in the same or lower total cost — while delivering better latency.

DynamoDB Access Patterns

DynamoDB performance depends on data modeling:

• Single-table design — Store multiple entity types in one table with composite keys for efficient access
• GSI overloading — Use Global Secondary Indexes with generic key names to support multiple query patterns
• Query, not Scan — Design keys so every access pattern uses Query (O(1)) rather than Scan (O(n))
• DAX caching — Add DynamoDB Accelerator for read-heavy workloads requiring microsecond latency

Serverless Cost Optimization

Lambda Cost Strategies

• Right-size memory — Use Power Tuning to find the cost-optimal memory configuration
• Minimize execution duration — Efficient code, connection reuse, and avoiding unnecessary I/O
• Batch processing — Process multiple SQS messages or Kinesis records per invocation
• Graviton (ARM) — Lambda on Graviton2 is 20% cheaper with comparable or better performance
• Reserved Concurrency — Set limits to prevent runaway costs from unexpected spikes

DynamoDB Cost Strategies

• On-demand for variable workloads — Pay per request with no capacity planning
• Provisioned for steady-state — Lower per-request cost with auto-scaling
• Reserved capacity — Up to 77% discount with 1 or 3-year commitments for predictable workloads
• TTL — Automatically delete expired items to reduce storage costs

API Gateway Cost Strategies

• HTTP API over REST API — HTTP API costs $1.00 per million requests versus $3.50 for REST API
• Caching — API Gateway caching reduces Lambda invocations for repeated requests
• Direct integrations — Proxy directly to DynamoDB or Step Functions without Lambda for simple operations

For comprehensive AWS cost optimization across serverless and other workloads, talk to our cloud economics team.

Serverless Security

Serverless does not mean security-free. We implement:

• Least-privilege IAM roles — Each Lambda function gets its own role with only the permissions it needs
• API authorization — Cognito, JWT validation, or custom Lambda authorizers on every API route
• VPC integration — Lambda functions in VPC subnets for database access without public endpoints
• Secrets management — AWS Secrets Manager and Parameter Store for credentials, never environment variables
• Input validation — API Gateway request validation and application-level input sanitization
• Dependency scanning — Automated vulnerability scanning of function dependencies in CI/CD pipelines

For organizations with compliance requirements, serverless architectures can meet SOC 2, HIPAA, and PCI DSS standards with proper configuration.

Serverless vs. Containers: When to Use Each

Use Lambda when: Functions are short-lived, traffic is variable, and you want zero infrastructure management.

Use Fargate/ECS when: Processes are long-running, you need persistent connections, or you want to run existing Docker images without modification.

Use both when: APIs and event processing on Lambda, with long-running background workers on Fargate — a common hybrid pattern.

Getting Started

For scaling patterns, see our AWS Auto Scaling guide. For API design patterns, read our API Gateway guide.

Whether you are building a new serverless application, migrating existing workloads, or optimizing an existing serverless architecture, our team brings the design expertise and hands-on implementation experience to deliver production-ready results.

Contact us to discuss your serverless project →