Questions
4 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?
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Basics
Configuration
Invocation and Triggers
System Design
Scaling
Testing and Troubleshooting
Security
Monitoring
Performance Optimisation
Deployment
04 / 08

How does AWS Lambda differ from traditional server-based computing?

Differences between traditional server based computing and AWS Lambda are listed below:

Traditional Server-Based Computing:
  1. 1

    Infrastructure Management: You must provision, configure, monitor, and maintain servers

  2. 2

    Scaling: Manual or auto-scaling setup required; often over- or under-provisioned

  3. 3

    Cost: Pay for server uptime, regardless of actual usage

  4. 4

    Deployment: Set up full environment (OS, app server, etc.) and deploy manually

  5. 5

    Startup Time: Persistent, always-on servers

  6. 6

    State Management: Can maintain state in memory or disk (session-based apps)

  7. 7

    Use Case Fit: Long-running processes, complex backends, stateful apps

  8. 8

    DevOps Overhead: High – patching, scaling, uptime, logging, etc.

  9. 9

    Security Patching: You’re responsible for OS and runtime patching

AWS Lambda serverless computing:
  1. 1

    Infrastructure Management: No server management – fully abstracted by AWS

  2. 2

    Scaling: Automatic, seamless scaling per request

  3. 3

    Cost: Pay per use (invocation & compute time)

  4. 4

    Deployment: Upload function code; very quick

  5. 5

    Startup Time: Cold start (some delay possible), then fast

  6. 6

    State Management: Stateless functions – externalize state (e.g., DynamoDB)

  7. 7

    Use Case Fit: Event-driven, short-lived tasks

  8. 8

    DevOps Overhead: Low – no patching, no server config

  9. 9

    Security Patching: Handled by AWS