Tag Archives: node.js

Integrating JFrog Artifactory with AWS CodePipeline

Post Syndicated from Erin McGill original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/integrating-jfrog-artifactory-with-aws-codepipeline/

When I talk with customers and partners, I find that they are in different stages in the adoption of DevOps methodologies. They are automating the creation of application artifacts and the deployment of their applications to different infrastructure environments. In many cases, they are creating and supporting multiple applications using a variety of coding languages and artifacts.

The management of these processes and artifacts can be challenging, but using the right tools and methodologies can simplify the process.

In this post, I will show you how you can automate the creation and storage of application artifacts through the implementation of a pipeline and custom deploy action in AWS CodePipeline. The example includes a Node.js code base stored in an AWS CodeCommit repository. A Node Package Manager (npm) artifact is built from the code base, and the build artifact is published to a JFrog Artifactory npm repository.

I frequently recommend AWS CodePipeline, the AWS continuous integration and continuous delivery tool. You can use it to quickly innovate through integration and deployment of new features and bug fixes by building a workflow that automates the build, test, and deployment of new versions of your application. And, because AWS CodePipeline is extensible, it allows you to create a custom action that performs customized, automated actions on your behalf.

JFrog’s Artifactory is a universal binary repository manager where you can manage multiple applications, their dependencies, and versions in one place. Artifactory also enables you to standardize the way you manage your package types across all applications developed in your company, no matter the code base or artifact type.

If you already have a Node.js CodeCommit repository, a JFrog Artifactory host, and would like to automate the creation of the pipeline, including the custom action and CodeBuild project, you can use this AWS CloudFormation template to create your AWS CloudFormation stack.

The project code can be found in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-codepipeline-custom-job-worker-for-jfrog-artifactory.

 

The AWS CodePipeline workflow

This figure shows the path defined in the pipeline for this project. It starts with a change to Node.js source code committed to a private code repository in AWS CodeCommit. With this change, CodePipeline triggers AWS CodeBuild to create the npm package from the node.js source code. After the build, CodePipeline triggers the custom action job worker to commit the build artifact to the designated artifact repository in Artifactory.

 

This blog post assumes you have already:

·      Created a CodeCommit repository that contains a Node.js project.

·      Configured a two-stage pipeline in AWS CodePipeline.

The Source stage of the pipeline is configured to poll the Node.js CodeCommit repository. The Build stage is configured to use a CodeBuild project to build the npm package using a buildspec.yml file located in the code repository.

If you do not have a Node.js repository, you can create a CodeCommit repository that contains this simple ‘Hello World’ project. This project also includes a buildspec.yml file that is used when you define your CodeBuild project. It defines the steps to be taken by CodeBuild to create the npm artifact.

If you do not already have a pipeline set up in CodePipeline, you can use this template to create a pipeline with a CodeCommit source action and a CodeBuild build action through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). If you do not want to install the AWS CLI on your local machine, you can use AWS Cloud9, our managed integrated development environment (IDE), to interact with AWS APIs.

In your development environment, open your favorite editor and fill out the template with values appropriate to your project. For information, see the readme in the GitHub repository.

Use this CLI command to create the pipeline from the template:

aws codepipeline create-pipeline --cli-input-json file://source-build-actions-codepipeline.json --region 'us-west-2'

It creates a pipeline that has a CodeCommit source action and a CodeBuild build action.

Integrating JFrog Artifactory

JFrog Artifactory provides default repositories for your project needs. For my NPM package repository, I am using the default virtual npm repository (named npm) that is available in Artifactory Pro. You might want to consider creating a repository per project but for the example used in this post, using the default lets me get started without having to configure a new repository.

I can use the steps in the Set Me Up -> npm section on the landing page to configure my worker to interact with the default NPM repository.

 

 

 

Custom actions in AWS CodePipeline

A custom action in AWS CodePipeline contains:

·      custom action definition

Describes the required values to run the custom action. I will define my custom action in the ‘Deploy’ category, identify the provider as ‘Artifactory’, of version ‘1’, and specify a variety of configurationProperties whose values will be defined when this stage is added to my pipeline.

·      custom action job worker

Polls CodePipeline for a job, scanning for its action-definition properties. In this blog post, after a job has been found, the job worker does the work required to publish the npm artifact to the Artifactory repository.

 

My custom action definition in JSON:

{
    "category": "Deploy",
    "configurationProperties": [{
        "name": "TypeOfArtifact",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
        "secret": false,
        "description": "Package type, ex. npm for node packages",
        "type": "String"
    },
    {   "name": "RepoKey",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Name of the repository in which this artifact should be stored"
    },
    {   "name": "UserName",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Username for authenticating with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "Password",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": true,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Password for authenticating with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "EmailAddress",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Email address used to authenticate with the repository"
    },
    {   "name": "ArtifactoryHost",
        "required": true,
        "key": true,
	"secret": false,
	"type": "String",
	"description": "Public address of Artifactory host, ex: https://myexamplehost.com or http://myexamplehost.com:8080"
    }],
    "provider": "Artifactory",
    "version": "1",
    "settings": {
        "entityUrlTemplate": "{Config:ArtifactoryHost}/artifactory/webapp/#/artifacts/browse/tree/General/{Config:RepoKey}"
    },
    "inputArtifactDetails": {
        "maximumCount": 5,
        "minimumCount": 1
    },
    "outputArtifactDetails": {
        "maximumCount": 5,
        "minimumCount": 0
    }
}

There are seven sections to the custom action definition:

  • category: This is the stage in which you will be creating this action. It can be Source, Build, Deploy, Test, Invoke, Approval. Except for source actions, the category section simply allows us to organize our actions. I am setting the category for my action as ‘Deploy’ because I’m using it to publish my node artifact to my Artifactory instance.
  • configurationProperties: These are the parameters or variables required for your project to authenticate and commit your artifact. In the case of my custom worker, I need:
    • TypeOfArtifact: In this case, npm, because it’s for the Node Package Manager.
    • RepoKey: The name of the repository. In this case, it’s the default npm.
    • UserName and Password for the user to authenticate with the Artifactory repository.
    • EmailAddress used to authenticate with the repository.
    • Artifactory host name or IP address.
  • provider: The name you define for your custom action stage. I have named the provider Artifactory.
  • version: Version number for the custom action. Because this is the first version, I set the version number to 1.
  • entityUrlTemplate: This URL is presented to your users for the deploy stage along with the title you define in your provider. The link takes the user to their artifact repository page in the Artifactory host.
  • inputArtifactDetails: The number of artifacts to expect from the previous stage in the pipeline.
  • outputArtifactDetails: The number of artifacts that should be the result from the custom action stage. Later in this blog post, I define 0 for my output artifacts because I am publishing the artifact to the Artifactory repository as the final action.

After I define the custom action in a JSON file, I use the AWS CLI to create the custom action type in CodePipeline:

aws codepipeline create-custom-action-type --cli-input-json file://artifactory_custom_action_deploy_npm.json --region='us-west-2'

After I create the custom action type in the same region as my pipeline, I edit the pipeline to add a Deploy stage and configure it to use the custom action I created for Artifactory:

 

 

 

 

I have created a custom worker for the actions required to commit the npm artifact to the Artifactory repository. The worker is in Python and it runs in a loop on an Amazon EC2 instance. My custom worker polls for a deploy job and publishes the NPM artifact to the Artifactory repository.

 

The EC2 instance is running Amazon Linux and has an IAM instance role attached that gives the worker permission to access CodePipeline. The worker process is as follows:

  1. Take the configuration properties from the custom worker and poll CodePipeline for a custom action job.
  2. After there is a job in the job queue with the appropriate category, provider, and version, acknowledge the job.
  3. Download the zipped artifact created in the previous Build stage from the provided S3 buckets with the provided temporary credentials.
  4. Unzip the artifact into a temporary directory.
  5. A user-defined Artifactory user name and password is used to receive a temporary API key from Artifactory.
  6. To avoid having to write the password to a file, use that temporary API key and user name to authenticate with the NPM repository.
  7. Publish the Node.js package to the specified repository.

Because I am running my custom worker on an Amazon Linux EC2 instance, I installed npm with the following command:

sudo yum install nodejs npm --enablerepo=epel

For my custom worker, I used pip to install the required Python libraries:

pip install boto3 requests

For a full Python package list, see requirements.txt in the GitHub repository.

Let’s take a look at some of the code snippets from the worker.

First, the worker polls for jobs:

def action_type():
    ActionType = {
        'category': 'Deploy',
        'owner': 'Custom',
        'provider': 'Artifactory',
        'version': '1' }
    return(ActionType)

def poll_for_jobs():
    try:
        artifactory_action_type = action_type()
        print(artifactory_action_type)
        jobs = codepipeline.poll_for_jobs(actionTypeId=artifactory_action_type)
        while not jobs['jobs']:
            time.sleep(10)
            jobs = codepipeline.poll_for_jobs(actionTypeId=artifactory_action_type)
            if jobs['jobs']:
                print('Job found')
        return jobs['jobs'][0]
    except ClientError as e:
        print("Received an error: %s" % str(e))
        raise

 

When there is a job in the queue, the poller returns a number of values from the queue such as jobId, the input and output S3 buckets for artifacts, temporary credentials to access the S3 buckets, and other configuration details from the stage in the pipeline.

 

Here is an example of the return response:

{
	'jobs': [
		{
			'nonce': '3',
			'data': {
				'inputArtifacts': [
					{
						'name': 'Output',
						'location': {
							'type': 'S3',
							's3Location': {
								'objectKey': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCo/Output/Key,
							'bucketName': '123456789012-codepipelineartifact-us-west-2'
							}
						}
					}
				],
				'pipelineContext': {
						'action': {
							'name': 'Deploy'
						},
						'pipelineName': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCodeDeploy',
						'stage': {
							'name': 'Deploy'
						}
				},
				'actionTypeId': {
					'category': 'Deploy',
					'owner': 'Custom',
					'version': '1',
					'provider': 'Artifactory'
				},
				'outputArtifacts': [
					{
						'name': 'ArtifactoryOut',
						'location': {
							'type': 'S3',
							's3Location': {
								'objectKey': 'ArtifactoryNPMwithCo/Artifactor/Key,
								'bucketName': '123456789012-codepipelineartifact-us-west-2'
							}
						}
					}
				],
				'actionConfiguration': {
					'configuration': {
						'UserName': 'admin',
						'ArtifactoryHost': 'https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com',
						'Password': 'xxx',
						'EmailAddress': '[email protected]',
						'TypeOfArtifact': 'npm',
						'RepoKey': 'npm'
					}
				},
				'artifactCredentials': {
					'secretAccessKey': 'SECRET',
			               'sessionToken':‘FQoDYXdz...XdndMF',
					'accessKeyId': 'ACCESSKEY'
					}
				},
				'id': 'a0eb',
				'accountId': '123456789012
			}
		],
		'ResponseMetadata': {
			'RetryAttempts': 0,
			'HTTPStatusCode': 200,
			'RequestId': a88b-cdbd5d08b9de',
			'HTTPHeaders': {
				'x-amzn-requestid': '77343c2d-eff4’,
				'content-length': '2461',
				'content-type': 'application/x-amz-json-1.1'
			}
		}
}

 

After successfully receiving the job details, the worker sends an acknowledgement to CodePipeline to ensure that the work on the job is not duplicated by other workers watching for the same job:

def job_acknowledge(jobId, nonce):
    try:
        print('Acknowledging job')
        result = codepipeline.acknowledge_job(jobId=jobId, nonce=nonce)
        return result
    except Exception as e:
        print("Received an error when trying to acknowledge the job: %s" % str(e))
        raise

With the job now acknowledged, the worker publishes the source code artifact into the desired repository. The worker gets the value of the artifact S3 bucket and objectKey from the inputArtifacts in the response from the poll_for_jobs API request. Next, the worker creates a new directory in /tmp and downloads the S3 object into this directory:

def get_bucket_location(bucketName, init_client):
    region = init_client.get_bucket_location(Bucket=bucketName)['LocationConstraint']
    if not region:
        region = 'us-east-1'
    return region


def get_s3_artifact(bucketName, objectKey, ak, sk, st):
    init_s3 = boto3.client('s3')
    region = get_bucket_location(bucketName, init_s3)
    session = Session(aws_access_key_id=ak,
                      aws_secret_access_key=sk,
                      aws_session_token=st)

    s3 = session.resource('s3',
                          region_name=region,
                          config=botocore.client.Config(signature_version='s3v4'))
    try:
        tempdirname = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    except OSError as e:
        print('Could not write temp directory %s' % tempdirname)
        raise
    bucket = s3.Bucket(bucketName)
    obj = bucket.Object(objectKey)
    filename = tempdirname + '/' + objectKey
    try:
        if os.path.dirname(objectKey):
            directory = os.path.dirname(filename)
            os.makedirs(directory)
        print('Downloading the %s object and writing it to disk in %s location' % (objectKey, tempdirname))
        with open(filename, 'wb') as data:
            obj.download_fileobj(data)
    except ClientError as e:
        print('Downloading the object and writing the file to disk raised this error: ' + str(e))
        raise
    return(filename, tempdirname)

 

 

Because the downloaded artifact from S3 is a zip file, the worker must unzip it first. To have a clean area in which to work, I extract the downloaded zip archive into a new directory:

def unzip_codepipeline_artifact(artifact, origtmpdir):
    # create a new temp directory
    # Unzip artifact into new directory
    try:
        newtempdir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
        print('Extracting artifact %s into temporary directory %s' % (artifact, newtempdir))
        zip_ref = zipfile.ZipFile(artifact, 'r')
        zip_ref.extractall(newtempdir)
        zip_ref.close()
        shutil.rmtree(origtmpdir)
        return(os.listdir(newtempdir), newtempdir)
    except OSError as e:
        if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
            shutil.rmtree(newtempdir)
            raise

The worker now has the npm package that I want to store in my Artifactory NPM repository.

To authenticate with the NPM repository, the worker requests a temporary token from the Artifactory host. After receiving this temporary token, it creates a .npmrc file in the worker user’s home directory that includes a hash of the user name and temporary token. After it has authenticated, the worker runs npm config set registry <URL OF REPOSITORY> to configure the npm registry value to be the Artifactory host.  Next, the worker runs npm publish –registry <URL OF REPOSITORY>, which publishes the node package to the NPM repository in the Artifactory host.

def push_to_npm(configuration, artifact_list, temp_dir, jobId):
    reponame = configuration['RepoKey']
    art_type = configuration['TypeOfArtifact']
    print("Putting artifact into NPM repository " + reponame)
    token, hostname, username = gen_artifactory_auth_token(configuration)
    npmconfigfile = create_npmconfig_file(configuration, username, token)
    url = hostname + '/artifactory/api/' + art_type + '/' + reponame
    print("Changing directory to " + str(temp_dir))
    os.chdir(temp_dir)
    try:
        print("Publishing following files to the repository: %s " % os.listdir(temp_dir))
        print("Sending artifact to Artifactory NPM registry URL: " + url)
        subprocess.call(["npm", "config", "set", "registry", url])
        req = subprocess.call(["npm", "publish", "--registry", url])
        print("Return code from npm publish: " + str(req))
        if req != 0:
            err_msg = "npm ERR! Recieved non OK response while sending response to Artifactory. Return code from npm publish: " + str(req)
            signal_failure(jobId, err_msg)
        else:
            signal_success(jobId)
    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
       print("Received an error when trying to commit artifact %s to repository %s: " % (str(art_type), str(configuration['RepoKey']), str(e)))
       raise
    return(req, npmconfigfile)

 

If the return value from publishing to the repository is not 0, the worker signals a failure to CodePipeline. If the value is 0, the worker signals success to CodePipeline to indicate that the stage of the pipeline has been completed successfully.

For the custom worker code, see npm_job_worker.py in the GitHub repository.

I run my custom worker on an EC2 instance using the command python npm_job_worker.py, with an optional --version flag that can be used to specify worker versions other than 1. Then I trigger a release change in my pipeline:

From my custom worker output logs, I have just committed a package named node_example at version 1.0.3:

On artifact: index.js
Committing to the repo: https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm
Sending artifact to Artifactory URL: https:// artifactoryhost.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm
npm config: 0
npm http PUT https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm/node_example
npm http 201 https://artifactory.myexamplehost.com/artifactory/api/npm/npm/node_example
+ [email protected]
Return code from npm publish: 0
Signaling success to CodePipeline

After that has been built successfully, I can find my artifact in my Artifactory repository:

To help you automate this process, I have created this AWS CloudFormation template that automates the creation of the CodeBuild project, the custom action, and the CodePipeline pipeline. It also launches the Amazon EC2-based custom job worker in an AWS Auto Scaling group. This template requires you to have a VPC and CodeCommit repository for your Node.js project. If you do not currently have a VPC in which you want to run your custom worker EC2 instances, you can use this AWS QuickStart to create one. If you do not have an existing Node.js project, I’ve provided a sample project in the GitHub repository.

