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What event sources can trigger a Lambda function to execute, and how does this support building event driven applications? What is a cold start in Lambda, and what strategies help reduce its impact on application performance? How does Lambda concurrency work, and what is the difference between reserved concurrency and the account level concurrency limit? How do Lambda layers help share common code and dependencies across multiple functions without duplicating that code in every deployment package? How does Lambda support running functions within a VPC, and what performance considerations does this introduce compared to functions that do not need VPC access? How should an organization approach designing observability and error handling for a complex, multi function serverless architecture built on Lambda?
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What is AWS Lambda and how does the serverless computing model differ from traditional server based applications?

Beginner

Answer

AWS Lambda lets you run code without provisioning or managing any servers at all, automatically scaling from handling a single request to thousands of concurrent requests and back down again, charging you only for the exact compute time your code actually consumes, which contrasts sharply with traditional server based applications where you must provision, patch, and pay for server capacity whether or not it is actively being used.
aws lambda create-function --function-name my-function --runtime python3.12 --role arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/lambda-role --handler app.handler --zip-file fileb://function.zip
Real-world example A company processes uploaded images using a Lambda function that only runs, and only incurs cost, at the exact moment a new image is uploaded, rather than paying for a continuously running server sitting idle between uploads.

Common follow-ups: What programming languages does Lambda support?;What is the maximum execution time allowed for a single Lambda function invocation?

Amazon API Gateway;Amazon S3 & Storage
All 7 Lambda & Serverless questions