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Lambda

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https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/ 

What is it?

Lambda is AWS' serverless computing offering. It doesn't actually mean 'serverless': it means you write some function, and then you can request Lambda to run it whenever you want, at which point it will provision a server to run the function and return the result.

It's a way to do various computing tasks on-demand, rather than provisioning your own dedicated server to sit around 24/7 waiting for you to use it, and allows for running the same function many times concurrently.

Why did we choose it?

Integration with other AWS services. That the cost is pretty low is a nice bonus.

What do we use it for?

Running various functions that are impractical or implausible to run on the webservers. The main list:

  • Image resizing and encoding
  • Video resizing and encoding
  • Batch file operations
  • Batch email sending
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