We’ll go over what AWS Step Functions are, their advantages, features, applications, and AWS Step Function cost in this article.
What is AWS Step Functions?
Workflows, also known as State machines, can be created with AWS Step Functions to build distributed applications, automate procedures, orchestrate microservices, and develop pipelines for data and machine learning.
The foundation of Step Functions is state machines and tasks. Workflows are a sequence of event-driven stages that state machines are referred to as in Step Functions. A workflow’s individual steps are referred to as states. A task state, for instance, denotes a unit of work carried out by another AWS service, like contacting another AWS service or API. In Step Functions, executions are instances of workflows carrying out tasks.
Activities, which are workers that exist outside of Step Functions, can also be used to complete the tasks in your state machine.
The workflow of your application may be seen, modified, and debugged in the Step Functions console. To ensure that your application operates as intended and in the correct order, you can check the status of each stage in your workflow.
Step Functions can access AWS services, like Lambda, to carry out activities, depending on your use case. Step Functions can be used to develop extract, convert, and load workflows by controlling AWS services like AWS Glue. For applications that need human involvement, you can also design lengthy, automated workflows.
Advantages of Step Functions
Fast Onboarding
Workflow Studio, a straightforward drag-and-drop interface for expressing intricate business logic, allows you to get started designing rapidly.
Easy Automation
Workflows across more than 220 AWS services can be automated without requiring code maintenance.
Analyse data as needed
Utilise code to run large-scale parallel operations and analyse data as needed.
Visualisation of event-driven architecture
Create robust workflows for event-driven architectures by visualising them.
How it works?
AWS services can be used to build distributed applications, automate procedures, orchestrate microservices, and build data and machine learning (ML) pipelines with the aid of Step Functions, a visual workflow tool.
Features of AWS Step Functions
Why Does AWS Step Work?
For contemporary applications, serverless orchestration is offered by AWS Step Functions. By dividing a workflow into several parts, adding flow logic, and monitoring inputs and outputs in between, orchestration centrally oversees the process.
In addition to keeping track of the precise workflow step your application is in and storing an event log of data sent between application components, Step Functions keeps track of your application’s state while it runs. This implies that your application can continue exactly where it left off in the event that networks fail or components hang.
Step Functions allows you to define and manage your application’s workflow apart from its business logic, which speeds up and simplifies application development. Modifications to one have no effect on the other.
Workflows may be readily updated and modified in a single location, saving you the trouble of managing, keeping an eye on, and maintaining several point-to-point integrations. Additionally, integrating with almost any SaaS application straight from your workflows is simple.
By removing unnecessary code from your functions and containers, Step Functions makes your applications easier to maintain, more robust, and quicker to build.
Use Cases for AWS Step Functions
With AWS Step Functions, what can be automated? Below are some of the most well-liked use cases to get you inspired.
You can use AWS Step Functions to implement a business process as a workflow consisting of a number of phases.
Once a step or the workflow as a whole has finished running, the various steps can publish a message to a queue, update a database like DynamoDB, or call a Lambda function or container with some business logic.
There are two workflow options for AWS Step Functions: Standard and Express. Standard is the best option if you anticipate that a single execution of your business process will take more than five minutes. ETL orchestration pipelines and workflows where each step waits for a human response before proceeding to the next are two instances of lengthy processes.
Workflows that take less than five minutes are best suited for express workflows, which are best suited when you want a high execution volume, such as 100,000 per second. Standard and Express can be used separately or in combination, with a larger Standard process starting several shorter Express workflows that run concurrently.
| Standard workflows | Express workflows |
|---|---|
| 2,000 per second execution rate | 100,000 per second execution rate |
| 4,000 per second state transition rate | Nearly unlimited state transition rate |
| Priced by state transition | Priced by number and duration of executions |
| Show execution history and visual debugging | Show execution history and visual debugging based on log level |
| See execution history in Step Functions | Send execution history to CloudWatch |
| Support integrations with all services.Support optimized integrations with some services. | Support integrations with all services. |
| Support Request Response pattern for all servicesSupport Run a Job and/or Wait for Callback patterns in specific services (see following section for details) | Support Request Response pattern for all services |
AWS Step Function Cost
You only pay for the services you utilise using AWS Step Functions. Standard Workflows and Express Workflows are the two types of workflows available in Step Functions.
Amazon Step Functions Pricing for Standard Workflows
You pay for state transitions needed to run your application.
Step Functions counts state transitions for each process step. You pay for all state machine transitions, including retries.
Step Functions offers 4,000 monthly state transitions for free. All charges are daily metered and billed monthly.
Pricing for AWS Step Functions Express Workflows
Pay-per-use with Step Functions Express Workflows. Your workflow’s requests and length determine your pricing.
Step Functions Express Workflows counts requests when it starts a workflow and charges you for the total number of requests across all workflows. This includes console tests.
Duration is computed from the start of your process to the end, rounded up to the nearest 100ms, and memory utilised, billed in 64-MB chunks.
Memory usage depends on workflow definition size, map or parallel states, and execution (payload) data.
Additional fees
If your application workflow uses other AWS services or transports data, you may pay additional charges. Using an AWS Lambda function in your application workflow will cost you per request and per duration. Step Functions interfaces with AWS PrivateLink and Amazon VPC Lattice to invoke endpoints in private networks like VPC. Invocations to private endpoints using AWS PrivateLink and Amazon VPC Lattice will incur typical data transfer charges.
For more details click on AWS Step Functions Standard Workflows pricing details.