Conclusion

I‘ve shown you the steps to integrate your JFrog Artifactory repository with your CodePipeline workflow. I’ve shown you how to create a custom action in CodePipeline and how to create a custom worker that works in your CI/CD pipeline. To dig deeper into custom actions and see how you can integrate your Artifactory repositories into your AWS CodePipeline projects, check out the full code base on GitHub.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us through the AWS CodePipeline forum.

Erin McGill is a Solutions Architect in the AWS Partner Program with a focus on DevOps and automation tooling.

Implementing safe AWS Lambda deployments with AWS CodeDeploy

Post Syndicated from Chris Munns original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/implementing-safe-aws-lambda-deployments-with-aws-codedeploy/

This post courtesy of George Mao, AWS Senior Serverless Specialist – Solutions Architect

AWS Lambda and AWS CodeDeploy recently made it possible to automatically shift incoming traffic between two function versions based on a preconfigured rollout strategy. This new feature allows you to gradually shift traffic to the new function. If there are any issues with the new code, you can quickly rollback and control the impact to your application.

Previously, you had to manually move 100% of traffic from the old version to the new version. Now, you can have CodeDeploy automatically execute pre- or post-deployment tests and automate a gradual rollout strategy. Traffic shifting is built right into the AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), making it easy to define and deploy your traffic shifting capabilities. SAM is an extension of AWS CloudFormation that provides a simplified way of defining serverless applications.

In this post, I show you how to use SAM, CloudFormation, and CodeDeploy to accomplish an automated rollout strategy for safe Lambda deployments.

Scenario

For this walkthrough, you write a Lambda application that returns a count of the S3 buckets that you own. You deploy it and use it in production. Later on, you receive requirements that tell you that you need to change your Lambda application to count only buckets that begin with the letter “a”.

Before you make the change, you need to be sure that your new Lambda application works as expected. If it does have issues, you want to minimize the number of impacted users and roll back easily. To accomplish this, you create a deployment process that publishes the new Lambda function, but does not send any traffic to it. You use CodeDeploy to execute a PreTraffic test to ensure that your new function works as expected. After the test succeeds, CodeDeploy automatically shifts traffic gradually to the new version of the Lambda function.

Your Lambda function is exposed as a REST service via an Amazon API Gateway deployment. This makes it easy to test and integrate.

Prerequisites

To execute the SAM and CloudFormation deployment, you must have the following IAM permissions:

  • cloudformation:*
  • lambda:*
  • codedeploy:*
  • iam:create*

You may use the AWS SAM Local CLI or the AWS CLI to package and deploy your Lambda application. If you choose to use SAM Local, be sure to install it onto your system. For more information, see AWS SAM Local Installation.

All of the code used in this post can be found in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-safe-lambda-deployments.

Walkthrough

For this post, use SAM to define your resources because it comes with built-in CodeDeploy support for safe Lambda deployments.  The deployment is handled and automated by CloudFormation.

SAM allows you to define your Serverless applications in a simple and concise fashion, because it automatically creates all necessary resources behind the scenes. For example, if you do not define an execution role for a Lambda function, SAM automatically creates one. SAM also creates the CodeDeploy application necessary to drive the traffic shifting, as well as the IAM service role that CodeDeploy uses to execute all actions.

Create a SAM template

To get started, write your SAM template and call it template.yaml.

AWSTemplateFormatVersion : '2010-09-09'
Transform: AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31
Description: An example SAM template for Lambda Safe Deployments.

Resources:

  returnS3Buckets:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
    Properties:
      Handler: returnS3Buckets.handler
      Runtime: nodejs6.10
      AutoPublishAlias: live
      Policies:
        - Version: "2012-10-17"
          Statement: 
          - Effect: "Allow"
            Action: 
              - "s3:ListAllMyBuckets"
            Resource: '*'
      DeploymentPreference:
          Type: Linear10PercentEvery1Minute
          Hooks:
            PreTraffic: !Ref preTrafficHook
      Events:
        Api:
          Type: Api
          Properties:
            Path: /test
            Method: get

  preTrafficHook:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
    Properties:
      Handler: preTrafficHook.handler
      Policies:
        - Version: "2012-10-17"
          Statement: 
          - Effect: "Allow"
            Action: 
              - "codedeploy:PutLifecycleEventHookExecutionStatus"
            Resource:
              !Sub 'arn:aws:codedeploy:${AWS::Region}:${AWS::AccountId}:deploymentgroup:${ServerlessDeploymentApplication}/*'
        - Version: "2012-10-17"
          Statement: 
          - Effect: "Allow"
            Action: 
              - "lambda:InvokeFunction"
            Resource: !Ref returnS3Buckets.Version
      Runtime: nodejs6.10
      FunctionName: 'CodeDeployHook_preTrafficHook'
      DeploymentPreference:
        Enabled: false
      Timeout: 5
      Environment:
        Variables:
          NewVersion: !Ref returnS3Buckets.Version

This template creates two functions:

  • returnS3Buckets
  • preTrafficHook

The returnS3Buckets function is where your application logic lives. It’s a simple piece of code that uses the AWS SDK for JavaScript in Node.JS to call the Amazon S3 listBuckets API action and return the number of buckets.

'use strict';

var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
var s3 = new AWS.S3();

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
	console.log("I am here! " + context.functionName  +  ":"  +  context.functionVersion);

	s3.listBuckets(function (err, data){
		if(err){
			console.log(err, err.stack);
			callback(null, {
				statusCode: 500,
				body: "Failed!"
			});
		}
		else{
			var allBuckets = data.Buckets;

			console.log("Total buckets: " + allBuckets.length);
			callback(null, {
				statusCode: 200,
				body: allBuckets.length
			});
		}
	});	
}

Review the key parts of the SAM template that defines returnS3Buckets:

  • The AutoPublishAlias attribute instructs SAM to automatically publish a new version of the Lambda function for each new deployment and link it to the live alias.
  • The Policies attribute specifies additional policy statements that SAM adds onto the automatically generated IAM role for this function. The first statement provides the function with permission to call listBuckets.
  • The DeploymentPreference attribute configures the type of rollout pattern to use. In this case, you are shifting traffic in a linear fashion, moving 10% of traffic every minute to the new version. For more information about supported patterns, see Serverless Application Model: Traffic Shifting Configurations.
  • The Hooks attribute specifies that you want to execute the preTrafficHook Lambda function before CodeDeploy automatically begins shifting traffic. This function should perform validation testing on the newly deployed Lambda version. This function invokes the new Lambda function and checks the results. If you’re satisfied with the tests, instruct CodeDeploy to proceed with the rollout via an API call to: codedeploy.putLifecycleEventHookExecutionStatus.
  • The Events attribute defines an API-based event source that can trigger this function. It accepts requests on the /test path using an HTTP GET method.
'use strict';

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const codedeploy = new AWS.CodeDeploy({apiVersion: '2014-10-06'});
var lambda = new AWS.Lambda();

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {

	console.log("Entering PreTraffic Hook!");
	
	// Read the DeploymentId & LifecycleEventHookExecutionId from the event payload
    var deploymentId = event.DeploymentId;
	var lifecycleEventHookExecutionId = event.LifecycleEventHookExecutionId;

	var functionToTest = process.env.NewVersion;
	console.log("Testing new function version: " + functionToTest);

	// Perform validation of the newly deployed Lambda version
	var lambdaParams = {
		FunctionName: functionToTest,
		InvocationType: "RequestResponse"
	};

	var lambdaResult = "Failed";
	lambda.invoke(lambdaParams, function(err, data) {
		if (err){	// an error occurred
			console.log(err, err.stack);
			lambdaResult = "Failed";
		}
		else{	// successful response
			var result = JSON.parse(data.Payload);
			console.log("Result: " +  JSON.stringify(result));

			// Check the response for valid results
			// The response will be a JSON payload with statusCode and body properties. ie:
			// {
			//		"statusCode": 200,
			//		"body": 51
			// }
			if(result.body == 9){	
				lambdaResult = "Succeeded";
				console.log ("Validation testing succeeded!");
			}
			else{
				lambdaResult = "Failed";
				console.log ("Validation testing failed!");
			}

			// Complete the PreTraffic Hook by sending CodeDeploy the validation status
			var params = {
				deploymentId: deploymentId,
				lifecycleEventHookExecutionId: lifecycleEventHookExecutionId,
				status: lambdaResult // status can be 'Succeeded' or 'Failed'
			};
			
			// Pass AWS CodeDeploy the prepared validation test results.
			codedeploy.putLifecycleEventHookExecutionStatus(params, function(err, data) {
				if (err) {
					// Validation failed.
					console.log('CodeDeploy Status update failed');
					console.log(err, err.stack);
					callback("CodeDeploy Status update failed");
				} else {
					// Validation succeeded.
					console.log('Codedeploy status updated successfully');
					callback(null, 'Codedeploy status updated successfully');
				}
			});
		}  
	});
}

The hook is hardcoded to check that the number of S3 buckets returned is 9.

Review the key parts of the SAM template that defines preTrafficHook:

  • The Policies attribute specifies additional policy statements that SAM adds onto the automatically generated IAM role for this function. The first statement provides permissions to call the CodeDeploy PutLifecycleEventHookExecutionStatus API action. The second statement provides permissions to invoke the specific version of the returnS3Buckets function to test
  • This function has traffic shifting features disabled by setting the DeploymentPreference option to false.
  • The FunctionName attribute explicitly tells CloudFormation what to name the function. Otherwise, CloudFormation creates the function with the default naming convention: [stackName]-[FunctionName]-[uniqueID].  Name the function with the “CodeDeployHook_” prefix because the CodeDeployServiceRole role only allows InvokeFunction on functions named with that prefix.
  • Set the Timeout attribute to allow enough time to complete your validation tests.
  • Use an environment variable to inject the ARN of the newest deployed version of the returnS3Buckets function. The ARN allows the function to know the specific version to invoke and perform validation testing on.

Deploy the function

Your SAM template is all set and the code is written—you’re ready to deploy the function for the first time. Here’s how to do it via the SAM CLI. Replace “sam” with “cloudformation” to use CloudFormation instead.

First, package the function. This command returns a CloudFormation importable file, packaged.yaml.

sam package –template-file template.yaml –s3-bucket mybucket –output-template-file packaged.yaml

Now deploy everything:

sam deploy –template-file packaged.yaml –stack-name mySafeDeployStack –capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

At this point, both Lambda functions have been deployed within the CloudFormation stack mySafeDeployStack. The returnS3Buckets has been deployed as Version 1:

SAM automatically created a few things, including the CodeDeploy application, with the deployment pattern that you specified (Linear10PercentEvery1Minute). There is currently one deployment group, with no action, because no deployments have occurred. SAM also created the IAM service role that this CodeDeploy application uses:

There is a single managed policy attached to this role, which allows CodeDeploy to invoke any Lambda function that begins with “CodeDeployHook_”.

An API has been set up called safeDeployStack. It targets your Lambda function with the /test resource using the GET method. When you test the endpoint, API Gateway executes the returnS3Buckets function and it returns the number of S3 buckets that you own. In this case, it’s 51.

Publish a new Lambda function version

Now implement the requirements change, which is to make returnS3Buckets count only buckets that begin with the letter “a”. The code now looks like the following (see returnS3BucketsNew.js in GitHub):

'use strict';

var AWS = require('aws-sdk');
var s3 = new AWS.S3();

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
	console.log("I am here! " + context.functionName  +  ":"  +  context.functionVersion);

	s3.listBuckets(function (err, data){
		if(err){
			console.log(err, err.stack);
			callback(null, {
				statusCode: 500,
				body: "Failed!"
			});
		}
		else{
			var allBuckets = data.Buckets;

			console.log("Total buckets: " + allBuckets.length);
			//callback(null, allBuckets.length);

			//  New Code begins here
			var counter=0;
			for(var i  in allBuckets){
				if(allBuckets[i].Name[0] === "a")
					counter++;
			}
			console.log("Total buckets starting with a: " + counter);

			callback(null, {
				statusCode: 200,
				body: counter
			});
			
		}
	});	
}

Repackage and redeploy with the same two commands as earlier:

sam package –template-file template.yaml –s3-bucket mybucket –output-template-file packaged.yaml
	
sam deploy –template-file packaged.yaml –stack-name mySafeDeployStack –capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM

CloudFormation understands that this is a stack update instead of an entirely new stack. You can see that reflected in the CloudFormation console:

During the update, CloudFormation deploys the new Lambda function as version 2 and adds it to the “live” alias. There is no traffic routing there yet. CodeDeploy now takes over to begin the safe deployment process.

The first thing CodeDeploy does is invoke the preTrafficHook function. Verify that this happened by reviewing the Lambda logs and metrics:

The function should progress successfully, invoke Version 2 of returnS3Buckets, and finally invoke the CodeDeploy API with a success code. After this occurs, CodeDeploy begins the predefined rollout strategy. Open the CodeDeploy console to review the deployment progress (Linear10PercentEvery1Minute):

Verify the traffic shift

During the deployment, verify that the traffic shift has started to occur by running the test periodically. As the deployment shifts towards the new version, a larger percentage of the responses return 9 instead of 51. These numbers match the S3 buckets.

A minute later, you see 10% more traffic shifting to the new version. The whole process takes 10 minutes to complete. After completion, open the Lambda console and verify that the “live” alias now points to version 2:

After 10 minutes, the deployment is complete and CodeDeploy signals success to CloudFormation and completes the stack update.

Check the results

If you invoke the function alias manually, you see the results of the new implementation.

aws lambda invoke –function [lambda arn to live alias] out.txt

You can also execute the prod stage of your API and verify the results by issuing an HTTP GET to the invoke URL:

Summary

This post has shown you how you can safely automate your Lambda deployments using the Lambda traffic shifting feature. You used the Serverless Application Model (SAM) to define your Lambda functions and configured CodeDeploy to manage your deployment patterns. Finally, you used CloudFormation to automate the deployment and updates to your function and PreTraffic hook.

Now that you know all about this new feature, you’re ready to begin automating Lambda deployments with confidence that things will work as designed. I look forward to hearing about what you’ve built with the AWS Serverless Platform.

How to retain system tables’ data spanning multiple Amazon Redshift clusters and run cross-cluster diagnostic queries

Post Syndicated from Karthik Sonti original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/how-to-retain-system-tables-data-spanning-multiple-amazon-redshift-clusters-and-run-cross-cluster-diagnostic-queries/

Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse service that logs the history of the system in STL log tables. The STL log tables manage disk space by retaining only two to five days of log history, depending on log usage and available disk space.

To retain STL tables’ data for an extended period, you usually have to create a replica table for every system table. Then, for each you load the data from the system table into the replica at regular intervals. By maintaining replica tables for STL tables, you can run diagnostic queries on historical data from the STL tables. You then can derive insights from query execution times, query plans, and disk-spill patterns, and make better cluster-sizing decisions. However, refreshing replica tables with live data from STL tables at regular intervals requires schedulers such as Cron or AWS Data Pipeline. Also, these tables are specific to one cluster and they are not accessible after the cluster is terminated. This is especially true for transient Amazon Redshift clusters that last for only a finite period of ad hoc query execution.

In this blog post, I present a solution that exports system tables from multiple Amazon Redshift clusters into an Amazon S3 bucket. This solution is serverless, and you can schedule it as frequently as every five minutes. The AWS CloudFormation deployment template that I provide automates the solution setup in your environment. The system tables’ data in the Amazon S3 bucket is partitioned by cluster name and query execution date to enable efficient joins in cross-cluster diagnostic queries.

I also provide another CloudFormation template later in this post. This second template helps to automate the creation of tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog for the system tables’ data stored in Amazon S3. After the system tables are exported to Amazon S3, you can run cross-cluster diagnostic queries on the system tables’ data and derive insights about query executions in each Amazon Redshift cluster. You can do this using Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Athena, Amazon EMR, or Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

You can find all the code examples in this post, including the CloudFormation templates, AWS Glue extract, transform, and load (ETL) scripts, and the resolution steps for common errors you might encounter in this GitHub repository.

Solution overview

The solution in this post uses AWS Glue to export system tables’ log data from Amazon Redshift clusters into Amazon S3. The AWS Glue ETL jobs are invoked at a scheduled interval by AWS Lambda. AWS Systems Manager, which provides secure, hierarchical storage for configuration data management and secrets management, maintains the details of Amazon Redshift clusters for which the solution is enabled. The last-fetched time stamp values for the respective cluster-table combination are maintained in an Amazon DynamoDB table.

The following diagram covers the key steps involved in this solution.

The solution as illustrated in the preceding diagram flows like this:

  1. The Lambda function, invoke_rs_stl_export_etl, is triggered at regular intervals, as controlled by Amazon CloudWatch. It’s triggered to look up the AWS Systems Manager parameter store to get the details of the Amazon Redshift clusters for which the system table export is enabled.
  2. The same Lambda function, based on the Amazon Redshift cluster details obtained in step 1, invokes the AWS Glue ETL job designated for the Amazon Redshift cluster. If an ETL job for the cluster is not found, the Lambda function creates one.
  3. The ETL job invoked for the Amazon Redshift cluster gets the cluster credentials from the parameter store. It gets from the DynamoDB table the last exported time stamp of when each of the system tables was exported from the respective Amazon Redshift cluster.
  4. The ETL job unloads the system tables’ data from the Amazon Redshift cluster into an Amazon S3 bucket.
  5. The ETL job updates the DynamoDB table with the last exported time stamp value for each system table exported from the Amazon Redshift cluster.
  6. The Amazon Redshift cluster system tables’ data is available in Amazon S3 and is partitioned by cluster name and date for running cross-cluster diagnostic queries.

