Lambda Function Configuration and Performance

RAM Configuration

• Default RAM: 128 MB
• Maximum RAM: 10 GB
• Increments: 1 MB
• More RAM = More vCPU credits
• At 1,792 MB RAM, you get 1 full vCPU
• Beyond 1,792 MB, multi-threading is needed to utilize additional vCPUs
• Increase RAM for CPU-bound (computation-heavy) applications to improve performance

Timeout Settings

• Default timeout: 3 seconds
• Maximum timeout: 900 seconds (15 minutes)
• Use cases longer than 15 minutes should consider Fargate, ECS, or EC2

Execution Context

• Maintains temporary runtime environment
• Reuses database connections, HTTP clients, SDK clients
• Includes /tmp directory for file storage across executions

Code Optimization

• Bad Example: Initializing database connection inside the handler function
• Best Practice: Initialize expensive operations outside the handler for reuse