AWS Lambda Pushes Serverless Toward Long-Running Workloads
AWS Lambda now allows functions running on Lambda Managed Instances to run for up to 90 minutes, six times longer than the previous 15-minute limit, further blurring the line between a Lambda invocation and a traditional server. The limit remains unchanged for traditional synchronous requests. By Renato Losio
AWS Lambda is expanding its capabilities, pushing serverless computing closer to traditional server environments. The service now allows functions running on Lambda Managed Instances to run for up to 90 minutes, a significant increase from the previous 15-minute limit. This change blurs the line between serverless and conventional server-based workloads.
The timeout limit for traditional synchronous requests remains unchanged at 15 minutes. However, the extended duration addresses the limitations faced by longer-running workloads, such as media processing, financial calculations, data processing, ETL, AI inference, and web scraping or large file transfers.
When dealing with longer-running functions, developers must ensure network connections, temporary credentials, and duplicate executions remain valid throughout the runtime. AWS recommends implementing idempotency to handle retries and duplicate processing safely. While the 15-minute limit has been a pain point for the AWS community, the extended timeout offers a solution for many deployments.
Rajesh Pandey, an AWS principal engineer, highlights the simplicity the increased timeout brings to steady-state workloads. However, some caution that the increased timeout may encourage fragile and costly patterns. They argue that if a function takes 90 minutes, it might be more suitable for other services like Durable Functions, ECS Tasks, or AWS Batch, depending on the specific use case.
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