Understanding the configuration data

This solution uses AWS Systems Manager parameter store to store the Amazon Redshift cluster credentials securely. The parameter store also securely stores other configuration information that the AWS Glue ETL job needs for extracting and storing system tables’ data in Amazon S3. Systems Manager comes with a default AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) key that it uses to encrypt the password component of the Amazon Redshift cluster credentials.

The following table explains the global parameters and cluster-specific parameters required in this solution. The global parameters are defined once and applicable at the overall solution level. The cluster-specific parameters are specific to an Amazon Redshift cluster and repeat for each cluster for which you enable this post’s solution. The CloudFormation template explained later in this post creates these parameters as part of the deployment process.

Parameter name Type Description
Global parameters—defined once and applied to all jobs
redshift_query_logs.global.s3_prefix String The Amazon S3 path where the query logs are exported. Under this path, each exported table is partitioned by cluster name and date.
redshift_query_logs.global.tempdir String The Amazon S3 path that AWS Glue ETL jobs use for temporarily staging the data.
redshift_query_logs.global.role> String The name of the role that the AWS Glue ETL jobs assume. Just the role name is sufficient. The complete Amazon Resource Name (ARN) is not required.
redshift_query_logs.global.enabled_cluster_list StringList A comma-separated list of cluster names for which system tables’ data export is enabled. This gives flexibility for a user to exclude certain clusters.
Cluster-specific parameters—for each cluster specified in the enabled_cluster_list parameter
redshift_query_logs.<<cluster_name>>.connection String The name of the AWS Glue Data Catalog connection to the Amazon Redshift cluster. For example, if the cluster name is product_warehouse, the entry is redshift_query_logs.product_warehouse.connection.
redshift_query_logs.<<cluster_name>>.user String The user name that AWS Glue uses to connect to the Amazon Redshift cluster.
redshift_query_logs.<<cluster_name>>.password Secure String The password that AWS Glue uses to connect the Amazon Redshift cluster’s encrypted-by key that is managed in AWS KMS.

For example, suppose that you have two Amazon Redshift clusters, product-warehouse and category-management, for which the solution described in this post is enabled. In this case, the parameters shown in the following screenshot are created by the solution deployment CloudFormation template in the AWS Systems Manager parameter store.

Solution deployment

To make it easier for you to get started, I created a CloudFormation template that automatically configures and deploys the solution—only one step is required after deployment.

Prerequisites

To deploy the solution, you must have one or more Amazon Redshift clusters in a private subnet. This subnet must have a network address translation (NAT) gateway or a NAT instance configured, and also a security group with a self-referencing inbound rule for all TCP ports. For more information about why AWS Glue ETL needs the configuration it does, described previously, see Connecting to a JDBC Data Store in a VPC in the AWS Glue documentation.

To start the deployment, launch the CloudFormation template:

CloudFormation stack parameters

The following table lists and describes the parameters for deploying the solution to export query logs from multiple Amazon Redshift clusters.

Property Default Description
S3Bucket mybucket The bucket this solution uses to store the exported query logs, stage code artifacts, and perform unloads from Amazon Redshift. For example, the mybucket/extract_rs_logs/data bucket is used for storing all the exported query logs for each system table partitioned by the cluster. The mybucket/extract_rs_logs/temp/ bucket is used for temporarily staging the unloaded data from Amazon Redshift. The mybucket/extract_rs_logs/code bucket is used for storing all the code artifacts required for Lambda and the AWS Glue ETL jobs.
ExportEnabledRedshiftClusters Requires Input A comma-separated list of cluster names from which the system table logs need to be exported.
DataStoreSecurityGroups Requires Input A list of security groups with an inbound rule to the Amazon Redshift clusters provided in the parameter, ExportEnabledClusters. These security groups should also have a self-referencing inbound rule on all TCP ports, as explained on Connecting to a JDBC Data Store in a VPC.

After you launch the template and create the stack, you see that the following resources have been created:

  1. AWS Glue connections for each Amazon Redshift cluster you provided in the CloudFormation stack parameter, ExportEnabledRedshiftClusters.
  2. All parameters required for this solution created in the parameter store.
  3. The Lambda function that invokes the AWS Glue ETL jobs for each configured Amazon Redshift cluster at a regular interval of five minutes.
  4. The DynamoDB table that captures the last exported time stamps for each exported cluster-table combination.
  5. The AWS Glue ETL jobs to export query logs from each Amazon Redshift cluster provided in the CloudFormation stack parameter, ExportEnabledRedshiftClusters.
  6. The IAM roles and policies required for the Lambda function and AWS Glue ETL jobs.

After the deployment

For each Amazon Redshift cluster for which you enabled the solution through the CloudFormation stack parameter, ExportEnabledRedshiftClusters, the automated deployment includes temporary credentials that you must update after the deployment:

  1. Go to the parameter store.
  2. Note the parameters <<cluster_name>>.user and redshift_query_logs.<<cluster_name>>.password that correspond to each Amazon Redshift cluster for which you enabled this solution. Edit these parameters to replace the placeholder values with the right credentials.

For example, if product-warehouse is one of the clusters for which you enabled system table export, you edit these two parameters with the right user name and password and choose Save parameter.

Querying the exported system tables

Within a few minutes after the solution deployment, you should see Amazon Redshift query logs being exported to the Amazon S3 location, <<S3Bucket_you_provided>>/extract_redshift_query_logs/data/. In that bucket, you should see the eight system tables partitioned by customer name and date: stl_alert_event_log, stl_dlltext, stl_explain, stl_query, stl_querytext, stl_scan, stl_utilitytext, and stl_wlm_query.

To run cross-cluster diagnostic queries on the exported system tables, create external tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog. To make it easier for you to get started, I provide a CloudFormation template that creates an AWS Glue crawler, which crawls the exported system tables stored in Amazon S3 and builds the external tables in the AWS Glue Data Catalog.

Launch this CloudFormation template to create external tables that correspond to the Amazon Redshift system tables. S3Bucket is the only input parameter required for this stack deployment. Provide the same Amazon S3 bucket name where the system tables’ data is being exported. After you successfully create the stack, you can see the eight tables in the database, redshift_query_logs_db, as shown in the following screenshot.

Now, navigate to the Athena console to run cross-cluster diagnostic queries. The following screenshot shows a diagnostic query executed in Athena that retrieves query alerts logged across multiple Amazon Redshift clusters.

You can build the following example Amazon QuickSight dashboard by running cross-cluster diagnostic queries on Athena to identify the hourly query count and the key query alert events across multiple Amazon Redshift clusters.

How to extend the solution

You can extend this post’s solution in two ways:

  • Add any new Amazon Redshift clusters that you spin up after you deploy the solution.
  • Add other system tables or custom query results to the list of exports from an Amazon Redshift cluster.

Extend the solution to other Amazon Redshift clusters

To extend the solution to more Amazon Redshift clusters, add the three cluster-specific parameters in the AWS Systems Manager parameter store following the guidelines earlier in this post. Modify the redshift_query_logs.global.enabled_cluster_list parameter to append the new cluster to the comma-separated string.

Extend the solution to add other tables or custom queries to an Amazon Redshift cluster

The current solution ships with the export functionality for the following Amazon Redshift system tables:

  • stl_alert_event_log
  • stl_dlltext
  • stl_explain
  • stl_query
  • stl_querytext
  • stl_scan
  • stl_utilitytext
  • stl_wlm_query

You can easily add another system table or custom query by adding a few lines of code to the AWS Glue ETL job, <<cluster-name>_extract_rs_query_logs. For example, suppose that from the product-warehouse Amazon Redshift cluster you want to export orders greater than $2,000. To do so, add the following five lines of code to the AWS Glue ETL job product-warehouse_extract_rs_query_logs, where product-warehouse is your cluster name:

  1. Get the last-processed time-stamp value. The function creates a value if it doesn’t already exist.

salesLastProcessTSValue = functions.getLastProcessedTSValue(trackingEntry=”mydb.sales_2000",job_configs=job_configs)

  1. Run the custom query with the time stamp.

returnDF=functions.runQuery(query="select * from sales s join order o where o.order_amnt > 2000 and sale_timestamp > '{}'".format (salesLastProcessTSValue) ,tableName="mydb.sales_2000",job_configs=job_configs)

  1. Save the results to Amazon S3.

functions.saveToS3(dataframe=returnDF,s3Prefix=s3Prefix,tableName="mydb.sales_2000",partitionColumns=["sale_date"],job_configs=job_configs)

  1. Get the latest time-stamp value from the returned data frame in Step 2.

latestTimestampVal=functions.getMaxValue(returnDF,"sale_timestamp",job_configs)

  1. Update the last-processed time-stamp value in the DynamoDB table.

functions.updateLastProcessedTSValue(“mydb.sales_2000",latestTimestampVal[0],job_configs)

Conclusion

In this post, I demonstrate a serverless solution to retain the system tables’ log data across multiple Amazon Redshift clusters. By using this solution, you can incrementally export the data from system tables into Amazon S3. By performing this export, you can build cross-cluster diagnostic queries, build audit dashboards, and derive insights into capacity planning by using services such as Athena. I also demonstrate how you can extend this solution to other ad hoc query use cases or tables other than system tables by adding a few lines of code.

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Using Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Athena, and AWS Glue with Node.js in Production and Amazon Redshift – 2017 Recap.

About the Author

Karthik Sonti is a senior big data architect at Amazon Web Services. He helps AWS customers build big data and analytical solutions and provides guidance on architecture and best practices.

 

 

 

 

Node.js 8.10 runtime now available in AWS Lambda

Post Syndicated from Chris Munns original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/node-js-8-10-runtime-now-available-in-aws-lambda/

This post courtesy of Ed Lima, AWS Solutions Architect

We are excited to announce that you can now develop your AWS Lambda functions using the Node.js 8.10 runtime, which is the current Long Term Support (LTS) version of Node.js. Start using this new version today by specifying a runtime parameter value of nodejs8.10 when creating or updating functions.

Supporting async/await

The Lambda programming model for Node.js 8.10 now supports defining a function handler using the async/await pattern.

Asynchronous or non-blocking calls are an inherent and important part of applications, as user and human interfaces are asynchronous by nature. If you decide to have a coffee with a friend, you usually order the coffee then start or continue a conversation with your friend while the coffee is getting ready. You don’t wait for the coffee to be ready before you start talking. These activities are asynchronous, because you can start one and then move to the next without waiting for completion. Otherwise, you’d delay (or block) the start of the next activity.

Asynchronous calls used to be handled in Node.js using callbacks. That presented problems when they were nested within other callbacks in multiple levels, making the code difficult to maintain and understand.

Promises were implemented to try to solve issues caused by “callback hell.” They allow asynchronous operations to call their own methods and handle what happens when a call is successful or when it fails. As your requirements become more complicated, even promises become harder to work with and may still end up complicating your code.

Async/await is the new way of handling asynchronous operations in Node.js, and makes for simpler, easier, and cleaner code for non-blocking calls. It still uses promises but a callback is returned directly from the asynchronous function, just as if it were a synchronous blocking function.

Take for instance the following Lambda function to get the current account settings, using the Node.js 6.10 runtime:

let AWS = require('aws-sdk');
let lambda = new AWS.Lambda();

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
    let getAccountSettingsPromise = lambda.getAccountSettings().promise();
    getAccountSettingsPromise.then(
        (data) => {
            callback(null, data);
        },
        (err) => {
            console.log(err);
            callback(err);
        }
    );
};

With the new Node.js 8.10 runtime, there are new handler types that can be declared with the “async” keyword or can return a promise directly.

This is how the same function looks like using async/await with Node.js 8.10:

let AWS = require('aws-sdk');
let lambda = new AWS.Lambda();

exports.handler = async (event) => {
    return await lambda.getAccountSettings().promise() ;
};

Alternatively, you could have the handler return a promise directly:

let AWS = require('aws-sdk');
let lambda = new AWS.Lambda();

exports.handler = (event) => {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        lambda.getAccountSettings(event)
        .then((data) => {
            resolve data;
        })
        .catch(reject);
     });
};

The new handler types are alternatives to the callback pattern, which is still fully supported.

All three functions return the same results. However, in the new runtime with async/await, all callbacks in the code are gone, which makes it easier to read. This is especially true for those less familiar with promises.

{
    "AccountLimit":{
        "TotalCodeSize":80530636800,
        "CodeSizeUnzipped":262144000,
        "CodeSizeZipped":52428800, 
        "ConcurrentExecutions":1000,
        "UnreservedConcurrentExecutions":1000
    },
    "AccountUsage":{
        "TotalCodeSize":52234461,
        "FunctionCount":53
    }
}

Another great advantage of async/await is better error handling. You can use a try/catch block inside the scope of an async function. Even though the function awaits an asynchronous operation, any errors end up in the catch block.

You can improve your previous Node.js 8.10 function with this trusted try/catch error handling pattern:

let AWS = require('aws-sdk');
let lambda = new AWS.Lambda();
let data;

exports.handler = async (event) => {
    try {
        data = await lambda.getAccountSettings().promise();
    }
    catch (err) {
        console.log(err);
        return err;
    }
    return data;
};

While you now have a similar number of lines in both runtimes, the code is cleaner and more readable with async/await. It makes the asynchronous calls look more synchronous. However, it is important to notice that the code is still executed the same way as if it were using a callback or promise-based API.

Backward compatibility

You may port your existing Node.js 4.3 and 6.10 functions over to Node.js 8.10 by updating the runtime. Node.js 8.10 does include numerous breaking changes from previous Node versions.

Make sure to review the API changes between Node.js 4.3, 6.10, and Node.js 8.10 to see if there are other changes that might affect your code. We recommend testing that your Lambda function passes internal validation for its behavior when upgrading to the new runtime version.

You can use Lambda versions/aliases to safely test that your function runs as expected on Node 8.10, before routing production traffic to it.

New node features

You can now get better performance when compared to the previous LTS version 6.x (up to 20%). The new V8 6.0 engine comes with Turbofan and the Ignition pipeline, which leads to lower memory consumption and faster startup time across Node.js applications.

HTTP/2, which is subject to future changes, allows developers to use the new protocol to speed application development and undo many of HTTP/1.1 workarounds to make applications faster, simpler, and more powerful.

For more information, see the AWS Lambda Developer Guide.

Hope you enjoy and… go build with Node.js 8.10!

Voice-controlled magnification glasses

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/voice-controlled-magnification-glasses/

Go hands-free in the laboratory or makerspace with Mauro Pichiliani’s voice-controlled magnification glasses.

Voice Controlled Glasses With Magnifying Lens

This video presents the project MoveLens: a voice controlled glasses with magnifying lens. It was the my entry for the Voice Activated context on unstructables. Check the step by step guide at Voice Controlled Glasses With Magnifying Lens. Source code: https://github.com/pichiliani/MoveLens Step by Step guide: https://www.instructables.com/id/Voice-Controlled-Glasses-With-Magnifying-Lens/

It’s a kind of magnification

We’ve all been there – that moment when you need another pair of hands to complete a task. And while these glasses may not hold all the answers, they’re a perfect addition to any hobbyist’s arsenal.

Introducing Mauro Pichilliani’s voice-activated glasses: a pair of frames with magnification lenses that can flip up and down in response to a voice command, depending on the task at hand. No more needing to put down your tools in order to put magnifying glasses on. No more trying to re-position a magnifying glass with the back of your left wrist, or getting grease all over your lenses.

As Mauro explains in his tutorial for the glasses:

Many professionals work for many hours looking at very small areas, such as surgeons, watchmakers, jewellery designers and so on. Most of the time these professionals use some kind of magnification glasses that helps them to see better the area they are working with and other tiny items used on the job. The devices that had magnifications lens on a form factor of a glass usually allow the professional to move the lens out of their eye sight, i.e. put aside the lens. However, in some scenarios touching the lens or the glass rim to move away the lens can contaminate the fingers. Also, it is cumbersome and can break the concentration of the professional.

Voice-controlled magnification glasses

Using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a servo motor, a microphone, and the IBM Watson speech-to-text service, Mauro built a pair of glasses that lets users control the position of the magnification lenses with voice commands.

Magnification glasses, before modification and addition of Raspberry Pi

The glasses Mauro modified, before he started work on them; you have to move the lenses with your hands, like it’s October 2015

Mauro started by dismantling a pair of standard magnification glasses in order to modify the lens supports to allow them to move freely. He drilled a hole in one of the lens supports to provide a place to attach the servo, and used lollipop sticks and hot glue to fix the lenses relative to one another, so they would both move together under the control of the servo. Then, he set up a Raspberry Pi Zero, installing Raspbian and software to use a USB microphone; after connecting the servo to the Pi Zero’s GPIO pins, he set up the Watson speech-to-text service.

