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A Beginner’s Guide: Understanding Serverless in 7mins in 2024

Shiwani Sharma — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 17:07:23 +0000

What is Serverless?

Serverless is a cloud-native development model that is also termed as FaaS (Function as a Service) . Serverless computing permits developers to operate the code and there is no need to handle traditional server infrastructure. In other words developers have to run the application and functions without having to spin up and operate a server. There are some famous serverless platforms that consist of Google Cloud Functions in Google Cloud Platform, IBM cloud function in IBM cloud, AWS Lambda in Amazon Web Services.

Serverless Adoption

As per the latest report by Datadog 2023, named’ State of Serverless 2023‘, an annual analysis tracking the adoption of serverless technologies in cloud workloads. The major cloud providers are witnessing substantial growth in serverless usage, especially for container-based solutions.

According to Datadog, a majority of organizations running workloads on AWS or Google Cloud now have at least one Serverless deployment in place, with MS-Azure following closely at 49 percent. Similarly, the latest CNCF Annual Survey reported growth of serverless architecture/FaaS to 53% of respondents.

IMAGE CREDITS: https://www.infoq.com/news/2023/09/state-serverless-report/

Image Credit: https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/devops/articles/what-is-serverless/#lg=1&slide=0

To understand the concept of serverless, let’s first clarify the term “Server.”

Server: A computer designed to work all day (24 hours) to provide services to other people on the networks. If you are using the internet, then you are communicating with so many servers, such as web servers that work to send your web pages, mail servers that work to send emails for communication purposes, file servers that work to send your files, etc. So, the server is designed to work quickly and have excess data with high-capacity internet speed.

However, servers are not flexible, which means if you manage your website with your own server, handling daily traffic becomes difficult for the server to manage on time, and this is known as over-provisioning. With servers, you can focus less on developing your website. To solve this type of problem, cloud-based Serverless Products were formulated.

In simple language, Serverless product means “NO server, no worries.” You can only concentrate on your application. By using serverless, you can capture numerous files without have to worry about hard drives or thinking of where to store these files or data. Many companies already had used Serverless in production and these companies are AOL, Netflix & Reuters etc. Serverless is best for applications with variable workloads, where resorces are only required occasionally or in response to some specific event.

Types of Serverless

Basically there are two types of Serverless, one is FaaS (Function As A Service) and the second one is BaaS (Backend As A Service).

Function as a Service (FaaS): In this type of serverless model, developers have to write some individuals functions that bring out specific tasks. Some famous FaaS platform that consists Google Cloud Functions, AWS Lambda, IBM Cloud functions and Azure functions.

Backend as a Service (BaaS): This serverless model provides backend services for web application, mobile and these backend services are pre-built. It also consists some characteristics like storage, push notifications, authentications & databases. Some of the example of BaaS provides that includes Backendless, Firebase & AWSAmplify.

Pros & Cons Of Serverless

Advantages of Serverless

IMAGE CREDIT: https://www.angleritech.com/5-benefits-serverless-architecture-business-transformation/

Here are some reasons why you can use Serverless or the benefits, as follows:

Money Saving: Serverless follows the model of pay-as-you-use, meaning while performing on the application, you only have to pay for the resources you are using. With serverless, it is not necessary to invest or to manage virtual machines or physical servers and this will helps to remove infrastructure costs, also decreases the initial capital expenditure that will help to save money.
Scalability: In terms of incoming requests, this platform automatically scales your application. When there is an increase in the number of users, the cloud provider immediately distributes a lot of resources to operate the workload. Some serverless platforms like Azure functions, Google Cloud functions & AWS Lambda automatically handle the scaling of your application.
Faster Work: It permits the developer to update the application much quicker. Here, the developer only has to concentrate on writing the code and creating new characteristics that will help lead to faster work coming to the market for more products and services. The platform of serverless automatically regulate the scaling of resources that depends on the latest workload. Without the help of any manual intervention the auto scaling of serverless assure that your application can handle increasing demand that provides the faster response time.
Decreases Administration Responsibility: Many tasks like security patches, software updates become the duty of the cloud provider, freeing developers from administrative tasks.
Decreases Operational Aloft: There is no need for the developer to worry about scaling, monitoring, server provisioning, and configuration because the cloud provider handles the underlying infrastructure. This decreases the operational tasks time, allowing the developer to concentrate on creating and deploying applications faster.

Cons Of Serverless

Limited Resources: The platform of serverless exploit the limitation of resources on functions as like memory, execution time and CPU. This can not be allowed for those application which have the high demand on resources and the tasks is running for the long time.

Vendor Lock-In: When you are accepting a serverless platform it means you are locking your application into a specific ecosystem of cloud provider’s. This will becomes very challenging to migrate from one provider to another or if there is any requirement for deploy on-premises because it become the dependency on single provider and that’s why it become the challenges to shift from one provider to another.

Cold Start: As the name suggest cold means the things which is not used for a while, so the functions of serverless can have a cold start time, that means the time that initialize the functions when it hasn’t used for a while. so, when the application is invoked for the first time then the infrastructure of serverless take some time for setting up the resources and this can introduce latency.

Examples Of Serverless

Mobile Backends: Serverless is used for mobile backend data and operates user notifications, file storage, and database interactions, providing a cost-efficient solution.
IoT (Internet Of Things): It can be used for Internet of Things applications, such as processing sensor data, sending notifications, and controlling devices.
File Processing: Serverless facilitates data storage in cloud storage, file uploads, and image processing.
Chatbots: It plays a role in customer interaction platforms like chatbots, combining functions with Natural Language Processing (NLP) services and backend systems communication.
Web Applications: It helps in developing web applications and also operates server-side logic & API endpoints.
Machine Learning: Serverless is used for machine learning applications requiring cost-efficient and scalable capabilities.

