
Real World Serverless with theburningmonk
A podcast where we talk about real-world use of Serverless technologies from engineers who work with them day-to-day. We will discuss use cases, why they chose serverless and the pain points and challenges they face. If you want to know what it's REALLY like to work with serverless, this is the show for you.
Latest episodes

Feb 14, 2024 • 57min
#95: How Dunelm went from on-prem to serverless while going faster
In this episode, I spoke with Mark White, who is a principal engineer at Dunelm, a leading home furnishing retailer in the UK.We talked about Dunelm's journey from on-premise infrastructure to serverless and how they stayed agile while migrating their systems to this new paradigm safely.We discussed the challenges of shifting the engineering culture and habits to fit the constraints and opportunities that serverless technologies offer. And we recounted Dunelm's success and failure stories along the way.Links from the episode:Dunelm's Engineering blogEp77 Microfrontends with Luca MezzaliraUnleashing The Power Of Frontend Distributed Systems With AWSOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Dec 27, 2023 • 1h 15min
#94: Serverless Framework v4 with Austen Collins
In this episode, I spoke with Austen Collins, founder and CEO of Serverless Inc. about the upcoming release of Serverless Framework v4.We talked about the origin of the Serverless Framework and the challenges it faces. We discussed the rationale behind the upcoming changes in v4. Including the ability to easily switch between containers and Lambda functions as the deployment target, and the revenue share model for Extensions.Links from the episode:* Serverless v4 announcement post* HashiCorp's license change announcement* Ep87 with Anton Babenko on the Terraform pricing change* Ep88 with AJ Stuyvenberg on Lambda cold start mistakes* State of Serverless report 2023Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Dec 13, 2023 • 58min
#93: Building serverless AI apps with Sam Williams
Sam Williams, an AI app developer, discusses his experience of building serverless AI apps. Topics include work-life balance, living in a van, and using AI for LinkedIn and SAS landing pages. They also explore using chat GPT to write a Chrome extension and using AI for generating furnished property images in real estate. The advantages of building serverless apps, including scalability and cost-efficiency, are also discussed.

Dec 6, 2023 • 53min
#92 - Rise of the AI Engineer with Shawn Wang
Shawn Wang, the coined term 'AI Engineer,' talks about the evolution of software development, the rise of AI engineers, AGI, and his 'smol-developer' project that facilitates quick project bootstrapping using prompt engineering.

Nov 29, 2023 • 51min
#91: DevOps Reimagined with Patrick deBois on the Future of AI and DevOps
In this episode, I spoke with Patrick deBois, who is known as the "father of DevOps" as he coined the term "DevOps" in 2009.In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the evolution of DevOps, what it means in 2023 and how it related to "Platform Engineering".We also talked about AI, how AI technologies are impacting software development, and what developers can do to prepare themselves for what is to come.Links from the episode:Patrick’s YouTube channelPatrick's Twitter profilePatrick's LinkedIn profileEp81 with Matt Carey on LangChain and testing AI applicationsBlog post on testing GenAI applicationsEp84 with Charity Majors on Observability, OTEL, and DevOpsPatrick's course on learning LLM, from dev, sec and ops perspectiveOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Nov 22, 2023 • 49min
#90: He built a hotel booking system that costs $0.82/month to run
In this episode, I spoke with Hieu Do, who is a Solution Architect at FPT Software in Vietnam. As a side project, he built a hotel booking system for a friend using entirely serverless technologies.He shared his experience and learnings from building this system and how he was able to keep the cost down. After running the system for a year, the system only costs an average of $0.82 per month and serves over 3000 users per day.There are some useful tips that everyone can apply. Such as reducing the cost of API Gateway by cutting out the OPTION requests associated with CORS. Or looking out for CloudWatch costs when using 3rd party services that poll CloudWatch data, such as NewRelic.Links from the episode:Hieu's article on running a serverless hotel booking system for a yearPuppeteerChrome Lambda LayerVendia serverless-express frameworkHieu's Linkedin profile-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

4 snips
Nov 15, 2023 • 1h
#89: Hashnode's serverless architecture with Sandro Volpicella
Sandro Volpicella, platform lead at Hashnode and co-author of AWS Fundamentals, discusses the architecture of Hashnode's serverless blogging platform, including its caching strategy and SWR approach. The podcast also covers the use of a regular database instead of a real-time database, the bottom and top layer of Hashnode's serverless architecture, and considerations for MongoDB.

Nov 8, 2023 • 54min
#88: Optimizing Lambda cold starts with AJ Stuyvenberg
AJ Stuyvenberg, an AWS Hero and staff engineer at Datadog, shares insights on optimizing Lambda cold starts. They discuss the gradual adoption of serverless technology, comparison of AWS services for serverless container deployment, running containers on AWS, Java's rise in serverless development, and strategies for optimizing Lambda cold starts.

Nov 1, 2023 • 40min
#87: Anton Babenko on Serverless.TF and the Terraform licensing fiasco
Anton Babenko, AWS Community Hero, discusses Serverless.TF for serverless development with Terraform and the recent Terraform licensing controversy. He shares insights on simplifying serverless application development, exploring server.tf for Terraform modules, and the impact of HashiCorp's license change. The podcast also covers the negative atmosphere on Hiker News, upcoming sessions at reinvent, and Anton's expertise in Terraform and serverless applications.

Oct 24, 2023 • 43min
#86: Enterprise CDK with Ran Isenberg
In this episode, I spoke with Ran Isenberg, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and Principal Software Architect at CyberArk. Amongst other things, we talked about platform engineering at CyberArk, how they adopted CDK and how they approach testing and tenant isolations.Links from the episode:* Ran's blog* Open positions at CyberArk* cdk-nag* Ran's AWS Lambda cookbook* See Ran speak at re:Invent, session OPN305* My approach towards serverless testing* My course on serverless testing* Episode 85 with Matt Bonig about CDK dos & don'tsYou can find Ran on X as @IsenbergRan-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0