I gave a presentation titled "I didn't understand Lambda MicroVMs at all, so I tried thinking from scratch about where to use them" #jawsugibaraki #jawsug

I gave a presentation titled "I didn't understand Lambda MicroVMs at all, so I tried thinking from scratch about where to use them" #jawsugibaraki #jawsug

I presented at a JAWS-UG Ibaraki LT event about use cases for AWS Lambda MicroVMs. I organized the confusing service specs and found clarity on its strengths and limitations.
2026.09.30

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Hello, I'm Tsukuboshi (tsukuboshi0755)!

At the JAWS-UG Ibaraki #17 Autumn Favorite AWS Services LT Festival! held on 2026/9/30, I gave an LT talk titled "Lambda MicroVMs Were Too Confusing, So I Thought From Scratch About Where to Use Them"!

In this article, I'd like to share my presentation materials and provide supplementary notes on the talk content!

What is JAWS-UG Ibaraki?

It's a volunteer community that holds AWS-centered networking events and study sessions in Ibaraki on a non-profit basis.

This time it was a festival-style LT event where speakers each talked about their favorite AWS services.

https://jawsug-ibaraki.connpass.com/

LT Materials

Supplementary Notes

In the LT, I organized the use cases for AWS Lambda MicroVMs around the axis of "whether you need a disposable isolated environment that can be stopped and resumed while retaining state."

AWS Lambda MicroVMs have VM-level isolation via Firecracker, and can be suspended while retaining memory and disk state during idle periods.

On the other hand, since a single MicroVM terminates after a maximum of 8 hours including time spent suspended, it's designed not for always-on workloads, but rather for use cases where VMs are provisioned and discarded per session or job.

Resource limits and authentication/network specifications are summarized in the following official documentation.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/lambda-microvms-guide.html

If you want to get hands-on and verify the behavior yourself, the following articles are also helpful.

https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/aws-lambda-microvms-idle-policy-auto-suspend-resume-terminate/

https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/github-actions-self-hosted-runner-on-lambda-microvms/

References

https://firecracker-microvm.github.io/

https://dev.classmethod.jp/articles/devio2021-awslambda-under-the-food/

https://github.com/aws-samples/sample-lambda-microvm-claude-managed-agents

Finally

This time, I introduced the content of my LT talk about where to use AWS Lambda MicroVMs.

Starting from a state of complete confusion, by laying out the specifications one by one, the differences from Lambda functions and the boundary between suitable and unsuitable use cases became clear.
While it's a service that requires choosing the right use case, I think it's a powerful service when the conditions align.

Please consider adding AWS Lambda MicroVMs as a candidate whenever you need a disposable isolated environment that can retain state!

That's all from Tsukuboshi (tsukuboshi0755)!

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