Questions
2 of 8
1What is AWS Lambda?
2What are the features of AWS Lambda?
3What is serverless in the context of AWS Lambda?
4How does AWS Lambda differ from traditional server-based computing?
5What programming languages does AWS Lambda support?
6How is AWS Lambda different from EC2 or ECS?
7What are some typical use cases for Lambda functions?
8When should you avoid using Lambda?
AWS-lambdaAWS-lambda
Basics
Configuration
Invocation and Triggers
System Design
Scaling
Testing and Troubleshooting
Security
Monitoring
Performance Optimisation
Deployment
02 / 08

What are the features of AWS Lambda?

Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning, automatic scaling, and logging. With Lambda, all you need to do is supply your code in one of the language runtimes that Lambda supports.

List of features:
  1. 1

    Serverless: Lambda handles the infrastructure, freeing developers from server management tasks like patching, updates, and scaling.

  2. 2

    Event-Driven: Lambda functions are triggered by events from other AWS services or custom events, making it ideal for event-driven architectures.

  3. 3

    Pay-as-you-go: Users only pay for the compute time they consume, making it cost-effective, especially for applications with fluctuating workloads.

  4. 4

    Automatic Scaling: Lambda automatically scales resources up or down based on demand, ensuring high availability and performance.

  5. 5

    Integration with AWS Services: Lambda integrates seamlessly with other AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, API Gateway, and more, enabling building complex applications.

  6. 6

    Supports Multiple Languages: Lambda supports various programming languages like Node.js, Python, Java, and more.

Difficulty: 4/10
Topics: serverless compute, event-driven triggers, auto-scaling

Scenario Questions

0-2 years experience
  1. 1

    How would you deploy a simple Lambda function triggered by an S3 object upload?

  2. 2

    What happens if your Lambda function exceeds the 15-minute timeout limit?

  3. 3

    How do you view and filter logs for a specific Lambda invocation in CloudWatch?

2-5 years experience
  1. 1

    Your Lambda processes SQS messages but occasionally fails due to downstream API timeouts. How would you configure retries and a dead-letter queue?

  2. 2

    The team sees cold-start latency spikes during traffic bursts. What Lambda features could mitigate this?

  3. 3

    How would you securely share a Lambda layer across multiple functions in different AWS accounts?

5-8 years experience
  1. 1

    Design a serverless image-processing pipeline using Lambda, S3, and Step Functions. How do you handle large payloads, concurrency limits, and cost optimization?

  2. 2

    A critical Lambda function experiences intermittent throttling errors. Walk me through how you'd diagnose and resolve this at scale.

  3. 3

    You need to migrate a monolithic service to Lambda functions. What architectural patterns would you use to manage shared state and deployment complexity?

8+ years experience
  1. 1

    Your organization is adopting Lambda across multiple teams. How would you establish governance, shared libraries, and observability standards to prevent sprawl?

  2. 2

    A legacy application runs on EC2 with long-running processes. Evaluate the feasibility and tradeoffs of migrating to Lambda, considering cold starts, execution limits, and team readiness.

  3. 3

    How would you design a multi-region, active-active serverless architecture using Lambda@Edge and Global Accelerator for disaster recovery?

Follow-up Questions

  • ❓How does Lambda pricing compare to EC2 for sporadic workloads?
  • ❓What are the limitations of Lambda that would make you choose ECS or EC2 instead?
  • ❓Explain how Lambda handles concurrency and what happens when limits are reached.