Finally, he wrote the code to bring the project together. Two Python scripts direct the servo to raise and lower the lenses, and a Node.js script captures audio from the microphone, passes it on to Watson, checks for an “up” or “down” command, and calls the appropriate Python script as required.

Your turn

You can follow the tutorial on the Instructables website, where Mauro entered the glasses into the Instructables Voice Activated Challenge. And if you’d like to take your first steps into digital making using the Raspberry Pi, take a look at our free online projects.

The post Voice-controlled magnification glasses appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Amazon Redshift – 2017 Recap

Post Syndicated from Larry Heathcote original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/amazon-redshift-2017-recap/

We have been busy adding new features and capabilities to Amazon Redshift, and we wanted to give you a glimpse of what we’ve been doing over the past year. In this article, we recap a few of our enhancements and provide a set of resources that you can use to learn more and get the most out of your Amazon Redshift implementation.

In 2017, we made more than 30 announcements about Amazon Redshift. We listened to you, our customers, and delivered Redshift Spectrum, a feature of Amazon Redshift, that gives you the ability to extend analytics to your data lake—without moving data. We launched new DC2 nodes, doubling performance at the same price. We also announced many new features that provide greater scalability, better performance, more automation, and easier ways to manage your analytics workloads.

To see a full list of our launches, visit our what’s new page—and be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Major launches in 2017

Amazon Redshift Spectrum—extend analytics to your data lake, without moving data

We launched Amazon Redshift Spectrum to give you the freedom to store data in Amazon S3, in open file formats, and have it available for analytics without the need to load it into your Amazon Redshift cluster. It enables you to easily join datasets across Redshift clusters and S3 to provide unique insights that you would not be able to obtain by querying independent data silos.

With Redshift Spectrum, you can run SQL queries against data in an Amazon S3 data lake as easily as you analyze data stored in Amazon Redshift. And you can do it without loading data or resizing the Amazon Redshift cluster based on growing data volumes. Redshift Spectrum separates compute and storage to meet workload demands for data size, concurrency, and performance. Redshift Spectrum scales processing across thousands of nodes, so results are fast, even with massive datasets and complex queries. You can query open file formats that you already use—such as Apache Avro, CSV, Grok, ORC, Apache Parquet, RCFile, RegexSerDe, SequenceFile, TextFile, and TSV—directly in Amazon S3, without any data movement.

“For complex queries, Redshift Spectrum provided a 67 percent performance gain,” said Rafi Ton, CEO, NUVIAD. “Using the Parquet data format, Redshift Spectrum delivered an 80 percent performance improvement. For us, this was substantial.”

To learn more about Redshift Spectrum, watch our AWS Summit session Intro to Amazon Redshift Spectrum: Now Query Exabytes of Data in S3, and read our announcement blog post Amazon Redshift Spectrum – Exabyte-Scale In-Place Queries of S3 Data.

DC2 nodes—twice the performance of DC1 at the same price

We launched second-generation Dense Compute (DC2) nodes to provide low latency and high throughput for demanding data warehousing workloads. DC2 nodes feature powerful Intel E5-2686 v4 (Broadwell) CPUs, fast DDR4 memory, and NVMe-based solid state disks (SSDs). We’ve tuned Amazon Redshift to take advantage of the better CPU, network, and disk on DC2 nodes, providing up to twice the performance of DC1 at the same price. Our DC2.8xlarge instances now provide twice the memory per slice of data and an optimized storage layout with 30 percent better storage utilization.

“Redshift allows us to quickly spin up clusters and provide our data scientists with a fast and easy method to access data and generate insights,” said Bradley Todd, technology architect at Liberty Mutual. “We saw a 9x reduction in month-end reporting time with Redshift DC2 nodes as compared to DC1.”

Read our customer testimonials to see the performance gains our customers are experiencing with DC2 nodes. To learn more, read our blog post Amazon Redshift Dense Compute (DC2) Nodes Deliver Twice the Performance as DC1 at the Same Price.

Performance enhancements— 3x-5x faster queries

On average, our customers are seeing 3x to 5x performance gains for most of their critical workloads.

We introduced short query acceleration to speed up execution of queries such as reports, dashboards, and interactive analysis. Short query acceleration uses machine learning to predict the execution time of a query, and to move short running queries to an express short query queue for faster processing.

We launched results caching to deliver sub-second response times for queries that are repeated, such as dashboards, visualizations, and those from BI tools. Results caching has an added benefit of freeing up resources to improve the performance of all other queries.

We also introduced late materialization to reduce the amount of data scanned for queries with predicate filters by batching and factoring in the filtering of predicates before fetching data blocks in the next column. For example, if only 10 percent of the table rows satisfy the predicate filters, Amazon Redshift can potentially save 90 percent of the I/O for the remaining columns to improve query performance.

We launched query monitoring rules and pre-defined rule templates. These features make it easier for you to set metrics-based performance boundaries for workload management (WLM) queries, and specify what action to take when a query goes beyond those boundaries. For example, for a queue that’s dedicated to short-running queries, you might create a rule that aborts queries that run for more than 60 seconds. To track poorly designed queries, you might have another rule that logs queries that contain nested loops.

Customer insights

Amazon Redshift and Redshift Spectrum serve customers across a variety of industries and sizes, from startups to large enterprises. Visit our customer page to see the success that customers are having with our recent enhancements. Learn how companies like Liberty Mutual Insurance saw a 9x reduction in month-end reporting time using DC2 nodes. On this page, you can find case studies, videos, and other content that show how our customers are using Amazon Redshift to drive innovation and business results.

In addition, check out these resources to learn about the success our customers are having building out a data warehouse and data lake integration solution with Amazon Redshift:

Partner solutions

You can enhance your Amazon Redshift data warehouse by working with industry-leading experts. Our AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners have certified their solutions to work with Amazon Redshift. They offer software, tools, integration, and consulting services to help you at every step. Visit our Amazon Redshift Partner page and choose an APN Partner. Or, use AWS Marketplace to find and immediately start using third-party software.

To see what our Partners are saying about Amazon Redshift Spectrum and our DC2 nodes mentioned earlier, read these blog posts:

Resources

Blog posts

Visit the AWS Big Data Blog for a list of all Amazon Redshift articles.

YouTube videos

GitHub

Our community of experts contribute on GitHub to provide tips and hints that can help you get the most out of your deployment. Visit GitHub frequently to get the latest technical guidance, code samples, administrative task automation utilities, the analyze & vacuum schema utility, and more.

Customer support

If you are evaluating or considering a proof of concept with Amazon Redshift, or you need assistance migrating your on-premises or other cloud-based data warehouse to Amazon Redshift, our team of product experts and solutions architects can help you with architecting, sizing, and optimizing your data warehouse. Contact us using this support request form, and let us know how we can assist you.

If you are an Amazon Redshift customer, we offer a no-cost health check program. Our team of database engineers and solutions architects give you recommendations for optimizing Amazon Redshift and Amazon Redshift Spectrum for your specific workloads. To learn more, email us at [email protected].

If you have any questions, email us at [email protected].

 

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Amazon Redshift Spectrum – Exabyte-Scale In-Place Queries of S3 Data, Using Amazon Redshift for Fast Analytical Reports and How to Migrate Your Oracle Data Warehouse to Amazon Redshift Using AWS SCT and AWS DMS.

About the Author

Larry Heathcote is a Principle Product Marketing Manager at Amazon Web Services for data warehousing and analytics. Larry is passionate about seeing the results of data-driven insights on business outcomes. He enjoys family time, home projects, grilling out and the taste of classic barbeque.

 

 

 

Reactive Microservices Architecture on AWS

Post Syndicated from Sascha Moellering original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/reactive-microservices-architecture-on-aws/

Microservice-application requirements have changed dramatically in recent years. These days, applications operate with petabytes of data, need almost 100% uptime, and end users expect sub-second response times. Typical N-tier applications can’t deliver on these requirements.

Reactive Manifesto, published in 2014, describes the essential characteristics of reactive systems including: responsiveness, resiliency, elasticity, and being message driven.

Being message driven is perhaps the most important characteristic of reactive systems. Asynchronous messaging helps in the design of loosely coupled systems, which is a key factor for scalability. In order to build a highly decoupled system, it is important to isolate services from each other. As already described, isolation is an important aspect of the microservices pattern. Indeed, reactive systems and microservices are a natural fit.

Implemented Use Case
This reference architecture illustrates a typical ad-tracking implementation.

Many ad-tracking companies collect massive amounts of data in near-real-time. In many cases, these workloads are very spiky and heavily depend on the success of the ad-tech companies’ customers. Typically, an ad-tracking-data use case can be separated into a real-time part and a non-real-time part. In the real-time part, it is important to collect data as fast as possible and ask several questions including:,  “Is this a valid combination of parameters?,””Does this program exist?,” “Is this program still valid?”

Because response time has a huge impact on conversion rate in advertising, it is important for advertisers to respond as fast as possible. This information should be kept in memory to reduce communication overhead with the caching infrastructure. The tracking application itself should be as lightweight and scalable as possible. For example, the application shouldn’t have any shared mutable state and it should use reactive paradigms. In our implementation, one main application is responsible for this real-time part. It collects and validates data, responds to the client as fast as possible, and asynchronously sends events to backend systems.

The non-real-time part of the application consumes the generated events and persists them in a NoSQL database. In a typical tracking implementation, clicks, cookie information, and transactions are matched asynchronously and persisted in a data store. The matching part is not implemented in this reference architecture. Many ad-tech architectures use frameworks like Hadoop for the matching implementation.

The system can be logically divided into the data collection partand the core data updatepart. The data collection part is responsible for collecting, validating, and persisting the data. In the core data update part, the data that is used for validation gets updated and all subscribers are notified of new data.

Components and Services

Main Application
The main application is implemented using Java 8 and uses Vert.x as the main framework. Vert.x is an event-driven, reactive, non-blocking, polyglot framework to implement microservices. It runs on the Java virtual machine (JVM) by using the low-level IO library Netty. You can write applications in Java, JavaScript, Groovy, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala, and Ceylon. The framework offers a simple and scalable actor-like concurrency model. Vert.x calls handlers by using a thread known as an event loop. To use this model, you have to write code known as “verticles.” Verticles share certain similarities with actors in the actor model. To use them, you have to implement the verticle interface. Verticles communicate with each other by generating messages in  a single event bus. Those messages are sent on the event bus to a specific address, and verticles can register to this address by using handlers.

With only a few exceptions, none of the APIs in Vert.x block the calling thread. Similar to Node.js, Vert.x uses the reactor pattern. However, in contrast to Node.js, Vert.x uses several event loops. Unfortunately, not all APIs in the Java ecosystem are written asynchronously, for example, the JDBC API. Vert.x offers a possibility to run this, blocking APIs without blocking the event loop. These special verticles are called worker verticles. You don’t execute worker verticles by using the standard Vert.x event loops, but by using a dedicated thread from a worker pool. This way, the worker verticles don’t block the event loop.

Our application consists of five different verticles covering different aspects of the business logic. The main entry point for our application is the HttpVerticle, which exposes an HTTP-endpoint to consume HTTP-requests and for proper health checking. Data from HTTP requests such as parameters and user-agent information are collected and transformed into a JSON message. In order to validate the input data (to ensure that the program exists and is still valid), the message is sent to the CacheVerticle.

This verticle implements an LRU-cache with a TTL of 10 minutes and a capacity of 100,000 entries. Instead of adding additional functionality to a standard JDK map implementation, we use Google Guava, which has all the features we need. If the data is not in the L1 cache, the message is sent to the RedisVerticle. This verticle is responsible for data residing in Amazon ElastiCache and uses the Vert.x-redis-client to read data from Redis. In our example, Redis is the central data store. However, in a typical production implementation, Redis would just be the L2 cache with a central data store like Amazon DynamoDB. One of the most important paradigms of a reactive system is to switch from a pull- to a push-based model. To achieve this and reduce network overhead, we’ll use Redis pub/sub to push core data changes to our main application.

Vert.x also supports direct Redis pub/sub-integration, the following code shows our subscriber-implementation:

vertx.eventBus().<JsonObject>consumer(REDIS_PUBSUB_CHANNEL_VERTX, received -> {

JsonObject value = received.body().getJsonObject("value");

String message = value.getString("message");

JsonObject jsonObject = new JsonObject(message);

eb.send(CACHE_REDIS_EVENTBUS_ADDRESS, jsonObject);

});

redis.subscribe(Constants.REDIS_PUBSUB_CHANNEL, res -> {

if (res.succeeded()) {

LOGGER.info("Subscribed to " + Constants.REDIS_PUBSUB_CHANNEL);

} else {

LOGGER.info(res.cause());

}

});

The verticle subscribes to the appropriate Redis pub/sub-channel. If a message is sent over this channel, the payload is extracted and forwarded to the cache-verticle that stores the data in the L1-cache. After storing and enriching data, a response is sent back to the HttpVerticle, which responds to the HTTP request that initially hit this verticle. In addition, the message is converted to ByteBuffer, wrapped in protocol buffers, and send to an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream.

The following example shows a stripped-down version of the KinesisVerticle:

public class KinesisVerticle extends AbstractVerticle {

private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(KinesisVerticle.class);

private AmazonKinesisAsync kinesisAsyncClient;

private String eventStream = "EventStream";

@Override

public void start() throws Exception {

EventBus eb = vertx.eventBus();

kinesisAsyncClient = createClient();

eventStream = System.getenv(STREAM_NAME) == null ? "EventStream" : System.getenv(STREAM_NAME);

eb.consumer(Constants.KINESIS_EVENTBUS_ADDRESS, message -> {

try {

TrackingMessage trackingMessage = Json.decodeValue((String)message.body(), TrackingMessage.class);

String partitionKey = trackingMessage.getMessageId();

byte [] byteMessage = createMessage(trackingMessage);

ByteBuffer buf = ByteBuffer.wrap(byteMessage);

sendMessageToKinesis(buf, partitionKey);

message.reply("OK");

}

catch (KinesisException exc) {

LOGGER.error(exc);

}

});

}

Kinesis Consumer
This AWS Lambda function consumes data from an Amazon Kinesis Data Stream and persists the data in an Amazon DynamoDB table. In order to improve testability, the invocation code is separated from the business logic. The invocation code is implemented in the class KinesisConsumerHandler and iterates over the Kinesis events pulled from the Kinesis stream by AWS Lambda. Each Kinesis event is unwrapped and transformed from ByteBuffer to protocol buffers and converted into a Java object. Those Java objects are passed to the business logic, which persists the data in a DynamoDB table. In order to improve duration of successive Lambda calls, the DynamoDB-client is instantiated lazily and reused if possible.

Redis Updater
From time to time, it is necessary to update core data in Redis. A very efficient implementation for this requirement is using AWS Lambda and Amazon Kinesis. New core data is sent over the AWS Kinesis stream using JSON as data format and consumed by a Lambda function. This function iterates over the Kinesis events pulled from the Kinesis stream by AWS Lambda. Each Kinesis event is unwrapped and transformed from ByteBuffer to String and converted into a Java object. The Java object is passed to the business logic and stored in Redis. In addition, the new core data is also sent to the main application using Redis pub/sub in order to reduce network overhead and converting from a pull- to a push-based model.

The following example shows the source code to store data in Redis and notify all subscribers:

public void updateRedisData(final TrackingMessage trackingMessage, final Jedis jedis, final LambdaLogger logger) {

try {

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

String jsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString(trackingMessage);

Map<String, String> map = marshal(jsonString);

String statusCode = jedis.hmset(trackingMessage.getProgramId(), map);

}

catch (Exception exc) {

if (null == logger)

exc.printStackTrace();

else

logger.log(exc.getMessage());

}

}

public void notifySubscribers(final TrackingMessage trackingMessage, final Jedis jedis, final LambdaLogger logger) {

try {

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

String jsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString(trackingMessage);

jedis.publish(Constants.REDIS_PUBSUB_CHANNEL, jsonString);

}

catch (final IOException e) {

log(e.getMessage(), logger);

}

}

Similarly to our Kinesis Consumer, the Redis-client is instantiated somewhat lazily.

Infrastructure as Code
As already outlined, latency and response time are a very critical part of any ad-tracking solution because response time has a huge impact on conversion rate. In order to reduce latency for customers world-wide, it is common practice to roll out the infrastructure in different AWS Regions in the world to be as close to the end customer as possible. AWS CloudFormation can help you model and set up your AWS resources so that you can spend less time managing those resources and more time focusing on your applications that run in AWS.

You create a template that describes all the AWS resources that you want (for example, Amazon EC2 instances or Amazon RDS DB instances), and AWS CloudFormation takes care of provisioning and configuring those resources for you. Our reference architecture can be rolled out in different Regions using an AWS CloudFormation template, which sets up the complete infrastructure (for example, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) cluster, Lambda functions, DynamoDB table, Amazon ElastiCache cluster, etc.).