Conclusion

So definitely Serverless has gained a lot of attention from tech giants, cloud enthusiasts, engineers, and developers alike for its apparent advantages.It is being envisioned as the next evolutionary stage in the development of computing and network architectures

But we need to understand that Serverless computing continues to evolve as serverless providers come up with solutions to overcome some of its drawbacks. Serverless is still not in fully matured state.

It is a cloud-native development model that enables developers to run code without managing traditional server infrastructure. It goes by various names, such as FaaS and Serverless computing. Its pay-as-you-use pricing model stands out as one of its most significant advantages. It is a powerful tool for building efficient and scalable applications. However, it’s crucial to consider its plans and limitations carefully when implementing it in your projects.

The post A Beginner’s Guide: Understanding Serverless in 7mins in 2024 appeared first on DevopsCurry.

DevOps and Serverless in 2020

Namrata Joshi — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:29:22 +0000

Serverless Architecture (FaaS) and when to use Serverless ?

Serverless Architecture is more than a buzzword. It’s the most-talked-about topic in the soaftware industry in the past few years. Everyone is trying their hands on Serverless environment. You also might have questions in your mind like – What exactly is Serverless? And when to use Serverless?

Serverless Architecture is a software design model where applications are hosted by a third-party service like Cloud Providers. Serverless does not mean there aren’t servers at all. All Serverless applications run on a server. The only thing to remember here is that Servers are managed by the vendors and not the developers. Hence, it is called Serverless Architecture.

Components of Serverless Architecture

The main components of Serverless Architecture are Serverless Functions & Serverless Backends.

Serverless Functions: serverless functions aka FaaS(Function as a Service) is the main platform for running the serverless logic code. The developers write independent code snippets which are called `functions` and then add these functions to the FaaS platform.This code is then triggered by an event or run on a schedule.Common examples of FaaS are AWS Lambda or Azure functions.

Serverless Backends: serverless backend aks BaaS (Backend as a Service) is a cloud computing offering that abstracts the backend logic, which is then executed on faraway servers.This helps the developers to focus on thier front-end code snippet and integrate with back-end logic that someone else has implemented. Common examples of BaaS are authentication service, storage services, geolocation services etc.

You can also read our post about “Some popular Serverless solutions in 2020” to know more about popular serverless solutions and tools in the market.

How Serverless or FaaS is different from PaaS?

Serverless or Faas (Function as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) both are pretty similar but majorly different at the same time. People often get confused between these two terms. We will give you some points to help you better understand the difference between FaaS and PaaS.

A Serverless app or FaaS does have a physical or virtual server that requires it to be managed. There is also a need to manage the operating system and other web server hosting process requests for your application to run.

Serverless Architecture focuses on the individual functions in your application code. It reduces physical hardware concerns.

On the other hand, PaaS offers the same benefits as Serverless or FaaS. But, PaaS eliminates the need for server hardware as well as software management.

The primary difference is how the application is composed and deployed in both services.

PaaS allows you to deploy applications and the rest of the things will be managed by the cloud. Cloud will manage how to deploy the servers to run the application.

FaaS offers the capability to deploy what is actually a single function or a part of a function.

Most PaaS hosting options can auto-scale the number of servers to handle workloads. PaaS makes it simple to deploy the entire function or application.

FaaS was created in a way so that it can work as a Serverless Architecture.

When an application spins-up, FaaS can be invoked in a much more agile manner than PaaS.

In PaaS, you will have a lot more control over the development environment, and in FaaS, you won’t have much control over the same.

Both, PaaS and FaaS can easily deploy and scale an application without having to configure the server.

Primary features of FaaS and PaaS

Check out some of the primary characteristics of FaaS and PaaS:

Serverless or FaaS Characteristics:

Cost provisioned.
Less dependency on code.
Micromanaged.
Operational with fewer errors.
Complete auto-scaling functionality.

PaaS Characteristics:

Easy to use and manage.
Highly efficient.
Scalable.
Offer better developer control.
Offer limited management responsibilities.

When to Use Serverless or FaaS?

Serverless Architecture does not work for every organization. However, it works for most of the companies because of the advantage of the pay-as-you-go feature. That means you only have to pay for what you have used. This way, companies can save a lot of money by not paying for idle time.
It is suitable for stateless applications. For example, applications that don’t maintain user state and data for long periods.
If your website is a high-traffic website, then serverless can be the best option. You can host your static website on S3 bucket which helps you with a global and faster cloud. It is cheaper and fast, but it’s highly available and scalable at the same time.
It is cost-effective for those applications that don’t need all of the components to run all the time. You can also run serverless to run a web server with routing.
The most popular use case is Multimedia Processing Applications. To store images and videos of your business you can use a scalable storage service like Amazon/AWS S3. You can automate this process by configuring a function to be invoked from an image or video to upload.
Serverless architecture is ideal for Mobile Backends. An API provides an entry point to functions. And these functions can be exposed as the rest API that your mobile app consumes. AWS AppSync allows you to securely access data from multiple sources in real-time.

Note that Serverless Architecture is not well-suited for long, compute-intensive apps. Because it can be expensive as compared to running code on a dedicated compute instance.

So before moving to a Serverless Architecture, measure and validate each use case and see if this will work for your organization or not. Serverless does have numerous advantages but it does come with some drawbacks, too.

We hope this article will help you to understand how to leverage Serverless Architecture for your business.

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