Pause/Resume AWS Lambda Reading Kinesis Stream

use the aws-cli to suspend an AWS Lambda function processing an Amazon Kinesis stream, then resume it again

At Campus Explorer we are using AWS Lambda extensively, with sources including Kinesis, DyanmoDB, S3, SNS, CloudFormation, API Gateway, custom events, and schedules.

This week, Steve Caldwell (CTO and prolific developer) encountered a situation which required pausing an AWS Lambda function with a Kinesis stream source, and later resuming it, preferably from the same point at which it had been reading in each Kinesis shard.

We brainstormed a half dozen different ways to accomplish this with varying levels of difficulty, varying levels of cost, and varying levels of not-quite-what-we-wanted-ness.

A few hours later, Steve shared that he had discovered the answer (and suggested I pass on the answer to you).