AWS Lambda - How to stop retries when there is a failure

Question

I know that when a Lambda function fails (for example when there is a time out), it tries to run the function 3 more times again. Is there any way to avoid this behavior? I\

Answer 1

I achieved this by placing the following line of code:

callback(null, "message");

Into my function such as the below update to DynamoDB. When there is an error, rather than retrying for hours on end, this callback outside of the if / else will stop the retries.

dynamodb.updateItem(params, function(err, data){
                 if (err) {
                    console.log(err)
                    callback(err, data)
            } else {
                 console.log(data);
                 callback(null, data);
           }
           callback(null, "message");
        });

Answer 2

If you call the function asynchronously, in the Console, under Function configuration, you can modify the Retry attempts:

Answer 3

As mentioned before, this feature has been added lately. To achieve this behaviour using cloudformation you will need both an AWS::Lambda::Version and AWS::Lambda::EventInvokeConfig:

  MyLambda:
    Type: AWS::Serverless::Function
    Properties:
      FunctionName: my-lambda-dev
      ...

  MyLambdaVersion:
    Type: AWS::Lambda::Version
    Properties:
      FunctionName: !Ref MyLambda

  MyLambdaAsyncConfig:
    Type: AWS::Lambda::EventInvokeConfig
    Properties:
      FunctionName: !Ref MyLambda
      MaximumRetryAttempts: 0
      Qualifier: !GetAtt MyLambdaVersion.Version