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This architecture pattern is the definitive solution for running full-featured, high-performance gRPC services on AWS, leveraging dedicated container services (ECS/EKS) and the Application Load Balancer (ALB) for robust HTTP/2 transport.
The question of whether AWS API Gateway supports gRPC is crucial for architects planning microservices deployments on AWS. The answer, which has evolved, is a nuanced Yes, but primarily through the HTTP API and only for unary calls, while traditional gRPC streaming requires alternative AWS services.
While gRPC is the gold standard for high-performance microservices, integrating it directly with AWS Lambda—a serverless, ephemeral computing service—presents fundamental architectural mismatches. Lambda is designed for short, stateless execution, whereas gRPC is optimized for persistent, long-lived connections over HTTP/2.
This article details the challenges of this integration and the primary methods developers use to make gRPC work in a serverless environment.
When building an application on AWS, especially using Lambda and other serverless components, the landscape for inter-service communication shifts dramatically compared to traditional VM-based or containerized microservices where gRPC shines.
While gRPC is possible to use with AWS Lambda (via HTTP/2 support in API Gateway or Application Load Balancer), the complexity of managing the gRPC framework within the Lambda execution environment often makes it non-ideal.
The fundamental shift in AWS is moving from synchronous RPC (Remote Procedure Call) patterns to more flexible Asynchronous Event-Driven and Managed API patterns.
gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Calls) is a modern, high-performance, open-source framework developed by Google that enables communication between services. It relies on Protocol Buffers (protobuf) for its Interface Definition Language (IDL) and uses HTTP/2 for transport.
It has become the standard choice for communication in microservices and polyglot (multi-language) environments where performance, efficiency, and strong typing are critical.