From dedicated Workers to Serverless Workers: Migrating Temporal Workflows to AWS Lambda

Temporal Cloud Serverless Workers on AWS Lambda provide an on-demand alternative to long-lived Kubernetes Workers for bursty, unpredictable, or low-volume workloads, while dedicated Workers remain preferable for steady, high-throughput traffic. Serverless Workers use the same Temporal SDK, Workflow, and Activity code but are invoked by Temporal’s Worker Controller Instance when Task Queue demand or backlog requires capacity, then shut down after work drains; each invocation creates a new client connection and Lambda limits individual Activity execution to at most 15 minutes, though Workflows can span unlimited invocations. Migrating involves adding a Lambda handler, configuring Worker Versioning with PINNED or AUTO_UPGRADE behavior, carefully coordinating graceful shutdown, deadline buffer, and Lambda timeout settings for long Activities, packaging Linux-compatible dependencies within Lambda’s size limits, and creating separate IAM roles for Lambda execution and Temporal Cloud invocation. The process also includes deploying and versioning the function, registering and activating its Worker Deployment Version, and testing through direct Lambda invocations and real Workflow runs. Production deployments should use immutable, qualified Lambda version ARNs to avoid replay and determinism risks, and organizations can adopt serverless gradually, run it alongside dedicated Workers, or use it as overflow capacity on the same Task Queue.

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