Conclusion
In this blog post we described reactive principles and an example architecture with a common use case. We leveraged the capabilities of different frameworks in combination with several AWS services in order to implement reactive principles—not only at the application-level but also at the system-level. I hope I’ve given you ideas for creating your own reactive applications and systems on AWS.

About the Author

Sascha Moellering is a Senior Solution Architect. Sascha is primarily interested in automation, infrastructure as code, distributed computing, containers and JVM. He can be reached at [email protected]

 

 

Invoking AWS Lambda from Amazon MQ

Post Syndicated from Tara Van Unen original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/invoking-aws-lambda-from-amazon-mq/

Contributed by Josh Kahn, AWS Solutions Architect

Message brokers can be used to solve a number of needs in enterprise architectures, including managing workload queues and broadcasting messages to a number of subscribers. Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ that makes it easy to set up and operate message brokers in the cloud.

In this post, I discuss one approach to invoking AWS Lambda from queues and topics managed by Amazon MQ brokers. This and other similar patterns can be useful in integrating legacy systems with serverless architectures. You could also integrate systems already migrated to the cloud that use common APIs such as JMS.

For example, imagine that you work for a company that produces training videos and which recently migrated its video management system to AWS. The on-premises system used to publish a message to an ActiveMQ broker when a video was ready for processing by an on-premises transcoder. However, on AWS, your company uses Amazon Elastic Transcoder. Instead of modifying the management system, Lambda polls the broker for new messages and starts a new Elastic Transcoder job. This approach avoids changes to the existing application while refactoring the workload to leverage cloud-native components.

This solution uses Amazon CloudWatch Events to trigger a Lambda function that polls the Amazon MQ broker for messages. Instead of starting an Elastic Transcoder job, the sample writes the received message to an Amazon DynamoDB table with a time stamp indicating the time received.

Getting started

To start, navigate to the Amazon MQ console. Next, launch a new Amazon MQ instance, selecting Single-instance Broker and supplying a broker name, user name, and password. Be sure to document the user name and password for later.

For the purposes of this sample, choose the default options in the Advanced settings section. Your new broker is deployed to the default VPC in the selected AWS Region with the default security group. For this post, you update the security group to allow access for your sample Lambda function. In a production scenario, I recommend deploying both the Lambda function and your Amazon MQ broker in your own VPC.

After several minutes, your instance changes status from “Creation Pending” to “Available.” You can then visit the Details page of your broker to retrieve connection information, including a link to the ActiveMQ web console where you can monitor the status of your broker, publish test messages, and so on. In this example, use the Stomp protocol to connect to your broker. Be sure to capture the broker host name, for example:

<BROKER_ID>.mq.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

You should also modify the Security Group for the broker by clicking on its Security Group ID. Click the Edit button and then click Add Rule to allow inbound traffic on port 8162 for your IP address.

Deploying and scheduling the Lambda function

To simplify the deployment of this example, I’ve provided an AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) template that deploys the sample function and DynamoDB table, and schedules the function to be invoked every five minutes. Detailed instructions can be found with sample code on GitHub in the amazonmq-invoke-aws-lambda repository, with sample code. I discuss a few key aspects in this post.

First, SAM makes it easy to deploy and schedule invocation of our function:

SubscriberFunction:
	Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
	Properties:
		CodeUri: subscriber/
		Handler: index.handler
		Runtime: nodejs6.10
		Role: !GetAtt SubscriberFunctionRole.Arn
		Timeout: 15
		Environment:
			Variables:
				HOST: !Ref AmazonMQHost
				LOGIN: !Ref AmazonMQLogin
				PASSWORD: !Ref AmazonMQPassword
				QUEUE_NAME: !Ref AmazonMQQueueName
				WORKER_FUNCTIOn: !Ref WorkerFunction
		Events:
			Timer:
				Type: Schedule
				Properties:
					Schedule: rate(5 minutes)

WorkerFunction:
Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
	Properties:
		CodeUri: worker/
		Handler: index.handler
		Runtime: nodejs6.10
Role: !GetAtt WorkerFunctionRole.Arn
		Environment:
			Variables:
				TABLE_NAME: !Ref MessagesTable

In the code, you include the URI, user name, and password for your newly created Amazon MQ broker. These allow the function to poll the broker for new messages on the sample queue.

The sample Lambda function is written in Node.js, but clients exist for a number of programming languages.

stomp.connect(options, (error, client) => {
	if (error) { /* do something */ }

	let headers = {
		destination: ‘/queue/SAMPLE_QUEUE’,
		ack: ‘auto’
	}

	client.subscribe(headers, (error, message) => {
		if (error) { /* do something */ }

		message.readString(‘utf-8’, (error, body) => {
			if (error) { /* do something */ }

			let params = {
				FunctionName: MyWorkerFunction,
				Payload: JSON.stringify({
					message: body,
					timestamp: Date.now()
				})
			}

			let lambda = new AWS.Lambda()
			lambda.invoke(params, (error, data) => {
				if (error) { /* do something */ }
			})
		}
})
})

Sending a sample message

For the purpose of this example, use the Amazon MQ console to send a test message. Navigate to the details page for your broker.

About midway down the page, choose ActiveMQ Web Console. Next, choose Manage ActiveMQ Broker to launch the admin console. When you are prompted for a user name and password, use the credentials created earlier.

At the top of the page, choose Send. From here, you can send a sample message from the broker to subscribers. For this example, this is how you generate traffic to test the end-to-end system. Be sure to set the Destination value to “SAMPLE_QUEUE.” The message body can contain any text. Choose Send.

You now have a Lambda function polling for messages on the broker. To verify that your function is working, you can confirm in the DynamoDB console that the message was successfully received and processed by the sample Lambda function.

First, choose Tables on the left and select the table name “amazonmq-messages” in the middle section. With the table detail in view, choose Items. If the function was successful, you’ll find a new entry similar to the following:

If there is no message in DynamoDB, check again in a few minutes or review the CloudWatch Logs group for Lambda functions that contain debug messages.

Alternative approaches

Beyond the approach described here, you may consider other approaches as well. For example, you could use an intermediary system such as Apache Flume to pass messages from the broker to Lambda or deploy Apache Camel to trigger Lambda via a POST to API Gateway. There are trade-offs to each of these approaches. My goal in using CloudWatch Events was to introduce an easily repeatable pattern familiar to many Lambda developers.

Summary

I hope that you have found this example of how to integrate AWS Lambda with Amazon MQ useful. If you have expertise or legacy systems that leverage APIs such as JMS, you may find this useful as you incorporate serverless concepts in your enterprise architectures.

To learn more, see the Amazon MQ website and Developer Guide. You can try Amazon MQ for free with the AWS Free Tier, which includes up to 750 hours of a single-instance mq.t2.micro broker and up to 1 GB of storage per month for one year.

Turn your smartphone into a universal remote

Post Syndicated from Alex Bate original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/zero-universal-remote/

Honolulu-based software developer bbtinkerer was tired of never being able to find the TV remote. So he made his own using a Raspberry Pi Zero, and connected it to a web app accessible on his smartphone.

bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero

Finding a remote alternative

“I needed one because the remote in my house tends to go missing a lot,” explains Bernard aka bbtinkerer on the Instructables page for his Raspberry Pi Zero Universal Remote.”If I want the controller, I have to hunt down three people and hope one of them remembers that they took it.”

bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero

For the build, Bernard used a Raspberry Pi Zero, an IR LED and corresponding receiver, Raspbian Lite, and a neat little 3D-printed housing.

bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero
bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero
bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero

First, he soldered a circuit for the LED and resistors on a small piece of perf board. Then he assembled the hardware components. Finally, all he needed to do was to write the code to control his devices (including a tower fan), and to set up the app.

bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero

Bernard employed the Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC) package to control the television with the Raspberry Pi Zero, accessing the Zero via SSH. He gives a complete rundown of the installation process on Instructables.

bbtinkerer universal remote Raspberry Pi zero

Setting up a remote’s buttons with LIRC is a simple case of pressing them and naming their functions one by one. You’ll need the remote to set up the system, but after that, feel free to lock it in a drawer and use your smartphone instead.



Finally, Bernard created the web interface using Node.js, and again, because he’s lovely, he published the code for anyone wanting to build their own. Thanks, Bernard!

Life hacks

If you’ve used a Raspberry Pi to build a time-saving life hack like Bernard’s, be sure to share it with us. Other favourites of ours include fridge cameras, phone app doorbell notifications, and Alan’s ocarina home automation system. I’m not sure if this last one can truly be considered a time-saving life hack. It’s still cool though!

The post Turn your smartphone into a universal remote appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

AWS Architecture Monthly for Kindle

Post Syndicated from Jamey Tisdale original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/aws-architecture-monthly-for-kindle/

We recently launched AWS Architecture Monthly, a new subscription service on Kindle that will push a selection of the best content around cloud architecture from AWS, with a few pointers to other content you might also enjoy.

From building a simple website to crafting an AI-based chat bot, the choices of technologies and the best practices in how to apply them are constantly evolving. Our goal is to supply you each month with a broad selection of the best new tech content from AWS — from deep-dive tutorials to industry-trend articles.

With your free subscription, you can look forward to fresh content delivered directly to your Kindledevice or Kindle app including:
– Technical whitepapers
– Reference architectures
– New solutions and implementation guides
– Training and certification opportunities
– Industry trends

The January issue is now live. This month includes:
– AWS Architecture Blog: Glenn Gore’s Take on re:Invent 2017 (Chief Architect for AWS)
– AWS Reference Architectures: Java Microservices Deployed on EC2 Container Service; Node.js Microservices Deployed on EC2 Container Service
– AWS Training & Certification: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
– Sample Code: aws-serverless-express
– Technical Whitepaper: Serverless Architectures with AWS Lambda – Overview and Best Practices

At this time, Architecture Monthly annual subscriptions are only available in the France (new), US, UK, and Germany. As more countries become available, we’ll update you here on the blog. For Amazon.com countries not listed above, we are offering single-issue downloads — also accessible from our landing page. The content is the same as in the subscription but requires individual-issue downloads.

FAQ
I have to submit my credit card information for a free subscription?
While you do have to submit your card information at this time (as you would for a free book in the Kindle store), it won’t be charged. This will remain a free, annual subscription and includes all 10 issues for the year.

Why isn’t the subscription available everywhere?
As new countries get added to Kindle Newsstand, we’ll ensure we add them for Architecture Monthly. This month we added France but anticipate it will take some time for the new service to move into additional markets.

What countries are included in the Amazon.com list where the issues can be downloaded?
Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Gibraltar, Guernsey, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Japan, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, Vatican City

Simplify Querying Nested JSON with the AWS Glue Relationalize Transform

Post Syndicated from Trevor Roberts original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/simplify-querying-nested-json-with-the-aws-glue-relationalize-transform/

AWS Glue has a transform called Relationalize that simplifies the extract, transform, load (ETL) process by converting nested JSON into columns that you can easily import into relational databases. Relationalize transforms the nested JSON into key-value pairs at the outermost level of the JSON document. The transformed data maintains a list of the original keys from the nested JSON separated by periods.

Let’s look at how Relationalize can help you with a sample use case.

An example of Relationalize in action

Suppose that the developers of a video game want to use a data warehouse like Amazon Redshift to run reports on player behavior based on data that is stored in JSON. Sample 1 shows example user data from the game. The player named “user1” has characteristics such as race, class, and location in nested JSON data. Further down, the player’s arsenal information includes additional nested JSON data. If the developers want to ETL this data into their data warehouse, they might have to resort to nested loops or recursive functions in their code.

Sample 1: Nested JSON

{
	"player": {
		"username": "user1",
		"characteristics": {
			"race": "Human",
			"class": "Warlock",
			"subclass": "Dawnblade",
			"power": 300,
			"playercountry": "USA"
		},
		"arsenal": {
			"kinetic": {
				"name": "Sweet Business",
				"type": "Auto Rifle",
				"power": 300,
				"element": "Kinetic"
			},
			"energy": {
				"name": "MIDA Mini-Tool",
				"type": "Submachine Gun",
				"power": 300,
				"element": "Solar"
			},
			"power": {
				"name": "Play of the Game",
				"type": "Grenade Launcher",
				"power": 300,
				"element": "Arc"
			}
		},
		"armor": {
			"head": "Eye of Another World",
			"arms": "Philomath Gloves",
			"chest": "Philomath Robes",
			"leg": "Philomath Boots",
			"classitem": "Philomath Bond"
		},
		"location": {
			"map": "Titan",
			"waypoint": "The Rig"
		}
	}
}

Instead, the developers can use the Relationalize transform. Sample 2 shows what the transformed data looks like.

Sample 2: Flattened JSON

{
    "player.username": "user1",
    "player.characteristics.race": "Human",
    "player.characteristics.class": "Warlock",
    "player.characteristics.subclass": "Dawnblade",
    "player.characteristics.power": 300,
    "player.characteristics.playercountry": "USA",
    "player.arsenal.kinetic.name": "Sweet Business",
    "player.arsenal.kinetic.type": "Auto Rifle",
    "player.arsenal.kinetic.power": 300,
    "player.arsenal.kinetic.element": "Kinetic",
    "player.arsenal.energy.name": "MIDA Mini-Tool",
    "player.arsenal.energy.type": "Submachine Gun",
    "player.arsenal.energy.power": 300,
    "player.arsenal.energy.element": "Solar",
    "player.arsenal.power.name": "Play of the Game",
    "player.arsenal.power.type": "Grenade Launcher",
    "player.arsenal.power.power": 300,
    "player.arsenal.power.element": "Arc",
    "player.armor.head": "Eye of Another World",
    "player.armor.arms": "Philomath Gloves",
    "player.armor.chest": "Philomath Robes",
    "player.armor.leg": "Philomath Boots",
    "player.armor.classitem": "Philomath Bond",
    "player.location.map": "Titan",
    "player.location.waypoint": "The Rig"
}

You can then write the data to a database or to a data warehouse. You can also write it to delimited text files, such as in comma-separated value (CSV) format, or columnar file formats such as Optimized Row Columnar (ORC) format. You can use either of these format types for long-term storage in Amazon S3. Storing the transformed files in S3 provides the additional benefit of being able to query this data using Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift Spectrum. You can further extend the usefulness of the data by performing joins between data stored in S3 and the data stored in an Amazon Redshift data warehouse.

Before we get started…

In my example, I took two preparatory steps that save some time in your ETL code development:

  1. I stored my data in an Amazon S3 bucket and used an AWS Glue crawler to make my data available in the AWS Glue data catalog. You can find instructions on how to do that in Cataloging Tables with a Crawler in the AWS Glue documentation. The AWS Glue database name I used was “blog,” and the table name was “players.” You can see these values in use in the sample code that follows.
  2. I deployed a Zeppelin notebook using the automated deployment available within AWS Glue. If you already used an AWS Glue development endpoint to deploy a Zeppelin notebook, you can skip the deployment instructions. Otherwise, let’s quickly review how to deploy Zeppelin.

Deploying a Zeppelin notebook with AWS Glue

The following steps are outlined in the AWS Glue documentation, and I include a few screenshots here for clarity.

First, create two IAM roles:

Next, in the AWS Glue Management Console, choose Dev endpoints, and then choose Add endpoint.

Specify a name for the endpoint and the AWS Glue IAM role that you created.

On the networking screen, choose Skip Networking because our code only communicates with S3.

Complete the development endpoint process by providing a Secure Shell (SSH) public key and confirming your settings.

When your new development endpoint’s Provisioning status changes from PROVISIONING to READY, choose your endpoint, and then for Actions choose Create notebook server.

Enter the notebook server details, including the role you previously created and a security group with inbound access allowed on TCP port 443.

Doing this automatically launches an AWS CloudFormation template. The output specifies the URL that you can use to access your Zeppelin notebook with the username and password you specified in the wizard.

How do we flatten nested JSON?

With my data loaded and my notebook server ready, I accessed Zeppelin, created a new note, and set my interpreter to spark. I used some Python code that AWS Glue previously generated for another job that outputs to ORC. Then I added the Relationalize transform. You can see the resulting Python code in Sample 3.­

Sample 3: Python code to transform the nested JSON and output it to ORC

import sys
from awsglue.transforms import *
from awsglue.utils import getResolvedOptions
from pyspark.context import SparkContext
from awsglue.context import GlueContext
from awsglue.job import Job
#from awsglue.transforms import Relationalize

# Begin variables to customize with your information
glue_source_database = "blog"
glue_source_table = "players"
glue_temp_storage = "s3://blog-example-edz/temp"
glue_relationalize_output_s3_path = "s3://blog-example-edz/output-flat"
dfc_root_table_name = "root" #default value is "roottable"
# End variables to customize with your information

glueContext = GlueContext(spark.sparkContext)
datasource0 = glueContext.create_dynamic_frame.from_catalog(database = glue_source_database, table_name = glue_source_table, transformation_ctx = "datasource0")
dfc = Relationalize.apply(frame = datasource0, staging_path = glue_temp_storage, name = dfc_root_table_name, transformation_ctx = "dfc")
blogdata = dfc.select(dfc_root_table_name)
blogdataoutput = glueContext.write_dynamic_frame.from_options(frame = blogdata, connection_type = "s3", connection_options = {"path": glue_relationalize_output_s3_path}, format = "orc", transformation_ctx = "blogdataoutput")

What exactly is going on in this script?

