AWS announced AWS Lambda Extensions back in October 2020 and I wrote extensively about it at the time – what it is, how it works, and why you should care. In short, Lambda Extensions allow operational tools to integrate with your Lambda functions and run either in-process alongside your code or in a separate process. To better understand the problems they solve and their use cases, please read my previous article.

This piece was originally three different blogs but is now one. In this piece, we lay out three ways you can improve your AWS Lambda performance. So much has been written about Lambda cold starts. It’s easily one of the most talked-about and yet, misunderstood topics when it comes to Lambda. Depending on who you talk to, you will likely get different advice on how best to reduce cold starts.