When Persistence Breaks in LocalStack Paid Tiers: How to Diagnose and Fix Incomplete Restores

#localstack#AWS#persistence#tutorial

You restart LocalStack Pro, and suddenly your Lambda can’t find its API Gateway. The resources are still there — but the links between them are gone.

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Aaron Rose       
Software Engineer & Technology Writer

Problem

In LocalStack’s paid tiers, persistence sometimes fails to fully restore your environment. Core resources like S3 buckets and DynamoDB tables usually come back, but the links—connections between services such as Lambda, API Gateway, IAM roles, and event source mappings—can break. The result: resources exist, but the wiring between them doesn’t.

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Clarifying the Issue

• Is this a basic persistence reload or a Cloud Pod restore?
• Which links are missing (Lambda code/ARN, API Gateway integration URI, IAM role attachment, event source mapping)?
• Was the stack fully deployed and healthy before saving state?

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Visual Overview

Flow Sketch

[ S3 ]         [ DynamoDB ]
   \               /
    \             /
     v           v
        [ Lambda ] <—— role/code
             |
             v
       [ API Gateway ]

Concept: resources connected by links.

Tree Diagram with ✅/❌

stack/
├── s3-bucket/
├── dynamodb-table/
├── lambda-function/
│   ├── iam-role/            ✅ healthy
│   ├── code-package/        ✅ healthy
│   └── (❌ broken restore: role/code missing)
├── apigateway/
│   ├── integration-URI -> lambda-function   ✅ healthy
│   └── (❌ broken restore: URI missing/invalid)
└── event-source-mapping/
    ├── dynamodb-stream -> lambda-function   ✅ healthy
    └── (❌ broken restore: mapping lost)

Reality: resources survive, links can vanish.

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Why It Matters

• Broken links create flaky environments and false failures in tests/CI.
• Team workflows stall if snapshots aren’t reliably reproducible.

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Key Terms

• Persistence: keeps LocalStack state between restarts.
• Cloud Pods (Team): versioned, shareable snapshots (pod save / pod restore).
• Export/Import State: file-based save/restore for reproducibility.

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Steps at a Glance

1. Reproduce cleanly on paid tier
2. Validate stack health before saving
3. Restore and check links
4. Re-attach broken links with awslocal
5. Harden workflow with a checklist and automation

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Detailed Steps

1. Reproduce cleanly on paid tier

# Persistence path
LOCALSTACK_PERSISTENCE=1 localstack start

# Cloud Pods (Team)
localstack start
localstack pod save myapp:v1
localstack pod restore myapp:v1

2. Validate stack health before saving

awslocal s3 ls
awslocal dynamodb list-tables
awslocal lambda list-functions
curl -i "http://localhost:4566/restapis/$API_ID/test/_user_request_/hello"

3. Restore and check links
Common errors when links break:

• ResourceNotFoundException: Function not found
• Invalid ARN
• The integration URI is invalid
• AccessDeniedException
• InternalFailure (API Gateway → Lambda)

4. Re-attach broken links

awslocal lambda create-function

awslocal lambda create-function \
  --function-name MyFn \
  --runtime python3.11 \
  --role arn:aws:iam::000000000000:role/lambda-ex \
  --handler handler.main \
  --zip-file fileb://function.zip

awslocal apigateway put-integration

awslocal apigateway put-integration \
  --rest-api-id "$API_ID" \
  --resource-id "$RES_ID" \
  --http-method GET \
  --type AWS_PROXY \
  --integration-http-method POST \
  --uri "arn:aws:apigateway:local:lambda:path/2015-03-31/functions/$LAMBDA_ARN/invocations"

awslocal lambda add-permission \
  --function-name MyFn \
  --statement-id apigw-invoke \
  --action lambda:InvokeFunction \
  --principal apigateway.amazonaws.com

awslocal lambda create-event-source-mapping

awslocal lambda create-event-source-mapping \
  --function-name MyFn \
  --event-source-arn "$DDB_STREAM_ARN" \
  --starting-position LATEST

5. Harden workflow

• Checklist before save

  • ✅ Stack deployed, no pending changes
  • ✅ Health checks pass (S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, API GW)
  • ✅ IAM roles and mappings confirmed

• Automation

  • CI jobs run health checks → pod save (Team) or export state
  • Smoke test on restore (invoke Lambda, hit API GW endpoint)

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Conclusion

LocalStack’s paid tiers provide tools, not magic. Persistence issues usually come down to saving too early or losing links across services. By visualizing the problem, using copy-paste commands to re-attach links, and locking in a simple checklist + automation, persistence stops being guesswork and becomes muscle memory.

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Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of The Rose Theory series on math and physics.