Thanks for coming here to answer questions. Much appreciated!
Does each new Lambda cold start pull the entire image from the repo? Or if I derive from Lambda base images am I likely to get some of the layers already cached?
I'm trying to think about how the data transfer costs are going to each time the Lambda is instantiated. I didn't take this into account with Fargate and got burned when trying to trigger images on demand in a similar way.
This could replace my whole SQS / CloudWatch Events / Fargate setup using Lambda if I can figure out cold start costs ($ not time).
Yes, it's been an incredibly valuable tool for me. I get the most out of the host monitoring and the logging / alerting. The APM is nice, but I'm not using it nearly as much as the other pieces.
Just getting logging centralized alone has saved me tons of time, which is in turn more time spent on the product. I've been able to use the log parsing to setup metrics that tell me when an outside integration is acting up and isolate which paths. Take a day to really learn how their logs work and you'll be able to generate metrics / advanced event alerting in no time.
I was hesitant to pay the premium, but the peace of mind has been worth it. You can piece the same thing together with open source tooling. But then you've got another thing to manage.
I agree in general with the responses encouraging better usage of managed platforms. I've run a SaaS app for a couple of years using a combination of AWS Elasticbeanstalk (Flask and Django) and AWS Lambda. Server resource related downtime has been minimal and recovery is quick/automated. Even hosting on Lambda you can run into issues without layers of redundancy (Lambda may be fine but a Route 53 outage would prevent you from hitting that endpoint if you're using that for DNS).
Before thinking about handing over management of the deployment, I would encourage you to think about what the root cause of the outage is and whether something in the app will create that situation again. I invested in setting up DataDog monitoring for all hosts with alerts on key resource metrics that were causing issues (CPU was biggest issue for me).
The other thing that's worked well for me is just keeping things simple. As a solo founder, time spent with customers is more valuable than time spent on infrastructure (assuming all is running well). It's a little dated, but I still think this is a good path to follow as you're building your customer base. A simple stack will let you spend more time learning how your product can help your customers best.
Does each new Lambda cold start pull the entire image from the repo? Or if I derive from Lambda base images am I likely to get some of the layers already cached?
I'm trying to think about how the data transfer costs are going to each time the Lambda is instantiated. I didn't take this into account with Fargate and got burned when trying to trigger images on demand in a similar way.
This could replace my whole SQS / CloudWatch Events / Fargate setup using Lambda if I can figure out cold start costs ($ not time).