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Module 5: AWS Compute & Serverless

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This module covers the modern compute landscape on AWS — from serverless functions to container orchestration. You will learn to build event-driven architectures and scalable APIs without managing servers.

Prerequisites

Basic AWS knowledge (EC2, IAM, S3 from Module 4). Familiarity with Docker containers and REST APIs is helpful but not required.

Module Objectives

Build and deploy AWS Lambda functions with various triggers and configurations
Run containerized applications on ECS Fargate and EKS
Design REST APIs with API Gateway and orchestrate workflows with Step Functions
Deploy a full serverless API with Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB

Topics

Lesson	Topics Covered
AWS Lambda	Triggers, runtimes, versions, aliases, cold starts, VPC integration, reserved concurrency, best practices
Containers on AWS	ECS (Fargate vs EC2), EKS, ECR, task definitions, services, auto scaling
API Gateway & Step Functions	REST/HTTP/WebSocket APIs, usage plans, API keys, Step Functions workflows, error handling
Serverless Project	Serverless API with Lambda + API Gateway + DynamoDB

Key AWS CLI Commands

# Invoke a Lambda function
aws lambda invoke --function-name my-function --payload '{"key":"value"}' response.json

# List ECS clusters
aws ecs list-clusters

# List API Gateway APIs
aws apigateway get-rest-apis

Tip

Use sam init (AWS SAM CLI) to quickly scaffold serverless projects. SAM provides local testing with sam local invoke before deploying to AWS.

Estimated Time

Lessons: 5 hours
Hands-on labs: 4 hours
Module project: 4 hours