The SNS Fan-Out Pattern

~8 min read

Combining SNS's broadcast capability with SQS's durability for reliable multi-consumer event distribution.

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Key points

  • Fan-out = SNS topic with multiple SQS queues as subscribers, not direct Lambda/HTTP subscriptions
  • Each queue gets SQS's own durability/retry/DLQ guarantees independently
  • More resilient than direct subscriptions, which can lose messages if the subscriber is briefly down
  • New consumers can be added later with zero changes to the original publisher