Force Discard AWS Lambda Container

Question

How to manually forcefully discard a aws lambda function in the cluster using aws console or aws cli for development and testing purposes ?

Answer 1

If you're using the UI, then a simple way to do this is to add or alter an environment variable on the function configuration page.

When you click "Save" the function will be reloaded.

Note: this won't work if you're using the versioned functions feature.

Answer 2

If you redeploy the function it'll terminate all existing containers. It could be as simple as assigning the current date/time to the description of the Lambda function and redeploying. This will allow you to redeploy as many times as you need because something is unique and it will tear down all existing containers each time you do the deployment.

With that said, Lambda functions are supposed to be stateless. You should keep that in mind when you write your code (eg. avoid using global variables, use random file names if creating something temp, etc). From the sounds of things, I think you might have an issue with your design if you require the Lambda container to be torn down.