Scaling and Deploying Serverless Applications with Terraform

Key Takeaways

1. Terraform and Tools for Building and Testing Serverless Apps: Terraform, along with tools like AWS SAM and LocalStack, enable efficient building and testing of serverless applications using the tools your organization is already familiar with.

2. Modularizing Terraform Configurations: Modularizing your Terraform configurations allows you to build reusable components and patterns, which is crucial in the serverless world. This improves efficiency in multi-team organizations.

3. Leveraging the Community: You're not alone - there is a large community using Terraform for serverless. Leverage open-source community projects and samples to accelerate your journey.

Detailed Summary

Introduction to Terraform and Serverless

• Serverless applications have a different architecture compared to traditional applications, with a slimmer infrastructure layer.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform are no longer exclusive to infrastructure teams, as application development teams also use them to build their applications efficiently.
• The session will focus on building, testing, scaling, and deploying serverless applications using Terraform.

Building a Serverless Application with Terraform

• The example application is a basic "greetings" application that receives messages from SQS, processes them, and stores the result in an S3 bucket.
• Terraform resources are used to create the SQS queue, S3 buckets, and the Lambda function, with best practices baked in (e.g., log retention, permissions).

Testing Serverless Applications with Terraform

• The AWS SAM CLI is used to test the Lambda function locally, simulating the Lambda environment and API Gateway.
• LocalStack is another tool that can simulate a larger AWS ecosystem for local testing.

Scaling and Deploying Serverless Applications

• Scaling challenges include ensuring consistent project structure, applying best practices at scale, and managing "orphan" resources.
• The solution is to use Terraform's modularization capabilities to encapsulate best practices, enable reusability, and allow composability of application components.

Terraform Modules for Serverless Applications

• Examples of Terraform modules for common serverless patterns, such as a periodic Lambda function, SQS with dead-letter queues, and a baseline Lambda function.
• These modules can be composed to build serverless architectures.

Serverless Terraform Community Projects

• The Serverless Terraform (serverless-tf) project is introduced, which provides opinionated Terraform modules for common serverless services and patterns.
• Features of the serverless-tf modules, such as package management for different runtimes and local testing capabilities, are discussed.

Cross-Service Integration and Project Structure

• Terraform modules can simplify the integration between services, such as connecting API Gateway to Lambda.
• Recommended project structure, including the use of monorepos and modular organization, is discussed.

Managing Dependencies and Deployments at Scale

• Challenges in managing dependencies and deployments across multiple teams and environments are addressed.
• Terraform Stacks, a new feature in Terraform, is introduced as a way to manage these challenges natively within Terraform.

Next Steps and Resources

• Attendees are encouraged to explore the resources and guides provided, including a QR code with links to various Terraform and serverless learning materials.
• Recommendations for related sessions at re:Invent are provided.