AWS Lambda is still my platform of choice
With the recent security patches that PHP underwent, as well as the *sshole bug in SSH on musl-based Linux, I have been re-evaluating my desire to transition services away from AWS Lambda.
Some months ago, I proposed to our company that we move our (public) API services written in PHP to AWS Fargate, using RoadRunner as the server. My thinking was:
- PHP is not a natively supported runtime on AWS Lambda.
- While Bref is a great tool to make it feel native, a more traditional execution model might suit us better.
- RoadRunner has worker mode, so any performance difference would be negligible.
But in light of these recent security events, I think Lambda is almost certainly the better choice. There are three reasons for this:
- Lambda micro vms are read-only by default. The only writable space is
/tmpand its contents are lost every time a new Lambda is warmed. - Lambda has the absolute minimum tooling available. Every Lambda function is running in a Firecracker micro with no SSH and very little to access.
- Lambda processes die quickly. The maximum lifespan for a Lambda vm is around 60 minutes, and idle vms are usually pruned within 10 minutes.
With this in mind, we're going to lean into AWS Lambda functions even more than we already do. They cost almost nothing and the inherent security is a huge benefit.