Serverless Architecture

in 10 minutes or less

Alexa, tell me about serverless architecture

Serverless Architecture:

What is it?

Backend as a service (BaaS)
Functions as a service (FaaS)

FaaS === a logical evolution of Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS: long running containers that provide ease of use & scalability
PaaS examples: Heroku, BitNami, Google AppEngine, etc..
FaaS examples: AWS Lambda (Amazon), Azure Functions (Microsoft), Cloud Functions (Google), OpenFaaS & Fn Project.

FaaS === ephemeral containers

transient stateless containers that scale

Containers: Run your code in here, without worrying about hardware and OS.
Transient: They're here, then *poof*, they're gone!
Stateless: You need state? Put it in a database.
Scale: don't worry about capacity, we'll scale it automatically to meet demand.

Is it right for me?
Maybe.
questions like "Why should I use it? When should I use it?" presume that you should use this. Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't. I don't know if you should, but I can share what I see as some pros and cons.

FaaS Pros:

Cost effective
Can scale automagically
Deployments can be simple and straight-forward
Removes a lot of (unnessecary?) overhead
Great for microservices & event-driven apps

FaaS Cons:

#NoOps is a lie
The learning curve is steep
Coldstarts can be a problem
Not efficient for long running tasks
Testing & running locally can be a challenge
Vendor lock-in is real

If you remember anything:

Call it FaaS
It probably won't change your life
It probably won't ruin your life
It might be a good option