Day 16 of #DistributedDilemmas: Serverless doesn't mean worry-free
Serverless doesn't mean worry-free. Cold starts and hidden state create new classes of distributed problems. While offering auto-scaling and cost…
Jatin Kumar Malik First published on 
X
Cold starts and hidden state create new classes of distributed problems.
While offering auto-scaling and cost efficiency, these systems require careful architectural decisions to handle stateful operations and latency-sensitive workloads.
Exhibit A:
- Coca-Cola’s IoT vending machines using AWS Lambda scaled from 30 million to 80 million monthly requests, reducing costs by 65% per machine.
However, this required rethinking state management:
- Payment sessions and user preferences had to be externalized to databases.
- Transactional consistency was maintained via DynamoDB instead of local function states.
Read more: https://www.serverless.direct/post/serverless-architecture-examples
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