Delivering scalable, serverless APIs with SmartBear and AWS
Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda are widely used for deploying and running scalable APIs or applications in the cloud. While they offer powerful capabilities for deploying and scaling APIs, designing the API or maintaining visibility into performance and reliability can be challenging without the right tools in place. Integrating SmartBear API Hub for Design with Amazon CloudWatch helps solve this by providing deep, centralized insight into how APIs behave at every stage of their lifecycle, from design, creation, to deployment.
CloudWatch enhances observability by capturing real-time metrics, logs, and events across API Gateway and Lambda events. It allows teams to track execution patterns, monitor key indicators such as latency, error rates, and request volume, allowing teams to respond quickly to unexpected behavior. Custom dashboards and alerts make it easier to stay informed and take proactive action before minor issues escalate into major outages.
API Hub for Design serves as the centralized repository for defining, managing, and reusing RESTful and EventDriven APIs, the combination with CloudWatch creates a seamless feedback loop between development and operations. Teams can design and deploy APIs while instantly gaining access to live performance data, improving response times, reducing downtime, and strengthening overall API governance.
By enabling this workflow, teams elevate their observability strategy and unlock a more efficient, transparent, and resilient approach to managing APIs at scale.
Before you start
Prerequisites
You will need an API Hub for Design account and an AWS account.
Design the API
Designing APIs at scale requires more than defining endpoints and data structures. It calls for consistency, reusability, and strong governance across teams and services. SmartBear API Hub for Design, built around the Swagger OpenAPI specification, provides a central workspace where teams can design APIs with clarity and control from the start.
Using API Hub for Design, teams can take advantage of shared domains to create and manage reusable components such as data models, response types, authentication schemes, and parameters. These shared elements promote consistency across APIs, accelerate development , reduce duplication, and make it easier to maintain changes over time.
Acting as a central repository for API definitions, API Hub for Design supports collaboration and discoverability while giving teams full visibility into how APIs evolve. Custom rules can be defined to enforce internal standards, validate specifications, and guide teams toward best practices automatically. This creates a natural foundation for strong governance and ensures APIs are designed with quality and compliance in mind.
By uniting design, reuse, and governance in one place, API Hub for Design helps teams build APIs that are consistent, scalable, and ready for every stage of the development lifecycle.
Build the API
API Hub goes beyond API design to support the entire API lifecycle. It also includes a fully functional developer portal that enables easy sharing, collaboration, and onboarding across teams and partners. Built-in features like API discoverability make it simple to locate and understand available services across the organization. It also offers end-to-end API testing to validate functionality and performance, along with dynamic contract testing to ensure that APIs behave as expected across units, environments and integrations. This unified approach helps teams deliver more reliable APIs and applications at high velocity.
If you have an API Hub account, sign in here, or sign up for a free trial.
Designing in API Hub offers flexibility for teams to start from scratch, use a prebuilt template, or import existing specifications. For even faster design, APIs can be generated automatically using SmartBear HaloAI, which helps translate plain language or existing logic into a structured OpenAPI definition. This range of options accelerates the design process while ensuring consistency and clarity from the beginning.
Once the API is created, the next step is enhancing the design and expanding the feature set. Built-in Spectral-powered design checks make it easier to improve and validate API specifications, even for non-technical users. For technical users, native integrations with editors like Visual Studio Code and IntelliJ provide a familiar and efficient way to edit and refine the API. With customizable design rules to enforce organizational standards, teams can ensure consistency, catch issues early, and deliver high quality APIs with greater speed and confidence.
Once the API is in a ready state, it can be connected to a wide range of native integrations that extend its value across the development lifecycle. There are many, like API Contract Testing to validate behavior across environments, version control through GitHub for better collaboration and traceability, and direct publishing to services like Amazon API Gateway or AWS Lambda. These integrations help streamline deployment, improve reliability, and keep teams aligned from design through delivery.
Deploy the API with Amazon API Gateway
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API Hub for Design supports multiple paths for deploying your APIs. You can publish directly from the platform using native integrations with services like Amazon API Gateway, enabling a fast and connected workflow. Alternatively, a more standard approach involves using the CLI to push the API to GitHub, then publishing the tracked version to API Gateway. This method provides greater control and fits seamlessly into existing version control and deployment pipelines.
