Weekly update 40
Tags: me, weeklyupdate
Published: 2020-02-03 11:38:04

---
title: Weekly update 40
published: true
date: 2020-01-31 17:43:29 UTC
tags: Me,Weekly Update
canonical_url: https://theburningmonk.com/2020/01/weekly-update-40/
---

Hi, welcome to another weekly update.

### Learn you some Lambda best practice for great good!

I have been working hard since the last update and have published **27 lessons** so far (total of ~2 hours of content). The lessons cover all areas of performance & cost optimization, scalability, security and observability. The last batch of lessons will be made available when the course officially launch on the 13th Feb. Until then, you can still enjoy the special preorder price of just £9.99 (~$13).

**[Enroll here](https://theburningmonk.thinkific.com/courses/learn-you-some-lambda?src=weekly-update-40)**.

[![](https://theburningmonk.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_5e3460cd060c0.png)](https://theburningmonk.thinkific.com/courses/learn-you-some-lambda?src=weekly-update-40)

### New posts

[**Amazon Builders’ Library in Focus #5: static stability using availability zones**](https://lumigo.io/blog/amazon-builders-library-in-focus-5-static-stability-using-availability-zones/). I summarised [this article](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/static-stability-using-availability-zones/) by AWS senior principal engineer Becky Weiss and principal engineer Mike Furr on what they mean by static stability and why each AZ should be completely independent and how it affected the design of their systems. They also discussed the importance of isolating the data-plane operations from control-plane operations.

[**Amazon Builders’ Library in Focus #6: implementing health checks**](https://lumigo.io/blog/amazon-builders-library-in-focus-6-implementing-health-checks/). I summarised [this article](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/implementing-health-checks/) by AWS principal engineer David Yanacek on the delicate tradeoffs one have to consider when implementing a system’s health checks. It also ties into some of the concepts in #5 wrt isolating data-plane operations from control-plane operations.

### Podcasts

I met up with [Jeremy Daly](https://twitter.com/jeremy_daly) at [ServerlessDays Belfast](https://belfast.serverlessdays.io/) and we sat down and recorded another episode for his ServerlessChats podcast series. It’s about an hour long, and you can listen to it [**here**](https://www.serverlesschats.com/33).

### Talks

I delivered a new talk at the AWS Community Day Nordics in Stockholm this week. I talked about the essential open source tools that you should use as a serverless developer.

<iframe title="Essential open source tools for serverless developers" src="https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/3DHV1xZtjqJ0ZL" width="427" height="356" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;" allowfullscreen> </iframe>

  **[Essential open source tools for serverless developers](https://www.slideshare.net/theburningmonk/essential-open-source-tools-for-serverless-developers "Essential open source tools for serverless developers")** from **[Yan Cui](https://www.slideshare.net/theburningmonk)** 

### Workshops

It’s been just over 3 weeks since I announced my _European workshop tour_ (yup, that’s what I’m calling it now…). The group tickets for the **[Amsterdam workshop](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/production-ready-serverless-2-days-incl-vat-tickets-88658334465?aff=Blog)** (March 19th-20th) has sold out, but there are still a couple of early bird tickets left.

I’m also running the workshop in [**Helsinki**](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/production-ready-serverless-2-days-incl-vat-tickets-88697680149?aff=Blog) and [**Stockholm**](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/production-ready-serverless-2-days-incl-vat-tickets-88856755949?aff=Blog) in May. If you need help convincing your manager to let you go, I’ve also created an email template for you to use ;-) (thanks to _Jeremy Daly_ for the idea!)

* * *

_Dear [your manager’s name],_

_I’d like your permission to attend this 2-day serverless workshop by Yan Cui, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and has several years of experience of actually running serverless applications in production with AWS Lambda at scale._

_[insert URL of the workshop you want to attend]_

_The workshop is happening on [insert workshop date] in [insert workshop city]. Attending this workshop will be beneficial to both my personal growth and our company’s cloud knowledge in the following areas:_

- _Boost proficiency in AWS’s serverless offerings, like AWS Lambda, API Gateway, Cognito and EventBridge._
- _Learn about the latest features of AWS Lambda such as Provisioned Concurrency and Lambda Destinations and when to use them._
- _Get educated on architectural and operational best practices on topics such as CI/CD, security, testing, logging and monitoring._
- _Gain valuable hands-on experience which I can bring back to my team and apply right away._

_Here’s an estimated breakdown of costs:_

_Domestic flight:  [insert estimated flight cost]_

_Hotel (2 nights):  [insert estimated hotel cost]_

_Admission:  [insert ticket price for the workshop you want to attend]_

_Total:  [insert total]_

_Hope to hear from you soon and many thanks in advance._

_Kind regards,_

* * *

To help the community grow, I’ve also reserved a couple of diversity tickets for attendees from minority groups and students. And there’s a referral fee of €100 for every student that you refer to the workshop! Details are available on the relevant event page.

**[Find the nearest workshop to you here](https://theburningmonk.com/workshops/).**

### Thank you to my patrons

Finally, I want to give a shout out to my patrons:

_Alexis, Andre Silva, Boseok In, Dome Jantaphat, Ebru Cucen, Hrafnkell Palsson, Joe Kearney, Jon Barber, Jonathan Kosgei, Kevin Woods, Luis Gutierrez, Marko @ Serverless Life, Michael Wills, Sal DiStefano, Shawn MacIntyre, Tendies123, Will Saunders, Yinan Xue_

Thank you guys so much for your continued support!

Liked this article? Support me on Patreon and get direct help from me via a private Slack channel or 1-2-1 mentoring.

[![](https://theburningmonk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Screenshot-2019-10-19-at-11.44.09.png)](https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=905909)

 ![](https://theburningmonk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/img_5dab0c477fc72.png)

Hi, my name is **Yan Cui**. I’m an **[AWS Serverless Hero](https://aws.amazon.com/developer/community/heroes/yan-cui/)** and the author of [**Production-Ready Serverless**](https://bit.ly/production-ready-serverless). I specialise in rapidly transitioning teams to serverless and building production-ready services on AWS.

Are you struggling with serverless or need guidance on best practices? Do you want someone to review your architecture and help you avoid costly mistakes down the line? Whatever the case, I’m here to help.

You can contact me via [Email](mailto:theburningmonk.com), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/theburningmonk) and [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/theburningmonk/).

[Hire me.](https://theburningmonk.com/hire-me)

The post [Weekly update 40](https://theburningmonk.com/2020/01/weekly-update-40/) appeared first on [theburningmonk.com](https://theburningmonk.com).

 ![](http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/theburningmonk/~4/P3EtaV40Gb8)