4x Deployments with CF Express Mode 🚀☁️ #106

SQS turns 20 and AWS brings in Sandboxes

Jul 15, 2026

In the previous issue, MicroVMs makes a debut 🚀☁️ #105 with a focus on Lambda MicroVMs.

AWS CloudFormation Express mode directly solves these serverless bottlenecks by redefining when a deployment is considered complete. In a traditional workflow, you are forced to wait for extended stabilization checks before your terminal is freed up. Express mode completely bypasses this waiting period by completing the deployment the exact millisecond the resource configuration is successfully applied, allowing the actual provisioning to finish silently in the background. For an event-driven setup, this shifts your execution speed into overdrive: creating an SQS queue drops from over a minute to under 10 seconds, while the notorious 20-to-30-minute delay required to tear down a VPC-attached Lambda function is completely obliterated down to less than 10 seconds.

This dramatic acceleration provides the crucial foundation needed for both rapid incremental building and modern, AI-assisted development. Because you can chain successive updates together without waiting, Express mode features built-in automated retries to handle any transient timing issues between dependent resources—like a Lambda function mapping to an SQS queue that is still stabilizing in the background. This introduces the sub-minute feedback loops that human developers need to maintain their flow state and autonomous AI tools like Kiro require to rapidly deploy, test, and self-correct your architecture in near real-time.

🚀 AWSome content to learn from

Luc van Donkersgoed explains how he replaced my GitHub runners with Lambda MicroVMs, and maybe you should too making a good case of Lambda MicroVMs v/s CodeBuild.

Marko Milosavljevic gets into the internals of the fan-out pattern with SNS, SQS, and Kinesis and specifically how you can also leverage Kinesis’ enhanced fan-out feature.

Lee Gilmore puts together a blog on architecting a scalable, reliable email service with EventBrige, SQS, SES, and MJML on Serverless with the problem statement and the walkthrough of the solution.

Jatin Mehrotra shares how he built a PR preview environment with AWS Lambda MicroVMs and have a dedicated VM for testing the PR and also terminates the VM on PR close.

Anthony Virtuoso brings in benchmarking Cloudflare containers v/s Lambda MicroVMs that talks about how each of them are good in it’s own but the if latency is a concern, MicroVM is the answer!

Aliha Iftikhar brings about the power of Serverless Architecture: Scaling AI-Driven image workflows on AWS for thousands of daily requests with Lambda, Step Functions.

Yuuki Yamashita explains what to choose for AWS Serverless Compute in 2026 as App Runner is winding down with the choices of Lambda and evolution of Lambda along with comparing it with ECS Express Mode.

⚒️ What's happening with Serverless tools, samples, and projects

Wong Chun Yin Cyrus has built LiteLLM AWS Lambda MicroVMs Serverless.

Jason Smith has launched s8sskills (Agentic Skills for Serverless).

Neeraj Chand builds out a browser IDE with AWS Lambda MicroVMs.

Sid Palas publishes deputies.

Kenta Goto publishes cdk-multi-region-stack.

Ryan Brown publishes microtty.

Jason Aricheta publishes Lambda MicroVM GitHub Runner.

🎙️ Podcasts, videos, and live-streams

On Yells At Cloud, Gunnar Grosch, Danielle Heberling, AJ Stuyvenberg, Matthew Bonig, and Chris Williams debut with generally available.

On the Serverless Office Hours, Ayush Kulkarni and Ricardo Marques join Julian Wood and Eric Johnson for a dive into AWS Lambda MicroVMs.

At the AWS London Ontario Meetup, Ajay Dhungel dives into AWS Lambda MicroVMs.

Yeshwanth L M shares on How to Build and Run a Firecracker AWS Lambda MicroVM from Scratch | How to Create Lambda MicroVMs?

🗓️ Mark your calendars

Tech Harate on July 27th, 2026.

AWS Community Days are happening -

ACD Ahmedabad - DevOps Edition on July 25th, 2026.

ACD Ottawa on August 21st and 22nd, 2026.
ACD Singapore on August 22nd, 2026.
ACD Manila on August 22nd and 23rd, 2026.
ACD Poland on September 8th, 2026.
ACD Sri Lanka on September 11th, 2026.
ACD DACH on September 15th, 2026.
ACD NL on September 23rd, 2026.
ACD Malaysia on September 26th, 2026. CFP is currently open.
ACD DMV on October 9th, 2026. CFP is currently open until August 15th, 2026.
ACD Armenia on October 10th, 2026. CFP is currently open until July 20th, 2026.
ACD South Florida on October 14th, 2026. CFP is currently open until August 15th, 2026.
ACD Australia on October 16th, 2026. CFP is currently open until August 16th, 2026.
ACD Mumbai on October 17th, 2026.
ACD Adria on October 22nd, 2026.