Serverless Cold Starts: Optimization Techniques for Production Apps

Serverless computing offers unparalleled scalability, but "cold starts" can introduce unacceptable latency for performance-critical applications.

The Mechanics of Latency

A cold start occurs when the cloud provider has to provision a new container to handle an execution request. This involves spinning up the runtime environment and loading your application code, which can take anywhere from 200ms to several seconds.

How to Optimize

Engineers at INFI IT recommend several advanced techniques to minimize this delay:

• Provisioned Concurrency: Keeping a set number of functions "warm" and ready to respond instantly.
• Dependency Shaking: Reducing the size of your deployment package to speed up loading times.
• Runtime Selection: Using compiled languages like Go or Rust which often start faster than heavy Java or Python environments.