Which Approach

As we have two different approaches to address cross-cutting concerns for the AWS Lambda functions, let’s discuss the pros and cons for each approach to guide users on how to choose the best option.

Lambda Framework

Pros
  • Completed Lambda Implementation with shared authorizer deployed on AWS API Gateway.
  • Lowest Cost for small and medium organizations when the public cloud is used.
  • Tightly integration with AWS products and toolchains, which are familiar to most Lambda developers.
Cons
  • Only support Java language. Other similar frameworks need to be implemented and maintained if users want to write Lambda functions with .Net, Python, Nodejs etc.
  • Limited due to the Lambda SDK and extension APIs. Hard to integrate with the existing enterprise ecosystem.
  • Vendor lockdown to the AWS cloud solution or ecosystem.
Who should use
  • Personal and small business focusing on cost reduction with AWS Lambda function pricing model on the public cloud.
  • For Lambda functions that are called in-frequently such batch jobs.
  • New startup companies want to simplify their IT solutions.

Lambda Proxy

Pros
  • Support multiple languages for Lamdba functions implementation.
  • Same Light-proxy image can be used for Rest APIs and Lambda to address cross-cutting concerns in the same fashion.
  • Replace the AWS API Gateway with the capability to extend middleware handlers for easy customization and integration with the existing ecosystem.
  • High throughput, low latency with extra functionalities compare with AWS API Gateway.
Cons
  • Cost of provision proxy instance in ECS with launch type of EC2 or Fargate.
Who should use
  • For medium and large-size organizations to address cross-cutting concerns for Lambda functions with high throughput.
  • For companies with existing EC2 instances pre-allocated.
  • For companies that want to customize the security, logging, metrics, auditing, validation etc.
  • For companies who are using the light-proxy or http-sidecar already in their cloud solution.
  • For organizations who are using Amazon VPC as AWS API Gateway is not free.
“Which Approach” was last updated: September 13, 2021: fixes #293 add pros and cons for the lambda framework and proxy (aae4d91)
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