Amazon Elasticache

Hands-On

Demo

In this demo, we will:

  1. Create an Aurora Serverless v2 MySQL cluster with sample product data
  2. Deploy ElastiCache Serverless for Valkey with IAM authentication
  3. Configure VPC networking and security groups for secure communication
  4. Create VPC endpoints for Lambda to access AWS services
  5. Build and deploy a Lambda function implementing cache-aside pattern using the official Glide client
  6. Test the complete system and observe performance improvements
  7. Monitor cache metrics and validate the caching behavior
  8. Clean up all resources

Agenda

Visual Representation

Step 1: Create Aurora Serverless v2 Database

Create Aurora database

Engine version

aurora-demo
admin

Credentials management

Instance configuration

0.5
1

Availability & durability

Connectivity

VPC security group name

aurora-demo-sg
3306

Read replica write forwarding

Monitoring

Additional configuration

mydb

Backup

Create database

Secrets ARN

Step 2: Load Sample Data into Aurora

Load Sample Data into Aurora

AWS_PAGER=""
DB_ARN="
SECRET_ARN='
# Create Database if not exists
aws rds-data execute-statement \
  --resource-arn "$DB_ARN" \
  --secret-arn "$SECRET_ARN" \
  --sql "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS mydb;" \
  --database "mysql"
# Create the products table
aws rds-data execute-statement \
  --resource-arn "$DB_ARN" \
  --secret-arn "$SECRET_ARN" \
  --sql "CREATE TABLE products(id INT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(50), price DECIMAL(6,2));" \
  --database "mydb"
# Insert sample data
for i in {1..20}; do
  aws rds-data execute-statement \
    --resource-arn "$DB_ARN" \
    --secret-arn "$SECRET_ARN" \
    --sql "INSERT INTO products VALUES($i, CONCAT('Widget-', $i), ROUND(RAND()*100,2));" \
    --database "mydb"
done
# Verify data creation
aws rds-data execute-statement \
  --resource-arn "$DB_ARN" \
  --secret-arn "$SECRET_ARN" \
  --sql "SELECT COUNT(*) as product_count FROM products;" \
  --database "mydb"

Load Sample Data into Aurora

Step 3: Create ElastiCache Serverless for Valkey

Create Valkey cache

Settings

elasticache-valkey-demo

Connectivity

Security

Backup

Tags

elasticache-valkey-demo

Step 4: Configure VPC Security Groups

Open ports in 2 Security Groups

Modify Aurora Security Group 

Add Traffic from Elasticache Group 

Final Settings

Modify Elasticache Security Group = default 

Add 6379 port or It Should be All Traffic 

Final Settings 

Step 5: Create VPC Endpoints for Lambda

VPC Endpoints

# Get your VPC ID
VPC_ID=$(aws ec2 describe-vpcs --filters \
"Name=is-default,Values=true" \
--query 'Vpcs[0].VpcId' --output text)

# Get subnet IDs
SUBNET_IDS=$(aws ec2 describe-subnets \
--filters "Name=vpc-id,Values=$VPC_ID" \
--query 'Subnets[*].SubnetId' --output text | tr '\t' ' ')

Create VPC Endpoints

# Create VPC endpoint for RDS Data API
aws ec2 create-vpc-endpoint \
  --vpc-id $VPC_ID \
  --service-name com.amazonaws.us-east-1.rds-data \
  --subnet-ids $SUBNET_IDS \
  --security-group-ids $(aws ec2 describe-security-groups \
  --filters "Name=group-name,Values=default" \
  --query 'SecurityGroups[0].GroupId' --output text) \
  --vpc-endpoint-type Interface
# Create VPC endpoint for Secrets Manager
aws ec2 create-vpc-endpoint \
  --vpc-id $VPC_ID \
  --service-name com.amazonaws.us-east-1.secretsmanager \
  --subnet-ids $SUBNET_IDS \
  --security-group-ids $(aws ec2 describe-security-groups \
  --filters "Name=group-name,Values=default" \
  --query 'SecurityGroups[0].GroupId' --output text) \
  --vpc-endpoint-type Interface

VPC Endpoints

Step 6: Create Lambda Execution Role

Create IAM Role 

Add permissions

AWSLambdaVPCAccessExecutionRole
AmazonRDSDataFullAccess

Add permissions

SecretsManagerReadWrite

Add permissions

AmazonElastiCacheFullAccess

Add permissions

Name, review, and create

lambda-valkey-role

Step 1: Select trusted entities

Step 2: Add permissions

Step 3: Add tags

lambda-valkey-role

Step 7: Build and Deploy Lambda Function

# Install Python 3.13 binaries
sudo yum update -y
sudo yum install -y python3.13 python3.13-pip zip

# Verify installation
python3.13 --version
pip3.13 --version

AWS CloudShell

mkdir lambda_build && cd lambda_build

cat > lambda_function.py << EOF
FILE CONTENTS
EOF
python3.13 -m pip install --target . valkey-glide boto3
zip -r function.zip . -x function.zip

Create the Zip

ls -lh function.zip

Download the package from CloudShell:

  • In CloudShell, click Actions → Download file
  • Enter:  ~/lambda_build/function.zip  
~/lambda_build/function.zip

Download the zip file

Create Lambda function

Change default execution role

Additional configurations

Security groups

Upload zip file

Upload a zip file

Edit basic settings

512

Timeout = 1 min  

VALKEY_ENDPOINT
DB_ARN
SECRET_ARN

Edit environment variables

Step 8: Test the Cache-Aside Pattern

Test

{
  "id": 5
}
test-cache-miss

Fetched from Database

Fetched from Cache

Elasticache Monitoring

Clean Up

Delete Lambda Function

Delete Elasticache Valkey Cache

Delete VPC Endpoints

# List and delete VPC endpoints
aws ec2 describe-vpc-endpoints \
--query 'VpcEndpoints[?ServiceName==`com.amazonaws.us-east-1.rds-data`].VpcEndpointId' \
--output text | xargs -I {} aws ec2 delete-vpc-endpoints --vpc-endpoint-id {}
aws ec2 describe-vpc-endpoints \
--query 'VpcEndpoints[?ServiceName==`com.amazonaws.us-east-1.secretsmanager`].VpcEndpointId' \
--output text | xargs -I {} aws ec2 delete-vpc-endpoints --vpc-endpoint-id {}

Endpoints

Delete Aurora Database Instance

delete me

Delete Lambda Execution Role

lambda-valkey-role

Delete Aurora Database

delete me

Delete Security Groups

delete

Optional - Delete VPC

Delete Network interfaces

Optional - Delete VPC

delete default vpc

Create default VPC

Create default VPC

Delete Secret

🙏

Thanks

for

Watching