After the import statements, we instantiate a GlueContext object, which allows us to work with the data in AWS Glue. Next, we create a DynamicFrame (datasource0) from the “players” table in the AWS Glue “blog” database. We use this DynamicFrame to perform any necessary operations on the data structure before it’s written to our desired output format. The source files remain unchanged.

We then run the Relationalize transform (Relationalize.apply()) with our datasource0 as one of the parameters. Another important parameter is the name parameter, which is a key that identifies our data after the transformation completes.

The Relationalize.apply() method returns a DynamicFrameCollection, and this is stored in the dfc variable. Before we can write our data to S3, we need to select the DynamicFrame from the DynamicFrameCollection object. We do this with the dfc.select() method. The correct DynamicFrame is stored in the blogdata variable.

You might be curious why a DynamicFrameCollection was returned when we started with a single DynamicFrame. This return value comes from the way Relationalize treats arrays in the JSON document: A DynamicFrame is created for each array. Together with the root data structure, each generated DynamicFrame is added to a DynamicFrameCollection when Relationalize completes its work. Although we didn’t have any arrays in our data, it’s good to keep this in mind. Finally, we output (blogdataoutput) the root DynamicFrame to ORC files in S3.

Using the transformed data

One of the use cases we discussed earlier was using Amazon Athena or Amazon Redshift Spectrum to query the ORC files.

I used the following SQL DDL statements to create external tables in both services to enable queries of my data stored in Amazon S3.

Sample 4: Amazon Athena DDL

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS blog.blog_data_athena_test (
  `characteristics_race` string,
  `characteristics_class` string,
  `characteristics_subclass` string,
  `characteristics_power` int,
  `characteristics_playercountry` string,
  `kinetic_name` string,
  `kinetic_type` string,
  `kinetic_power` int,
  `kinetic_element` string,
  `energy_name` string,
  `energy_type` string,
  `energy_power` int,
  `energy_element` string,
  `power_name` string,
  `power_type` string,
  `power_power` int,
  `power_element` string,
  `armor_head` string,
  `armor_arms` string,
  `armor_chest` string,
  `armor_leg` string,
  `armor_classitem` string,
  `map` string,
  `waypoint` string 
)
ROW FORMAT SERDE 'org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.io.orc.OrcSerde'
WITH SERDEPROPERTIES (
  'serialization.format' = '1'
) LOCATION 's3://blog-example-edz/output-flat/'
TBLPROPERTIES ('has_encrypted_data'='false');

 

Sample 5: Amazon Redshift Spectrum DDL

-- Create a Schema
-- A single schema can be used with multiple external tables.
-- This step is only required once for the external tables you create.
create external schema spectrum 
from data catalog 
database 'blog' 
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::0123456789:role/redshift-role'
create external database if not exists;

-- Create an external table in the schema
create external table spectrum.blog(
  username VARCHAR,
  characteristics_race VARCHAR,
  characteristics_class VARCHAR,
  characteristics_subclass VARCHAR,
  characteristics_power INTEGER,
  characteristics_playercountry VARCHAR,
  kinetic_name VARCHAR,
  kinetic_type VARCHAR,
  kinetic_power INTEGER,
  kinetic_element VARCHAR,
  energy_name VARCHAR,
  energy_type VARCHAR,
  energy_power INTEGER,
  energy_element VARCHAR,
  power_name VARCHAR,
  power_type VARCHAR,
  power_power INTEGER,
  power_element VARCHAR,
  armor_head VARCHAR,
  armor_arms VARCHAR,
  armor_chest VARCHAR,
  armor_leg VARCHAR,
  armor_classItem VARCHAR,
  map VARCHAR,
  waypoint VARCHAR)
stored as orc
location 's3://blog-example-edz/output-flat';

I even ran a query, shown in Sample 6, that joined my Redshift Spectrum table (spectrum.playerdata) with data in an Amazon Redshift table (public.raids) to generate advanced reports. In the where clause, I join the two tables based on the username values that are common to both data sources.

Sample 6: Select statement with a join of Redshift Spectrum data with Amazon Redshift data

-- Get Total Raid Completions for the Hunter Class.
select spectrum.playerdata.characteristics_class as class, sum(public.raids."completions.val.raids.leviathan") as "Total Hunter Leviathan Raid Completions" from spectrum.playerdata, public.raids
where spectrum.playerdata.username = public.raids."completions.val.username"
and spectrum.playerdata.characteristics_class = 'Hunter'
group by spectrum.playerdata.characteristics_class;

Summary

This post demonstrated how simple it can be to flatten nested JSON data with AWS Glue, using the Relationalize transform to automate the conversion of nested JSON. AWS Glue also automates the deployment of Zeppelin notebooks that you can use to develop your Python automation script. Finally, AWS Glue can output the transformed data directly to a relational database, or to files in Amazon S3 for further analysis with tools such as Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

As great as Relationalize is, it’s not the only transform available with AWS Glue. You can see a complete list of available transforms in Built-In Transforms in the AWS Glue documentation. Try them out today!

Additional Reading

If you found this post useful, be sure to check out Using Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Athena and AWS Glue with Node.js in Production and Build a Data Lake Foundation with AWS Glue and Amazon S3.

About the Author

Trevor Roberts Jr is a Solutions Architect with AWS. He provides architectural guidance to help customers achieve success in the cloud. In his spare time, Trevor enjoys traveling to new places and spending time with family.

Using Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Amazon Athena, and AWS Glue with Node.js in Production

Post Syndicated from Rafi Ton original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/using-amazon-redshift-spectrum-amazon-athena-and-aws-glue-with-node-js-in-production/

This is a guest post by Rafi Ton, founder and CEO of NUVIAD. NUVIAD is, in their own words, “a mobile marketing platform providing professional marketers, agencies and local businesses state of the art tools to promote their products and services through hyper targeting, big data analytics and advanced machine learning tools.”

At NUVIAD, we’ve been using Amazon Redshift as our main data warehouse solution for more than 3 years.

We store massive amounts of ad transaction data that our users and partners analyze to determine ad campaign strategies. When running real-time bidding (RTB) campaigns in large scale, data freshness is critical so that our users can respond rapidly to changes in campaign performance. We chose Amazon Redshift because of its simplicity, scalability, performance, and ability to load new data in near real time.

Over the past three years, our customer base grew significantly and so did our data. We saw our Amazon Redshift cluster grow from three nodes to 65 nodes. To balance cost and analytics performance, we looked for a way to store large amounts of less-frequently analyzed data at a lower cost. Yet, we still wanted to have the data immediately available for user queries and to meet their expectations for fast performance. We turned to Amazon Redshift Spectrum.

In this post, I explain the reasons why we extended Amazon Redshift with Redshift Spectrum as our modern data warehouse. I cover how our data growth and the need to balance cost and performance led us to adopt Redshift Spectrum. I also share key performance metrics in our environment, and discuss the additional AWS services that provide a scalable and fast environment, with data available for immediate querying by our growing user base.

Amazon Redshift as our foundation

The ability to provide fresh, up-to-the-minute data to our customers and partners was always a main goal with our platform. We saw other solutions provide data that was a few hours old, but this was not good enough for us. We insisted on providing the freshest data possible. For us, that meant loading Amazon Redshift in frequent micro batches and allowing our customers to query Amazon Redshift directly to get results in near real time.

The benefits were immediately evident. Our customers could see how their campaigns performed faster than with other solutions, and react sooner to the ever-changing media supply pricing and availability. They were very happy.

However, this approach required Amazon Redshift to store a lot of data for long periods, and our data grew substantially. In our peak, we maintained a cluster running 65 DC1.large nodes. The impact on our Amazon Redshift cluster was evident, and we saw our CPU utilization grow to 90%.

Why we extended Amazon Redshift to Redshift Spectrum

Redshift Spectrum gives us the ability to run SQL queries using the powerful Amazon Redshift query engine against data stored in Amazon S3, without needing to load the data. With Redshift Spectrum, we store data where we want, at the cost that we want. We have the data available for analytics when our users need it with the performance they expect.

Seamless scalability, high performance, and unlimited concurrency

Scaling Redshift Spectrum is a simple process. First, it allows us to leverage Amazon S3 as the storage engine and get practically unlimited data capacity.

Second, if we need more compute power, we can leverage Redshift Spectrum’s distributed compute engine over thousands of nodes to provide superior performance – perfect for complex queries running against massive amounts of data.

Third, all Redshift Spectrum clusters access the same data catalog so that we don’t have to worry about data migration at all, making scaling effortless and seamless.

Lastly, since Redshift Spectrum distributes queries across potentially thousands of nodes, they are not affected by other queries, providing much more stable performance and unlimited concurrency.

Keeping it SQL

Redshift Spectrum uses the same query engine as Amazon Redshift. This means that we did not need to change our BI tools or query syntax, whether we used complex queries across a single table or joins across multiple tables.

An interesting capability introduced recently is the ability to create a view that spans both Amazon Redshift and Redshift Spectrum external tables. With this feature, you can query frequently accessed data in your Amazon Redshift cluster and less-frequently accessed data in Amazon S3, using a single view.

Leveraging Parquet for higher performance

Parquet is a columnar data format that provides superior performance and allows Redshift Spectrum (or Amazon Athena) to scan significantly less data. With less I/O, queries run faster and we pay less per query. You can read all about Parquet at https://parquet.apache.org/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Parquet.

Lower cost

From a cost perspective, we pay standard rates for our data in Amazon S3, and only small amounts per query to analyze data with Redshift Spectrum. Using the Parquet format, we can significantly reduce the amount of data scanned. Our costs are now lower, and our users get fast results even for large complex queries.

What we learned about Amazon Redshift vs. Redshift Spectrum performance

When we first started looking at Redshift Spectrum, we wanted to put it to the test. We wanted to know how it would compare to Amazon Redshift, so we looked at two key questions:

  1. What is the performance difference between Amazon Redshift and Redshift Spectrum on simple and complex queries?
  2. Does the data format impact performance?

During the migration phase, we had our dataset stored in Amazon Redshift and S3 as CSV/GZIP and as Parquet file formats. We tested three configurations:

  • Amazon Redshift cluster with 28 DC1.large nodes
  • Redshift Spectrum using CSV/GZIP
  • Redshift Spectrum using Parquet

We performed benchmarks for simple and complex queries on one month’s worth of data. We tested how much time it took to perform the query, and how consistent the results were when running the same query multiple times. The data we used for the tests was already partitioned by date and hour. Properly partitioning the data improves performance significantly and reduces query times.

Simple query

First, we tested a simple query aggregating billing data across a month:

SELECT 
  user_id, 
  count(*) AS impressions, 
  SUM(billing)::decimal /1000000 AS billing 
FROM <table_name> 
WHERE 
  date >= '2017-08-01' AND 
  date <= '2017-08-31'  
GROUP BY 
  user_id;

We ran the same query seven times and measured the response times (red marking the longest time and green the shortest time):

Execution Time (seconds)
  Amazon Redshift Redshift Spectrum
CSV		 Redshift Spectrum Parquet
Run #1 39.65 45.11 11.92
Run #2 15.26 43.13 12.05
Run #3 15.27 46.47 13.38
Run #4 21.22 51.02 12.74
Run #5 17.27 43.35 11.76
Run #6 16.67 44.23 13.67
Run #7 25.37 40.39 12.75
Average 21.53  44.82 12.61

For simple queries, Amazon Redshift performed better than Redshift Spectrum, as we thought, because the data is local to Amazon Redshift.

What was surprising was that using Parquet data format in Redshift Spectrum significantly beat ‘traditional’ Amazon Redshift performance. For our queries, using Parquet data format with Redshift Spectrum delivered an average 40% performance gain over traditional Amazon Redshift. Furthermore, Redshift Spectrum showed high consistency in execution time with a smaller difference between the slowest run and the fastest run.

Comparing the amount of data scanned when using CSV/GZIP and Parquet, the difference was also significant:

Data Scanned (GB)
CSV (Gzip) 135.49
Parquet 2.83

Because we pay only for the data scanned by Redshift Spectrum, the cost saving of using Parquet is evident and substantial.

Complex query

Next, we compared the same three configurations with a complex query.

Execution Time (seconds)
  Amazon Redshift Redshift Spectrum CSV Redshift Spectrum Parquet
Run #1 329.80 84.20 42.40
Run #2 167.60 65.30 35.10
Run #3 165.20 62.20 23.90
Run #4 273.90 74.90 55.90
Run #5 167.70 69.00 58.40
Average 220.84 71.12 43.14

This time, Redshift Spectrum using Parquet cut the average query time by 80% compared to traditional Amazon Redshift!

Bottom line: For complex queries, Redshift Spectrum provided a 67% performance gain over Amazon Redshift. Using the Parquet data format, Redshift Spectrum delivered an 80% performance improvement over Amazon Redshift. For us, this was substantial.

Optimizing the data structure for different workloads

Because the cost of S3 is relatively inexpensive and we pay only for the data scanned by each query, we believe that it makes sense to keep our data in different formats for different workloads and different analytics engines. It is important to note that we can have any number of tables pointing to the same data on S3. It all depends on how we partition the data and update the table partitions.

Data permutations

For example, we have a process that runs every minute and generates statistics for the last minute of data collected. With Amazon Redshift, this would be done by running the query on the table with something as follows:

SELECT 
  user, 
  COUNT(*) 
FROM 
  events_table 
WHERE 
  ts BETWEEN ‘2017-08-01 14:00:00’ AND ‘2017-08-01 14:00:59’ 
GROUP BY 
  user;

(Assuming ‘ts’ is your column storing the time stamp for each event.)

With Redshift Spectrum, we pay for the data scanned in each query. If the data is partitioned by the minute instead of the hour, a query looking at one minute would be 1/60th the cost. If we use a temporary table that points only to the data of the last minute, we save that unnecessary cost.

Creating Parquet data efficiently

On the average, we have 800 instances that process our traffic. Each instance sends events that are eventually loaded into Amazon Redshift. When we started three years ago, we would offload data from each server to S3 and then perform a periodic copy command from S3 to Amazon Redshift.

Recently, Amazon Kinesis Firehose added the capability to offload data directly to Amazon Redshift. While this is now a viable option, we kept the same collection process that worked flawlessly and efficiently for three years.

This changed, however, when we incorporated Redshift Spectrum. With Redshift Spectrum, we needed to find a way to:

  • Collect the event data from the instances.
  • Save the data in Parquet format.
  • Partition the data effectively.

To accomplish this, we save the data as CSV and then transform it to Parquet. The most effective method to generate the Parquet files is to:

  1. Send the data in one-minute intervals from the instances to Kinesis Firehose with an S3 temporary bucket as the destination.
  2. Aggregate hourly data and convert it to Parquet using AWS Lambda and AWS Glue.
  3. Add the Parquet data to S3 by updating the table partitions.

With this new process, we had to give more attention to validating the data before we sent it to Kinesis Firehose, because a single corrupted record in a partition fails queries on that partition.

Data validation

To store our click data in a table, we considered the following SQL create table command:

create external TABLE spectrum.blog_clicks (
    user_id varchar(50),
    campaign_id varchar(50),
    os varchar(50),
    ua varchar(255),
    ts bigint,
    billing float
)
partitioned by (date date, hour smallint)  
stored as parquet
location 's3://nuviad-temp/blog/clicks/';

The above statement defines a new external table (all Redshift Spectrum tables are external tables) with a few attributes. We stored ‘ts’ as a Unix time stamp and not as Timestamp, and billing data is stored as float and not decimal (more on that later). We also said that the data is partitioned by date and hour, and then stored as Parquet on S3.

