TCP #63: Lambda Cold Start Mitigation in Production
Advanced Strategies Beyond the Basic Advice
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After implementing our cold start mitigation framework across 280+ Lambda functions processing 2.3 billion invocations monthly, we cut our p99 latency from 6.2 seconds to just 187ms without adding unnecessary concurrency costs.
This newsletter outlines the comprehensive approach that achieved these results - with implementation details most AWS "experts" get wrong.
Understanding The Real Cold Start Culprits
Before attempting to optimize, we need to identify what's actually causing our cold starts.
Our analysis across hundreds of functions revealed five distinct categories, each requiring different mitigation strategies:
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