Going Serverless: Is it the Right Fit for Your Stack?
Just two decades away from the jump from physical to virtualization, computing architecture is taking another quantum leap forward in usability and efficiency. Going serverless isn’t just a new buzzword, but an opportunity to step away from the sluggish nature of infrastructure maintenance and monitoring. In this article, we’ll break down what serverless is, how it compares to traditional computing, and what the benefits and considerations of serverless architecture entail for a company.
What is Serverless Computing?
Serverless computing is a model for the allocation of resources and uses in a cloud computing environment. If an application is serverless, this means it does not run on a virtual machine, but rather in a container, which runs on top of a virtual machine. Containers are extremely flexible pieces of software that can run in any environment from a laptop to a public cloud environment to a private data center without needing to rely on any associated system. A serverless app is managed by its cloud provider and is triggered by events; that is, they don’t start running until they are told, unlike a traditional environment where lots of programs launch at startup. These apps are priced on their number of executions rather than a pre-purchase expense and most major cloud environment providers, including Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, AWS Lambda, and IBM OpenWhisk are frequently using them.
Key terms to learn in serverless architecture include:
- Duration: The time for a serverless function to execute a task.
- Cold Start: The latency length when a serverless app is called on for the first time or after being inactive for a period of time.
- Concurrency Limit: Determined by the cloud provider, it is the maximum number of instances of FaaS that can run simultaneously in one particular location.
- Invocation: The execution of a single function.
- Timeout: How long a function can run before it is turned off by the cloud provider.
How Does Serverless Work?
Your typical server lets users communicate with an app, but the cost and time of managing servers is significant and can make accessing resources sluggish. Consider how much leg work and human resources go into server management; everything from software upgrades to security updates to creating backups in the event of a system failure.
When utilizing serverless architecture, all of these responsibilities become the tasks of a cloud infrastructure provider, enabling developers to focus on higher-value tasks rather than nitpicking their way through lines of code. A leading type of serverless architecture is Function as a Service (FaaS). The code is written as a set of specific functions that perform their tasks only when told to by an event occurrence, such as a new email being detected. Users prepay for units of capacity in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing model, and thus have to pay for infrastructure for an app even if they only use that app every few days. Serverless architecture allows a user to stop paying for cloud service as soon as the code is done executing. In real-world parlance, it would be like paying a flat fee for the right to use electricity from the light company every month as opposed to only being charged when you turn a light on, and having the billing stop when you turn it back off. When you utilize serverless architecture, tasks like scaling, logging, capacity management, and load balancing shift in responsibility from the user to the cloud provider.
Serverless Architecture Benefits
Touched on above, there are considerable benefits to moving from a traditional server architecture to a serverless architecture model, including the following.
- Cost: Using serverless methodology keeps you from paying for servers that are not being used or virtual machines that sit idle but still cost money when not active.
- Productivity: Your software engineers don’t have to worry about managing servers in order to deploy new code. Using the container method, they can speed up their delivery windows and quickly scale a company’s operations. Having new functionality suddenly “there” for any user in a company structure to use versus finagling it into cloud availability or onto a server is a huge freeing up of time.
- Scalability: When serverless apps are needed, their instances are created automatically. When they are done being used, they vanish. There are no concerns about leaving them open and draining resources from the cloud instance, which can greatly impact traffic in the cloud.
Serverless Architecture Considerations
No form of technology is perfect, and serverless does come with some considerations that must be calculated.
- Debugging: Debugging issues can be a struggle in a serverless environment because it requires expertise on the cloud infrastructure provider to be able to pinpoint and correct issues.
- Control: When going serverless, users give up control over the software stack that the code is running on. If there is an occurrence of a data center failure or a problem with the hardware, users will have to rely on the cloud provider to offer a fix. Depending on the extent of the problem and the reliability of the provider, this can lead to lengthy delays and major headaches for a company.
- Security: Because serverless applications are utilizing third-party cloud infrastructure providers instead of maintaining their own, there is a high likelihood that said providers are running multiple serverless instances from multiple customers on the same server concurrently. Cloud infrastructure providers are responsible for the security measures in and of the cloud, including the unique security challenges of specific serverless applications.
Final Thoughts
Serverless architecture is a great fit for companies that desire lightweight applications that are infinitely scalable and do not have complicated, long-running processes that require continuous uptime. The benefits of cost reduction, quick deployment, and easy integration are all congruent with the need of modern businesses to be flexible and fast.