Of late, you may have heard this term – Serverless Computing. It is a term that has been around in the developer’s world for more than a year, and it has already caused a paradigm shift in the field of cloud technology.
In this article, we will examine the reasons that caused serverless computing to be such a major trend.
Serverless Computing is a computing code execution model where the developers are relieved of several time-consuming activities so that they can focus on other important tasks.
This trend is also known as Function as a Service (FaaS) where the cloud vendor is responsible for starting and stopping a function’s container platform, check infrastructure security, reduce maintenance efforts, improve scalability, so on and so forth at low operational costs.
The aim is to develop microservice oriented solutions to help decompose complex applications into small, easily manageable and exchangeable modules.
This brings us to the question – are there really serverless’ computing services?
Of course, it is only logical that there should be servers in the background, but developers need not bother about the operation or provisioning of these servers; the entire server management is done by the cloud provider. Thus, the developer can devote more of his time to creating effective and innovative codes.
Here is how it works:
1. Being serverless, the developers are relieved from the tension of server operation and maintenance and hence, can focus on the codes.
2. The developer gets access to a framework with which he can create codes, which are adaptable for IoT applications as well, and that means handling the exodus of inputs and outputs. The cause and effect of the code will be reflected in the framework.
3. It takes on the role of a service, by providing all requisites for a functioning application.
A Use Case of Serverless Architecture
One of the simplest and direct applications of serverless architecture is REST APIs. Serverless APIs can be built quickly and within minutes through serverless frameworks. This can be done through your AWS Lamba account. Building REST APIs are not hard at all because all you need is a basic web framework, a glue code to talk with the backend and a library for rendering data in whichever format you are returning.
Serverless frameworks help you perform all the common functions (like autoscaling, for example) in a REST API. And since you get the benefit of pay as you use’ model, you save a lot of money, while deploying goes according to plan.Serverless platforms play a major role in helping you build a varied range of apps that you can integrate seamlessly with cognitive intelligence and data analytics. IoT devices, cognitive chat bots perform well on serverless platforms.
More on why companies should start adopting Serverless Computing, if they have not, already:
1. It Saves Time and Overhead Costs
Many large companies like Coca- Cola and The Seattle Times are already leveraging the benefits of serverless computing to help trigger code in response to a series of pre-defined events. This helps them to manage their fleet of servers without the threat of overhead costs.
One of the main attractions of serverless computing is that it is a pay as you use’ model. You just need to pay for the runtime of your function – the duration your code is executed and the number of times it’s been triggered. You don’t have to incur the cost of unutilized functions as seen in a cloud computing model where even idle’ resources have to be paid for.
2. It is also Function as a Service (FaaS)
The idea of Function as a Service was given a new meaning when Amazon released their AWS Lambda serverless computing platform in 2014. They brought in a whole new architecture for applications that run in the cloud. AWS is provided as part of Amazon Web Services and it acts as a compute service that runs codes by looking at the events and manages the compute resources required by a code automatically.
The good news is that you can run code on any type of application/backend service without provisioning or managing servers. And you pay for only computing time that you use. Developers can upload the code and the rest of chores would be handled by Lambda. Lambda also makes it possible for you to automatically trigger from any AWS services, web or mobile app.
3. Nanoservices takes Serverless Computing to a Whole New Level
Serverless architecture gives you the chance to work with several architectures including nano-services. It is these architectures that help you structure your serverless computing application. You can say that Nanoservices is the first architectural pattern because each functionality comes with its own API endpoint and its own separate function file.
Each of the API endpoints points to one function file that implements one CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) functionality. It works in perfect correlation with microservices, another architecture of serverless computing, and enables auto scaling and load balancing. You no longer have to manually configure clusters and load balancers.
4. Enjoy an Event-based Compute Experience
Companies are always worried about infrastructure costs and provisioning of servers when their Functions call rate become very high. Serverless providers like Microsoft Azure are a perfect solution for situations like this as they aim to provide an event-based serverless compute experience to aid in faster app development.
It is event-driven, and developers no longer have to rely on the ops to test their code. They can quickly run, test and deploy their code without getting tangled in the traditional workflow.
5. Scaling as Per the Size of the Workload
Serverless Computing automatically scales your application. With each individual trigger, your code will run parallel to it, thereby reducing your workload and saving time in the process. When the code is not running, you don’t have to pay anything.
The charging takes place for every 100ms your code executes and for the number of times the code is triggered. This is a good thing because you no longer pay for an idle compute.
6. Developers can Quit Worrying about the Machinery the Code Runs on
The promise given to developers through IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)- one of the service models of cloud computing and serverless computing is that they can stop worrying about how many machines are needed at any given point of time, especially during peak hours, whether the machines are working optimally, whether all the security measures are offered and so on.
The software teams can forget about the hardware, concentrate on the task at hand and dramatically reduce costs. This is because they no longer have to worry about hardware capacity requirements nor make long-term server reservation contracts.
7. Capacity Decisions are Handled by the Vendor – leading to Green Computing
The huge proliferation of data led to an explosion of data centers and their associated energy usage had an adverse environmental impact. Often physical resources turn out to be insufficient incapacitating the activity of data segregation and collection to such an extent that more and more servers are demanded to be set up.
Another snitch that comes along with this explosion is that a huge portion of servers remains idle and unattended to. According to a research, 30% of physical servers are in a comatose’ state which is almost 10 million servers available worldwide. This is bad both for the enterprise as well as the environment.
So what happens with serverless computing is that the vendors are given the baton here, companies no longer worry about the capacity decisions. Vendors make the capacity decisions and allot just the required compute capacity based on the needs of the enterprises, thereby saving the environment in the longer run.
To Wrap Up
The simplicity and cost saving feature of serverless computing are what makes it click among developers. As it is often the IaaS vendor who provides the API for the developer to upload the function and also the URL for the user to access the application, it is important to place a lot of trust in him. The vendor looks after all of this, especially the scaling part, without compromising on the performance of the app. So it is important to hire a vendor with whom you can do business with.
Developers everywhere are embracing serverless computing because it is a huge leap of faith for them. They no longer have to write the codes (at least most of them) from scratch any more.
Apart from AWS Lambda and Microsoft Azure, there are some prominent serverless frameworks like Google Cloud Functions, IBM OpenWhisk and Iron.io that have already made waves in serverless computing.
A number of other companies are making plans to join the serverless computing revolution. Over the years, you can expect this trend to be at the forefront of the cloud ecosystem.