First, we need to get the table definitions. This can be achieved by running the following query:

SELECT 
  * 
FROM 
  svv_external_columns 
WHERE 
  tablename = 'blog_clicks';

This query lists all the columns in the table with their respective definitions:

schemaname tablename columnname external_type columnnum part_key
spectrum blog_clicks user_id varchar(50) 1 0
spectrum blog_clicks campaign_id varchar(50) 2 0
spectrum blog_clicks os varchar(50) 3 0
spectrum blog_clicks ua varchar(255) 4 0
spectrum blog_clicks ts bigint 5 0
spectrum blog_clicks billing double 6 0
spectrum blog_clicks date date 7 1
spectrum blog_clicks hour smallint 8 2

Now we can use this data to create a validation schema for our data:

const rtb_request_schema = {
    "name": "clicks",
    "items": {
        "user_id": {
            "type": "string",
            "max_length": 100
        },
        "campaign_id": {
            "type": "string",
            "max_length": 50
        },
        "os": {
            "type": "string",
            "max_length": 50            
        },
        "ua": {
            "type": "string",
            "max_length": 255            
        },
        "ts": {
            "type": "integer",
            "min_value": 0,
            "max_value": 9999999999999
        },
        "billing": {
            "type": "float",
            "min_value": 0,
            "max_value": 9999999999999
        }
    }
};

Next, we create a function that uses this schema to validate data:

function valueIsValid(value, item_schema) {
    if (schema.type == 'string') {
        return (typeof value == 'string' && value.length <= schema.max_length);
    }
    else if (schema.type == 'integer') {
        return (typeof value == 'number' && value >= schema.min_value && value <= schema.max_value);
    }
    else if (schema.type == 'float' || schema.type == 'double') {
        return (typeof value == 'number' && value >= schema.min_value && value <= schema.max_value);
    }
    else if (schema.type == 'boolean') {
        return typeof value == 'boolean';
    }
    else if (schema.type == 'timestamp') {
        return (new Date(value)).getTime() > 0;
    }
    else {
        return true;
    }
}

Near real-time data loading with Kinesis Firehose

On Kinesis Firehose, we created a new delivery stream to handle the events as follows:

Delivery stream name: events
Source: Direct PUT
S3 bucket: nuviad-events
S3 prefix: rtb/
IAM role: firehose_delivery_role_1
Data transformation: Disabled
Source record backup: Disabled
S3 buffer size (MB): 100
S3 buffer interval (sec): 60
S3 Compression: GZIP
S3 Encryption: No Encryption
Status: ACTIVE
Error logging: Enabled

This delivery stream aggregates event data every minute, or up to 100 MB, and writes the data to an S3 bucket as a CSV/GZIP compressed file. Next, after we have the data validated, we can safely send it to our Kinesis Firehose API:

if (validated) {
    let itemString = item.join('|')+'\n'; //Sending csv delimited by pipe and adding new line

    let params = {
        DeliveryStreamName: 'events',
        Record: {
            Data: itemString
        }
    };

    firehose.putRecord(params, function(err, data) {
        if (err) {
            console.error(err, err.stack);        
        }
        else {
            // Continue to your next step 
        }
    });
}

Now, we have a single CSV file representing one minute of event data stored in S3. The files are named automatically by Kinesis Firehose by adding a UTC time prefix in the format YYYY/MM/DD/HH before writing objects to S3. Because we use the date and hour as partitions, we need to change the file naming and location to fit our Redshift Spectrum schema.

Automating data distribution using AWS Lambda

We created a simple Lambda function triggered by an S3 put event that copies the file to a different location (or locations), while renaming it to fit our data structure and processing flow. As mentioned before, the files generated by Kinesis Firehose are structured in a pre-defined hierarchy, such as:

S3://your-bucket/your-prefix/2017/08/01/20/events-4-2017-08-01-20-06-06-536f5c40-6893-4ee4-907d-81e4d3b09455.gz

All we need to do is parse the object name and restructure it as we see fit. In our case, we did the following (the event is an object received in the Lambda function with all the data about the object written to S3):

/*
	object key structure in the event object:
your-prefix/2017/08/01/20/event-4-2017-08-01-20-06-06-536f5c40-6893-4ee4-907d-81e4d3b09455.gz
	*/

let key_parts = event.Records[0].s3.object.key.split('/'); 

let event_type = key_parts[0];
let date = key_parts[1] + '-' + key_parts[2] + '-' + key_parts[3];
let hour = key_parts[4];
if (hour.indexOf('0') == 0) {
 		hour = parseInt(hour, 10) + '';
}
    
let parts1 = key_parts[5].split('-');
let minute = parts1[7];
if (minute.indexOf('0') == 0) {
        minute = parseInt(minute, 10) + '';
}

Now, we can redistribute the file to the two destinations we need—one for the minute processing task and the other for hourly aggregation:

    copyObjectToHourlyFolder(event, date, hour, minute)
        .then(copyObjectToMinuteFolder.bind(null, event, date, hour, minute))
        .then(addPartitionToSpectrum.bind(null, event, date, hour, minute))
        .then(deleteOldMinuteObjects.bind(null, event))
        .then(deleteStreamObject.bind(null, event))        
        .then(result => {
            callback(null, { message: 'done' });            
        })
        .catch(err => {
            console.error(err);
            callback(null, { message: err });            
        });

Kinesis Firehose stores the data in a temporary folder. We copy the object to another folder that holds the data for the last processed minute. This folder is connected to a small Redshift Spectrum table where the data is being processed without needing to scan a much larger dataset. We also copy the data to a folder that holds the data for the entire hour, to be later aggregated and converted to Parquet.

Because we partition the data by date and hour, we created a new partition on the Redshift Spectrum table if the processed minute is the first minute in the hour (that is, minute 0). We ran the following:

ALTER TABLE 
  spectrum.events 
ADD partition
  (date='2017-08-01', hour=0) 
  LOCATION 's3://nuviad-temp/events/2017-08-01/0/';

After the data is processed and added to the table, we delete the processed data from the temporary Kinesis Firehose storage and from the minute storage folder.

Migrating CSV to Parquet using AWS Glue and Amazon EMR

The simplest way we found to run an hourly job converting our CSV data to Parquet is using Lambda and AWS Glue (and thanks to the awesome AWS Big Data team for their help with this).

Creating AWS Glue jobs

What this simple AWS Glue script does:

  • Gets parameters for the job, date, and hour to be processed
  • Creates a Spark EMR context allowing us to run Spark code
  • Reads CSV data into a DataFrame
  • Writes the data as Parquet to the destination S3 bucket
  • Adds or modifies the Redshift Spectrum / Amazon Athena table partition for the table
import sys
import sys
from awsglue.transforms import *
from awsglue.utils import getResolvedOptions
from pyspark.context import SparkContext
from awsglue.context import GlueContext
from awsglue.job import Job
import boto3

## @params: [JOB_NAME]
args = getResolvedOptions(sys.argv, ['JOB_NAME','day_partition_key', 'hour_partition_key', 'day_partition_value', 'hour_partition_value' ])

#day_partition_key = "partition_0"
#hour_partition_key = "partition_1"
#day_partition_value = "2017-08-01"
#hour_partition_value = "0"

day_partition_key = args['day_partition_key']
hour_partition_key = args['hour_partition_key']
day_partition_value = args['day_partition_value']
hour_partition_value = args['hour_partition_value']

print("Running for " + day_partition_value + "/" + hour_partition_value)

sc = SparkContext()
glueContext = GlueContext(sc)
spark = glueContext.spark_session
job = Job(glueContext)
job.init(args['JOB_NAME'], args)

df = spark.read.option("delimiter","|").csv("s3://nuviad-temp/events/"+day_partition_value+"/"+hour_partition_value)
df.registerTempTable("data")

df1 = spark.sql("select _c0 as user_id, _c1 as campaign_id, _c2 as os, _c3 as ua, cast(_c4 as bigint) as ts, cast(_c5 as double) as billing from data")

df1.repartition(1).write.mode("overwrite").parquet("s3://nuviad-temp/parquet/"+day_partition_value+"/hour="+hour_partition_value)

client = boto3.client('athena', region_name='us-east-1')

response = client.start_query_execution(
    QueryString='alter table parquet_events add if not exists partition(' + day_partition_key + '=\'' + day_partition_value + '\',' + hour_partition_key + '=' + hour_partition_value + ')  location \'s3://nuviad-temp/parquet/' + day_partition_value + '/hour=' + hour_partition_value + '\'' ,
    QueryExecutionContext={
        'Database': 'spectrumdb'
    },
    ResultConfiguration={
        'OutputLocation': 's3://nuviad-temp/convertresults'
    }
)

response = client.start_query_execution(
    QueryString='alter table parquet_events partition(' + day_partition_key + '=\'' + day_partition_value + '\',' + hour_partition_key + '=' + hour_partition_value + ') set location \'s3://nuviad-temp/parquet/' + day_partition_value + '/hour=' + hour_partition_value + '\'' ,
    QueryExecutionContext={
        'Database': 'spectrumdb'
    },
    ResultConfiguration={
        'OutputLocation': 's3://nuviad-temp/convertresults'
    }
)

job.commit()

Note: Because Redshift Spectrum and Athena both use the AWS Glue Data Catalog, we could use the Athena client to add the partition to the table.

Here are a few words about float, decimal, and double. Using decimal proved to be more challenging than we expected, as it seems that Redshift Spectrum and Spark use them differently. Whenever we used decimal in Redshift Spectrum and in Spark, we kept getting errors, such as:

S3 Query Exception (Fetch). Task failed due to an internal error. File 'https://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/nuviad-temp/events/2017-08-01/hour=2/part-00017-48ae5b6b-906e-4875-8cde-bc36c0c6d0ca.c000.snappy.parquet has an incompatible Parquet schema for column 's3://nuviad-events/events.lat'. Column type: DECIMAL(18, 8), Parquet schema:\noptional float lat [i:4 d:1 r:0]\n (https://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/nuviad-temp/events/2017-08-01/hour=2/part-00017-48ae5b6b-906e-4875-8cde-bc36c0c6d0ca.c000.snappy.parq

We had to experiment with a few floating-point formats until we found that the only combination that worked was to define the column as double in the Spark code and float in Spectrum. This is the reason you see billing defined as float in Spectrum and double in the Spark code.

Creating a Lambda function to trigger conversion

Next, we created a simple Lambda function to trigger the AWS Glue script hourly using a simple Python code:

import boto3
import json
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
 
client = boto3.client('glue')
 
def lambda_handler(event, context):
    last_hour_date_time = datetime.now() - timedelta(hours = 1)
    day_partition_value = last_hour_date_time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d") 
    hour_partition_value = last_hour_date_time.strftime("%-H") 
    response = client.start_job_run(
    JobName='convertEventsParquetHourly',
    Arguments={
         '--day_partition_key': 'date',
         '--hour_partition_key': 'hour',
         '--day_partition_value': day_partition_value,
         '--hour_partition_value': hour_partition_value
         }
    )

Using Amazon CloudWatch Events, we trigger this function hourly. This function triggers an AWS Glue job named ‘convertEventsParquetHourly’ and runs it for the previous hour, passing job names and values of the partitions to process to AWS Glue.

Redshift Spectrum and Node.js

Our development stack is based on Node.js, which is well-suited for high-speed, light servers that need to process a huge number of transactions. However, a few limitations of the Node.js environment required us to create workarounds and use other tools to complete the process.

Node.js and Parquet

The lack of Parquet modules for Node.js required us to implement an AWS Glue/Amazon EMR process to effectively migrate data from CSV to Parquet. We would rather save directly to Parquet, but we couldn’t find an effective way to do it.

One interesting project in the works is the development of a Parquet NPM by Marc Vertes called node-parquet (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-parquet). It is not in a production state yet, but we think it would be well worth following the progress of this package.

Timestamp data type

According to the Parquet documentation, Timestamp data are stored in Parquet as 64-bit integers. However, JavaScript does not support 64-bit integers, because the native number type is a 64-bit double, giving only 53 bits of integer range.

The result is that you cannot store Timestamp correctly in Parquet using Node.js. The solution is to store Timestamp as string and cast the type to Timestamp in the query. Using this method, we did not witness any performance degradation whatsoever.

Lessons learned

You can benefit from our trial-and-error experience.

Lesson #1: Data validation is critical

As mentioned earlier, a single corrupt entry in a partition can fail queries running against this partition, especially when using Parquet, which is harder to edit than a simple CSV file. Make sure that you validate your data before scanning it with Redshift Spectrum.

Lesson #2: Structure and partition data effectively

One of the biggest benefits of using Redshift Spectrum (or Athena for that matter) is that you don’t need to keep nodes up and running all the time. You pay only for the queries you perform and only for the data scanned per query.

Keeping different permutations of your data for different queries makes a lot of sense in this case. For example, you can partition your data by date and hour to run time-based queries, and also have another set partitioned by user_id and date to run user-based queries. This results in faster and more efficient performance of your data warehouse.

Storing data in the right format

Use Parquet whenever you can. The benefits of Parquet are substantial. Faster performance, less data to scan, and much more efficient columnar format. However, it is not supported out-of-the-box by Kinesis Firehose, so you need to implement your own ETL. AWS Glue is a great option.

Creating small tables for frequent tasks

When we started using Redshift Spectrum, we saw our Amazon Redshift costs jump by hundreds of dollars per day. Then we realized that we were unnecessarily scanning a full day’s worth of data every minute. Take advantage of the ability to define multiple tables on the same S3 bucket or folder, and create temporary and small tables for frequent queries.

Lesson #3: Combine Athena and Redshift Spectrum for optimal performance

Moving to Redshift Spectrum also allowed us to take advantage of Athena as both use the AWS Glue Data Catalog. Run fast and simple queries using Athena while taking advantage of the advanced Amazon Redshift query engine for complex queries using Redshift Spectrum.

Redshift Spectrum excels when running complex queries. It can push many compute-intensive tasks, such as predicate filtering and aggregation, down to the Redshift Spectrum layer, so that queries use much less of your cluster’s processing capacity.

Lesson #4: Sort your Parquet data within the partition

We achieved another performance improvement by sorting data within the partition using sortWithinPartitions(sort_field). For example:

df.repartition(1).sortWithinPartitions("campaign_id")…

Conclusion

We were extremely pleased with using Amazon Redshift as our core data warehouse for over three years. But as our client base and volume of data grew substantially, we extended Amazon Redshift to take advantage of scalability, performance, and cost with Redshift Spectrum.

Redshift Spectrum lets us scale to virtually unlimited storage, scale compute transparently, and deliver super-fast results for our users. With Redshift Spectrum, we store data where we want at the cost we want, and have the data available for analytics when our users need it with the performance they expect.

About the Author

With 7 years of experience in the AdTech industry and 15 years in leading technology companies, Rafi Ton is the founder and CEO of NUVIAD. He enjoys exploring new technologies and putting them to use in cutting edge products and services, in the real world generating real money. Being an experienced entrepreneur, Rafi believes in practical-programming and fast adaptation of new technologies to achieve a significant market advantage.

 

 

Access Resources in a VPC from AWS CodeBuild Builds

Post Syndicated from John Pignata original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/access-resources-in-a-vpc-from-aws-codebuild-builds/

John Pignata, Startup Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services

In this blog post we’re going to discuss a new AWS CodeBuild feature that is available starting today. CodeBuild builds can now access resources in a VPC directly without these resources being exposed to the public internet. These resources include Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases, Amazon ElastiCache clusters, internal services running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon EC2 Container Service (Amazon ECS), or any service endpoints that are only reachable from within a specific VPC.

CodeBuild is a fully managed build service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy. As part of the build process, developers often require access to resources that should be isolated from the public Internet. Now CodeBuild builds can be optionally configured to have VPC connectivity and access these resources directly.

Accessing Resources in a VPC

You can configure builds to have access to a VPC when you create a CodeBuild project or you can update an existing CodeBuild project with VPC configuration attributes. Here’s how it looks in the console:

 

To configure VPC connectivity: select a VPC, one or more subnets within that VPC, and one or more VPC security groups that CodeBuild should apply when attaching to your VPC. Once configured, commands running as part of your build will be able to access resources in your VPC without transiting across the public Internet.

Use Cases

The availability of VPC connectivity from CodeBuild builds unlocks many potential uses. For example, you can:

  • Run integration tests from your build against data in an Amazon RDS instance that’s isolated on a private subnet.
  • Query data in an ElastiCache cluster directly from tests.
  • Interact with internal web services hosted on Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, or services that use internal Elastic Load Balancing.
  • Retrieve dependencies from self-hosted, internal artifact repositories such as PyPI for Python, Maven for Java, npm for Node.js, and so on.
  • Access objects in an Amazon S3 bucket configured to allow access only through a VPC endpoint.
  • Query external web services that require fixed IP addresses through the Elastic IP address of the NAT gateway associated with your subnet(s).

… and more! Your builds can now access any resource that’s hosted in your VPC without any compromise on network isolation.

Internet Connectivity

CodeBuild requires access to resources on the public Internet to successfully execute builds. At a minimum, it must be able to reach your source repository system (such as AWS CodeCommit, GitHub, Bitbucket), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to deliver build artifacts, and Amazon CloudWatch Logs to stream logs from the build process. The interface attached to your VPC will not be assigned a public IP address so to enable Internet access from your builds, you will need to set up a managed NAT Gateway or NAT instance for the subnets you configure. You must also ensure your security groups allow outbound access to these services.

IP Address Space

Each running build will be assigned an IP address from one of the subnets in your VPC that you designate for CodeBuild to use. As CodeBuild scales to meet your build volume, ensure that you select subnets with enough address space to accommodate your expected number of concurrent builds.

Service Role Permissions

CodeBuild requires new permissions in order to manage network interfaces on your VPCs. If you create a service role for your new projects, these permissions will be included in that role’s policy automatically. For existing service roles, you can edit the policy document to include the additional actions. For the full policy document to apply to your service role, see Advanced Setup in the CodeBuild documentation.

For more information, see VPC Support in the CodeBuild documentation. We hope you find the ability to access internal resources on a VPC useful in your build processes! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us through the AWS CodeBuild forum or leave a comment!