When to harness the power of AWS Lambda with API Development
Many teams prefer to use Lambda functions as backends instead of static mock endpoints, especially when preparing APIs for real-world use. Lambda provides a flexible and scalable way to execute backend logic without provisioning or managing servers. This serverless model allows functions to scale automatically with demand while keeping costs aligned with actual usage, which helps reduce operational overhead and accelerates delivery timelines.
Integrating Lambda with API endpoints enables each service to be tracked, secured, and metered individually. This level of control supports the creation of usage plans, enforcement of rate limits, and detailed monitoring through tools like Amazon CloudWatch. These features make it easier to productize and monetize APIs, enabling models such as tiered access, consumption-based pricing, and partner-specific offerings. By using Lambda as a backend, teams can turn APIs into flexible, reliable, and revenue-ready services.
API Hub for Design enables teams to manage both API design and deployment from a single platform. With native Lambda Sync integration, teams can quickly iterate on API definitions, maintain consistency across environments, and streamline the release of serverless APIs powered by AWS Lambda. This unified approach simplifies the process of building scalable, event driven services while reducing operational overhead and accelerating delivery timelines.
To publish an API from API Hub to AWS Lambda using the Lambda Sync integration, the following fields are required:
- Integration Name
- AWS Region
- AWS Access Key
- AWS Secret Key
In addition, if you want the design feature within API Hub to automatically create new Lambda functions (rather than just update existing ones), you must also provide:
- Execution Role (used for creating new Lambda functions)
- Runtime (the target Lambda runtime such as nodejs18.x, python3.9, etc.)
With all six fields specified, the design feature will push the API to Amazon API Gateway and create or update the associated Lambda functions, keeping your API design and API deployment fully synchronized.
Scale and Deploy the API Once the API is published from API Hub with Lambda Sync, you can go to AWS and view it in Amazon API Gateway. Each resource within the API will be linked to a prebuilt Lambda function, automatically generated based on your API definition. These functions provide a ready-to-use foundation for backend logic, making it easy to begin the process of productizing your API with minimal setup. This setup streamlines the transition from design to implementation, allowing teams to focus on building value-driven functionality right away.
After the API is available on Amazon API Gateway, it is created but not yet deployed. To make the API accessible and start handling requests, you need to deploy the API to a stage within API Gateway. This step activates the API and its connected Lambda functions, allowing you to test endpoints, integrate with other services, and begin using it in real-world environments. Deployment ensures the latest version of your API is live and ready to support production or staging workflows.
Enhanced API Observability with CloudWatch
Enabling CloudWatch after deploying your API brings powerful observability to both the API Gateway layer and the connected Lambda backends. CloudWatch automatically collects essential metrics such as request count, latency, error rates, and integration failures, giving teams real time insight into how the API is performing. For each Lambda function, it also captures invocation metrics, memory usage, duration, and logs, making it easy to trace issues down to individual executions. This visibility allows teams to receive alerts, identify and diagnose problems early, and reduce the risk of errors and downtime.
Custom dashboards can be created to monitor traffic patterns, while alarms can notify teams of anomalies before they become critical. Log filters help pinpoint the root cause of unexpected behavior, enabling faster resolution and continuous improvement. With CloudWatch integrated into the workflow, observability becomes a proactive tool for maintaining availability, optimizing performance, and scaling APIs with confidence.
Conclusion: Design, Deployment and Observability
API Hub for Design, in combination with Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, and Amazon CloudWatch, offers a structured and scalable approach to delivering high quality APIs. From definition to deployment, teams gain precision and control through a centralized design environment, integrated versioning, and automated publishing to cloud infrastructure. The ability to seamlessly connect APIs to Lambda backends ensures services are modular, efficient, and built to scale without added operational complexity.
With observability powered by CloudWatch, teams gain actionable insights into performance, reliability, and usage. This allows for faster issue resolution and continuous optimization based on real-time data. The visibility supports stronger service level commitments and ensures APIs meet both technical and business expectations.
By aligning design, deployment, and monitoring within a unified workflow, organizations can reduce time to market, enforce governance at scale, and deliver more consistent and reliable digital experiences. This results in improved operational efficiency, stronger collaboration across teams, and greater value delivered to customers through dependable and well managed API products.