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Apart from Runtime-specific errors (e.g. Python, NodeJS), programmers have to think about failures that are specific to Lambda functions. In this documentation, we have covered most of the problems that cause headaches to serverless developers.
All calls made to AWS Lambda must complete execution within 15 minutes (you can set a lower timeout, when appropriate). When the execution duration reaches the timeout, your invocation is halted abruptly.
Timeouts are expressed in Lambda logs in the following way.
2019-02-13T20:12:38.950Z 41a10717-e9af-11e7-892c-5bb1a4054ed6 Task timed out after 300.09 seconds
Lambda executions can run into memory limits. You can recognise the failure when both the Max Memory Used and Memory Size values in the REPORT line are identical.
Max Memory Used
Memory Size
Example:
START RequestId: b86c93c6-e1d0-11e7-955b-539d8b965ff9 Version: $LATEST REPORT RequestId: b86c93c6-e1d0-11e7-955b-539d8b965ff9 Duration: 122204.28 ms Billed Duration: 122300 ms Memory Size: 256 MB Max Memory Used: 256 MB RequestId: b86c93c6-e1d0-11e7-955b-539d8b965ff9 Process exited before completing request
Handler is a function in your code that is invoked by AWS Lambda when your service is executed. If the handler name provided in the Lambda configuration is different from the function in your code, this error will be produced upon Lambda execution and caught by Dashbird.
See example below:
START RequestId: db1e9421-724a-11e7-a121-63fe49a029e8 Version: $LATEST Handler 'my_lambda_handlerx' missing on module REPORT RequestId: db1e9421-724a-11e7-a121-63fe49a029e8 Duration: 15.11 ms Billed Duration: 100 ms Memory Size: 128 MB Max Memory Used: 18 MB
Okay, so now we know what can go wrong. Fortunately, Lambda has a few tricks up its sleeve that we can use to remedy the situation.
In case an invocation results in error, AWS Lambda will automatically retry the request for you (see AWS Lambda Retry Behavior). That can be very convenient, but is also a potential source of issues that can be hard to debug.
To help you track down those cases, a “Retry” flag is assigned to the invocations when we identify AWS Lambda is retrying a previously failed request. Also, when viewing an error on Dashbird, it will also point you subsequent retry requests generated by AWS retry system.
Some services can automatically generate streams of data and invoke your Lambda functions. If the invocation fails, Lambda will try to process the batch again until the data expires.
To ensure that stream events are processed in order, the exception is blocking and the function will not read any new records until the failed batch is either successfully processed or expired.
Depending on the flow of your system, retries can be harmful. For instance, lets imagine a function that is responsible for adding user row to the database and sending a welcome email. If the function fails after creating the user, and gets retried, you will have a duplicate row in the database.
A good way to overcome this is to design your functions to be idempotent.
Idempotent functions are functions with a single task, which either succeeds or can be retried without any damage to the system. You could redesign the aforementioned function using step-functions. First being the function responsible for adding the user to the database and as a second step, another function sends the email. Read more about step functions here.
We aim to improve Dashbird every day and user feedback is extremely important for that, so please let us know if you have any feedback about our features and error handling! We would really appreciate it!
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Dashbird is a monitoring, debugging and intelligence platform designed to help serverless developers build, operate, improve, and scale their modern cloud applications on AWS environment securely and with ease.
Dashbird gives us a simple and easy to use tool to have peace of mind and know that all of our Serverless functions are running correctly. We are instantly aware now if there’s a problem. We love the fact that we have enough information in the Slack notification itself to take appropriate action immediately and know exactly where the issue occurred.
Thanks to Dashbird the time to discover the occurrence of an issue reduced from 2-4 hours to a matter of seconds or minutes. It also means that hundreds of dollars are saved every month.
Great onboarding: it takes just a couple of minutes to connect an AWS account to an organization in Dashbird. The UI is clean and gives a good overview of what is happening with the Lambdas and API Gateways in the account.
I mean, it is just extremely time-saving. It’s so efficient! I don’t think it’s an exaggeration or dramatic to say that Dashbird has been a lifesaver for us.
Dashbird provides an easier interface to monitor and debug problems with our Lambdas. Relevant logs are simple to find and view. Dashbird’s support has been good, and they take product suggestions with grace.
Great UI. Easy to navigate through CloudWatch logs. Simple setup.
Dashbird helped us refine the size of our Lambdas, resulting in significantly reduced costs. We have Dashbird alert us in seconds via email when any of our functions behaves abnormally. Their app immediately makes the cause and severity of errors obvious.