Capturing Custom, High-Resolution Metrics from Containers Using AWS Step Functions and AWS Lambda

Post Syndicated from Nathan Taber original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/capturing-custom-high-resolution-metrics-from-containers-using-aws-step-functions-and-aws-lambda/

Contributed by Trevor Sullivan, AWS Solutions Architect

When you deploy containers with Amazon ECS, are you gathering all of the key metrics so that you can correctly monitor the overall health of your ECS cluster?

By default, ECS writes metrics to Amazon CloudWatch in 5-minute increments. For complex or large services, this may not be sufficient to make scaling decisions quickly. You may want to respond immediately to changes in workload or to identify application performance problems. Last July, CloudWatch announced support for high-resolution metrics, up to a per-second basis.

These high-resolution metrics can be used to give you a clearer picture of the load and performance for your applications, containers, clusters, and hosts. In this post, I discuss how you can use AWS Step Functions, along with AWS Lambda, to cost effectively record high-resolution metrics into CloudWatch. You implement this solution using a serverless architecture, which keeps your costs low and makes it easier to troubleshoot the solution.

To show how this works, you retrieve some useful metric data from an ECS cluster running in the same AWS account and region (Oregon, us-west-2) as the Step Functions state machine and Lambda function. However, you can use this architecture to retrieve any custom application metrics from any resource in any AWS account and region.

Why Step Functions?

Step Functions enables you to orchestrate multi-step tasks in the AWS Cloud that run for any period of time, up to a year. Effectively, you’re building a blueprint for an end-to-end process. After it’s built, you can execute the process as many times as you want.

For this architecture, you gather metrics from an ECS cluster, every five seconds, and then write the metric data to CloudWatch. After your ECS cluster metrics are stored in CloudWatch, you can create CloudWatch alarms to notify you. An alarm can also trigger an automated remediation activity such as scaling ECS services, when a metric exceeds a threshold defined by you.

When you build a Step Functions state machine, you define the different states inside it as JSON objects. The bulk of the work in Step Functions is handled by the common task state, which invokes Lambda functions or Step Functions activities. There is also a built-in library of other useful states that allow you to control the execution flow of your program.

One of the most useful state types in Step Functions is the parallel state. Each parallel state in your state machine can have one or more branches, each of which is executed in parallel. Another useful state type is the wait state, which waits for a period of time before moving to the next state.

In this walkthrough, you combine these three states (parallel, wait, and task) to create a state machine that triggers a Lambda function, which then gathers metrics from your ECS cluster.

Step Functions pricing

This state machine is executed every minute, resulting in 60 executions per hour, and 1,440 executions per day. Step Functions is billed per state transition, including the Start and End state transitions, and giving you approximately 37,440 state transitions per day. To reach this number, I’m using this estimated math:

26 state transitions per-execution x 60 minutes x 24 hours

Based on current pricing, at $0.000025 per state transition, the daily cost of this metric gathering state machine would be $0.936.

Step Functions offers an indefinite 4,000 free state transitions every month. This benefit is available to all customers, not just customers who are still under the 12-month AWS Free Tier. For more information and cost example scenarios, see Step Functions pricing.

Why Lambda?

The goal is to capture metrics from an ECS cluster, and write the metric data to CloudWatch. This is a straightforward, short-running process that makes Lambda the perfect place to run your code. Lambda is one of the key services that makes up “Serverless” application architectures. It enables you to consume compute capacity only when your code is actually executing.

The process of gathering metric data from ECS and writing it to CloudWatch takes a short period of time. In fact, my average Lambda function execution time, while developing this post, is only about 250 milliseconds on average. For every five-second interval that occurs, I’m only using 1/20th of the compute time that I’d otherwise be paying for.

Lambda pricing

For billing purposes, Lambda execution time is rounded up to the nearest 100-ms interval. In general, based on the metrics that I observed during development, a 250-ms runtime would be billed at 300 ms. Here, I calculate the cost of this Lambda function executing on a daily basis.

Assuming 31 days in each month, there would be 535,680 five-second intervals (31 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 12 five-second intervals = 535,680). The Lambda function is invoked every five-second interval, by the Step Functions state machine, and runs for a 300-ms period. At current Lambda pricing, for a 128-MB function, you would be paying approximately the following:

Total compute

Total executions = 535,680
Total compute = total executions x (3 x $0.000000208 per 100 ms) = $0.334 per day

Total requests

Total requests = (535,680 / 1000000) * $0.20 per million requests = $0.11 per day

Total Lambda Cost

$0.11 requests + $0.334 compute time = $0.444 per day

Similar to Step Functions, Lambda offers an indefinite free tier. For more information, see Lambda Pricing.

Walkthrough

In the following sections, I step through the process of configuring the solution just discussed. If you follow along, at a high level, you will:

  • Configure an IAM role and policy
  • Create a Step Functions state machine to control metric gathering execution
  • Create a metric-gathering Lambda function
  • Configure a CloudWatch Events rule to trigger the state machine
  • Validate the solution

Prerequisites

You should already have an AWS account with a running ECS cluster. If you don’t have one running, you can easily deploy a Docker container on an ECS cluster using the AWS Management Console. In the example produced for this post, I use an ECS cluster running Windows Server (currently in beta), but either a Linux or Windows Server cluster works.

Create an IAM role and policy

First, create an IAM role and policy that enables Step Functions, Lambda, and CloudWatch to communicate with each other.

  • The CloudWatch Events rule needs permissions to trigger the Step Functions state machine.
  • The Step Functions state machine needs permissions to trigger the Lambda function.
  • The Lambda function needs permissions to query ECS and then write to CloudWatch Logs and metrics.

When you create the state machine, Lambda function, and CloudWatch Events rule, you assign this role to each of those resources. Upon execution, each of these resources assumes the specified role and executes using the role’s permissions.

  1. Open the IAM console.
  2. Choose Roles, create New Role.
  3. For Role Name, enter WriteMetricFromStepFunction.
  4. Choose Save.

Create the IAM role trust relationship
The trust relationship (also known as the assume role policy document) for your IAM role looks like the following JSON document. As you can see from the document, your IAM role needs to trust the Lambda, CloudWatch Events, and Step Functions services. By configuring your role to trust these services, they can assume this role and inherit the role permissions.

  1. Open the IAM console.
  2. Choose Roles and select the IAM role previously created.
  3. Choose Trust Relationships, Edit Trust Relationships.
  4. Enter the following trust policy text and choose Save.
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "lambda.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "events.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "states.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Create an IAM policy

After you’ve finished configuring your role’s trust relationship, grant the role access to the other AWS resources that make up the solution.

The IAM policy is what gives your IAM role permissions to access various resources. You must whitelist explicitly the specific resources to which your role has access, because the default IAM behavior is to deny access to any AWS resources.

I’ve tried to keep this policy document as generic as possible, without allowing permissions to be too open. If the name of your ECS cluster is different than the one in the example policy below, make sure that you update the policy document before attaching it to your IAM role. You can attach this policy as an inline policy, instead of creating the policy separately first. However, either approach is valid.

  1. Open the IAM console.
  2. Select the IAM role, and choose Permissions.
  3. Choose Add in-line policy.
  4. Choose Custom Policy and then enter the following policy. The inline policy name does not matter.
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "logs:*" ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "cloudwatch:PutMetricData" ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "states:StartExecution" ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:states:*:*:stateMachine:WriteMetricFromStepFunction"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "lambda:InvokeFunction" ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:*:*:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "ecs:Describe*" ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:ecs:*:*:cluster/ECSEsgaroth"
        }
    ]
}

Create a Step Functions state machine

In this section, you create a Step Functions state machine that invokes the metric-gathering Lambda function every five (5) seconds, for a one-minute period. If you divide a minute (60) seconds into equal parts of five-second intervals, you get 12. Based on this math, you create 12 branches, in a single parallel state, in the state machine. Each branch triggers the metric-gathering Lambda function at a different five-second marker, throughout the one-minute period. After all of the parallel branches finish executing, the Step Functions execution completes and another begins.

Follow these steps to create your Step Functions state machine:

  1. Open the Step Functions console.
  2. Choose Dashboard, Create State Machine.
  3. For State Machine Name, enter WriteMetricFromStepFunction.
  4. Enter the state machine code below into the editor. Make sure that you insert your own AWS account ID for every instance of “676655494xxx”
  5. Choose Create State Machine.
  6. Select the WriteMetricFromStepFunction IAM role that you previously created.
{
    "Comment": "Writes ECS metrics to CloudWatch every five seconds, for a one-minute period.",
    "StartAt": "ParallelMetric",
    "States": {
      "ParallelMetric": {
        "Type": "Parallel",
        "Branches": [
          {
            "StartAt": "WriteMetricLambda",
            "States": {
             	"WriteMetricLambda": {
                  "Type": "Task",
				  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
    	  {
            "StartAt": "WaitFive",
            "States": {
            	"WaitFive": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 5,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambdaFive"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambdaFive": {
                  "Type": "Task",
				  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
    	  {
            "StartAt": "WaitTen",
            "States": {
            	"WaitTen": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 10,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda10"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda10": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
    	  {
            "StartAt": "WaitFifteen",
            "States": {
            	"WaitFifteen": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 15,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda15"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda15": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait20",
            "States": {
            	"Wait20": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 20,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda20"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda20": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait25",
            "States": {
            	"Wait25": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 25,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda25"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda25": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait30",
            "States": {
            	"Wait30": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 30,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda30"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda30": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait35",
            "States": {
            	"Wait35": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 35,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda35"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda35": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait40",
            "States": {
            	"Wait40": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 40,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda40"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda40": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait45",
            "States": {
            	"Wait45": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 45,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda45"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda45": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait50",
            "States": {
            	"Wait50": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 50,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda50"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda50": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          },
          {
            "StartAt": "Wait55",
            "States": {
            	"Wait55": {
            		"Type": "Wait",
            		"Seconds": 55,
            		"Next": "WriteMetricLambda55"
          		},
             	"WriteMetricLambda55": {
                  "Type": "Task",
                  "Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:us-west-2:676655494xxx:function:WriteMetricFromStepFunction",
                  "End": true
                } 
            }
          }
        ],
        "End": true
      }
  }
}

Now you’ve got a shiny new Step Functions state machine! However, you might ask yourself, “After the state machine has been created, how does it get executed?” Before I answer that question, create the Lambda function that writes the custom metric, and then you get the end-to-end process moving.

Create a Lambda function

The meaty part of the solution is a Lambda function, written to consume the Python 3.6 runtime, that retrieves metric values from ECS, and then writes them to CloudWatch. This Lambda function is what the Step Functions state machine is triggering every five seconds, via the Task states. Key points to remember:

The Lambda function needs permission to:

  • Write CloudWatch metrics (PutMetricData API).
  • Retrieve metrics from ECS clusters (DescribeCluster API).
  • Write StdOut to CloudWatch Logs.

Boto3, the AWS SDK for Python, is included in the Lambda execution environment for Python 2.x and 3.x.

Because Lambda includes the AWS SDK, you don’t have to worry about packaging it up and uploading it to Lambda. You can focus on writing code and automatically take a dependency on boto3.

As for permissions, you’ve already created the IAM role and attached a policy to it that enables your Lambda function to access the necessary API actions. When you create your Lambda function, make sure that you select the correct IAM role, to ensure it is invoked with the correct permissions.

The following Lambda function code is generic. So how does the Lambda function know which ECS cluster to gather metrics for? Your Step Functions state machine automatically passes in its state to the Lambda function. When you create your CloudWatch Events rule, you specify a simple JSON object that passes the desired ECS cluster name into your Step Functions state machine, which then passes it to the Lambda function.

Use the following property values as you create your Lambda function:

Function Name: WriteMetricFromStepFunction
Description: This Lambda function retrieves metric values from an ECS cluster and writes them to Amazon CloudWatch.
Runtime: Python3.6
Memory: 128 MB
IAM Role: WriteMetricFromStepFunction

import boto3

def handler(event, context):
    cw = boto3.client('cloudwatch')
    ecs = boto3.client('ecs')
    print('Got boto3 client objects')
    
    Dimension = {
        'Name': 'ClusterName',
        'Value': event['ECSClusterName']
    }

    cluster = get_ecs_cluster(ecs, Dimension['Value'])
    
    cw_args = {
       'Namespace': 'ECS',
       'MetricData': [
           {
               'MetricName': 'RunningTask',
               'Dimensions': [ Dimension ],
               'Value': cluster['runningTasksCount'],
               'Unit': 'Count',
               'StorageResolution': 1
           },
           {
               'MetricName': 'PendingTask',
               'Dimensions': [ Dimension ],
               'Value': cluster['pendingTasksCount'],
               'Unit': 'Count',
               'StorageResolution': 1
           },
           {
               'MetricName': 'ActiveServices',
               'Dimensions': [ Dimension ],
               'Value': cluster['activeServicesCount'],
               'Unit': 'Count',
               'StorageResolution': 1
           },
           {
               'MetricName': 'RegisteredContainerInstances',
               'Dimensions': [ Dimension ],
               'Value': cluster['registeredContainerInstancesCount'],
               'Unit': 'Count',
               'StorageResolution': 1
           }
        ]
    }
    cw.put_metric_data(**cw_args)
    print('Finished writing metric data')
    
def get_ecs_cluster(client, cluster_name):
    cluster = client.describe_clusters(clusters = [ cluster_name ])
    print('Retrieved cluster details from ECS')
    return cluster['clusters'][0]

Create the CloudWatch Events rule

Now you’ve created an IAM role and policy, Step Functions state machine, and Lambda function. How do these components actually start communicating with each other? The final step in this process is to set up a CloudWatch Events rule that triggers your metric-gathering Step Functions state machine every minute. You have two choices for your CloudWatch Events rule expression: rate or cron. In this example, use the cron expression.

A couple key learning points from creating the CloudWatch Events rule:

  • You can specify one or more targets, of different types (for example, Lambda function, Step Functions state machine, SNS topic, and so on).
  • You’re required to specify an IAM role with permissions to trigger your target.
    NOTE: This applies only to certain types of targets, including Step Functions state machines.
  • Each target that supports IAM roles can be triggered using a different IAM role, in the same CloudWatch Events rule.
  • Optional: You can provide custom JSON that is passed to your target Step Functions state machine as input.

Follow these steps to create the CloudWatch Events rule:

  1. Open the CloudWatch console.
  2. Choose Events, Rules, Create Rule.
  3. Select Schedule, Cron Expression, and then enter the following rule:
    0/1 * * * ? *
  4. Choose Add Target, Step Functions State Machine, WriteMetricFromStepFunction.
  5. For Configure Input, select Constant (JSON Text).
  6. Enter the following JSON input, which is passed to Step Functions, while changing the cluster name accordingly:
    { "ECSClusterName": "ECSEsgaroth" }
  7. Choose Use Existing Role, WriteMetricFromStepFunction (the IAM role that you previously created).

After you’ve completed with these steps, your screen should look similar to this:

Validate the solution

Now that you have finished implementing the solution to gather high-resolution metrics from ECS, validate that it’s working properly.

  1. Open the CloudWatch console.
  2. Choose Metrics.
  3. Choose custom and select the ECS namespace.
  4. Choose the ClusterName metric dimension.

You should see your metrics listed below.

Troubleshoot configuration issues

If you aren’t receiving the expected ECS cluster metrics in CloudWatch, check for the following common configuration issues. Review the earlier procedures to make sure that the resources were properly configured.

  • The IAM role’s trust relationship is incorrectly configured.
    Make sure that the IAM role trusts Lambda, CloudWatch Events, and Step Functions in the correct region.
  • The IAM role does not have the correct policies attached to it.
    Make sure that you have copied the IAM policy correctly as an inline policy on the IAM role.
  • The CloudWatch Events rule is not triggering new Step Functions executions.
    Make sure that the target configuration on the rule has the correct Step Functions state machine and IAM role selected.
  • The Step Functions state machine is being executed, but failing part way through.
    Examine the detailed error message on the failed state within the failed Step Functions execution. It’s possible that the
  • IAM role does not have permissions to trigger the target Lambda function, that the target Lambda function may not exist, or that the Lambda function failed to complete successfully due to invalid permissions.
    Although the above list covers several different potential configuration issues, it is not comprehensive. Make sure that you understand how each service is connected to each other, how permissions are granted through IAM policies, and how IAM trust relationships work.

Conclusion

In this post, you implemented a Serverless solution to gather and record high-resolution application metrics from containers running on Amazon ECS into CloudWatch. The solution consists of a Step Functions state machine, Lambda function, CloudWatch Events rule, and an IAM role and policy. The data that you gather from this solution helps you rapidly identify issues with an ECS cluster.

To gather high-resolution metrics from any service, modify your Lambda function to gather the correct metrics from your target. If you prefer not to use Python, you can implement a Lambda function using one of the other supported runtimes, including Node.js, Java, or .NET Core. However, this post should give you the fundamental basics about capturing high-resolution metrics in CloudWatch.

If you found this post useful, or have questions, please comment below.