Special attention to Azure Durable Functions. Code: https://github.com/jedjohan/durashop

1. Johan Eriksson
johan.eriksson@stratiteq.com

2. • Evolution of serverless
• Vendor comparison
• Azure serverless toolbox
• 2 customer cases
• Durable Functions
Outline

6. Business
Logic/Value
Availability
Pay for what
you use
Auto scale

7. </> </>
</> </>
</> </> </>
</>
</>
Bare Metal
Virtual
Machines
Containers
Functions
Decreasing infrastructural concerns
Increasingfocusonbusinesslogic
• Virtualizes the
hardware
• VMs as unit of
scaling
VM
• Virtualizes the OS
• Applications as
unit of scaling
• Virtualizes the
Runtime
• Functions as unit
of scaling

8. Disruptions ? Containers – Just a Distraction?
Devops – Noops ?
“We just got here. We just moved to the cloud.
We moved our physical servers to instances. We
moved our databases as well. Even though we
lost a little visibility into the underpinning
infrastructure, we gained some cool new
features and abilities. Now, they go ahead and
pull the rug out from under us with this whole
functions serverless thing. Can’t we just pause
for a little bit?”
“Serverless is being driven by mainstream
enterprises. We see them leapfrogging
containers so they can take something off the
shelf and move quickly”
A disruptive technology is
one that displaces an
established technology
and shakes up the
industry or a ground-
breaking product that
creates a completely new
industry. (Airbnb, Spotify
Smartphones, Cloud,
Uber …)

9. Vendors
2014 AWS Lambda
2016 Google Cloud Functions
2016 Azure Functions
2016 IBM OpenWhisk

10. Feature AWS Lambda Google Cloud Functions (BETA!!) Azure Functions
Scalability &
availability
Automatic scaling (transparently) Automatic scaling
Manual or metered scaling (App Service Plan), or sub-second
automatic scaling (Consumption Plan)
Max # of
functions
Unlimited functions 1000 functions per project Unlimited functions
Concurrent
executions
1000 parallel executions per account, per region (soft limit) No limit No limit
Max execution 300 sec (5 min) 540 seconds (9 minutes) Default 300 sec (5 min) or configurable to 10 min
Supported
languages
JavaScript, Java, C# (.NET Core) and Python JavaScript
C#, JavaScript, F#, TypeScript, Python, Java, Bash, Batch, PHP
and PowerShell
Dependencies Deployment Packages npm package.json Npm, NuGet
Deployments ZIP upload (to Lambda or S3) ZIP upload, Cloud Storage or Cloud Source Repositories
Visual Studio Team Services, OneDrive, Local Git repository,
GitHub, Bitbucket, Dropbox, External repository, Visual Studio,
Visual Studio Code, ZIP Upload
Environment
variables
Yes Not yet App Settings and Connection Strings from App Services
Versioning Versions and aliases Cloud Source branch/tag Cloud Source branch/tag
Event-driven
S3, SNS, SES, DynamoDB, Kinesis, CloudWatch, Cognito, API
Gateway, CodeCommit, etc.
Cloud Pub/Sub or Cloud Storage Object Change Notifications
Blob, EventHub, Generic WebHook, GitHub WebHook, Queue,
Http, ServiceBus Queue, Service Bus Topic, Cosmos DB, Timer
triggers, Event Grid, etc.
HTTP(S)
invocation
API Gateway HTTP trigger HTTP trigger
Orchestration AWS Step Functions Not yet Azure Logic Apps, Azure Durable Functions
Logging CloudWatch Logs Stackdriver Logging App Services monitoring, Application Insights
Monitoring CloudWatch & X-Ray Stackdriver Monitoring Application Insights
Pricing
1 million requests for free, then $0.20/1M invocations, plus
$0.00001667/GB-sec
1 million requests for free, then $0.40/1M invocations, plus
$0.00000231/GB-sec
1 million requests for free, then $0.20/1M invocations, plus
$0.000016/GB-s

13. Azure
Functions
Functions – Execute code

15. Azure
Functions
Function App A
FunctionA1
FunctionA2
FunctionA3
Function App B
FunctionB1
FunctionB2
FunctionB3
Settings Settings

16. Azure
Functions

17. Azure
Functions CODE
Inputs
Outputs
Trigger
Bindings
Bindings

18. Azure
Functions
Supported
bindings
Blob Storage
Cosmos DB
Event Grid
Event Hubs
External File
External Table
HTTP
Microsoft Graph Excel tables
Microsoft Graph OneDrive files
Microsoft Graph Outlook email
Microsoft Graph Events
Microsoft Graph Auth tokens
Mobile Apps
Notification Hubs
Queue storage
SendGrid
Service Bus
Table storage
Timer
Twilio
Webhooks
Custom

19. Azure Logic
Apps
Logic Apps – Connectivity and workflow

20. Azure Logic
Apps

21. Azure Event
Grid
Event broker

22. Event Grid Capabilities
•Reliability - Utilize 24-hour retry with exponential
backoff to ensure events are delivered.
•Pay-per-event - Pay only for the amount you use Event
Grid.
•High throughput - Build high-volume workloads on
Event Grid with support for millions of events per
second.

23. Azure Event
Grid

24. Azure Event
Grid

25. Azure Event
Grid

27. Azure
Functions
Proxies
API Surface for functions

28. Azure
Functions
Proxies
products.azurewebsites.net customers.azurewebsites.net orders.azurewebsites.net

29. Azure
Functions
Proxies
/customers
/products
/orders
Function App A
customers.azurewebsites.net
Function App B
products.azurewebsites.net
Function App C
orders.azurewebsites.net
eshop.azurewebsites.net

30. Azure
Service Bus
Message broker

31. Azure
Service Bus

32. Azure
Serverless
Toolbox
• Functions: Execute code
• Logic Apps: Connectivity and workflow
• Event Grid: Event broker
• Functions Proxy: API Surface for functions
• Service Bus: Message broker

33. Event programming model
#2#1

34. Event programming model
#2#1

35. Event programming model
#2#1
#3

36. Event programming model
#2#1

37. Event programming model
#2#1

38. Event programming model
#2#1
#3

40. Event driven architecture

41. • OnPrem legacy system
• OnPrem Biztalk 2016 (!)
• ---------------------------------
• Service Bus
• Logic App
• Azure Functions
• D365
Customer Case #1
Integrate OnPrem legacy
system with cloud
Dynamics 365.
Both ways.

42. OnPrem
Legacy
1
2

43. • OnPrem legacy system
• OnPrem SQL Server
• ----------------------------------
• Azure Easy Auth
• Azure Functions Proxy
• Azure Functions
• D365
Customer Case #2
Integrate OnPrem legacy
system with cloud
Dynamics 365.
1-way (main) integration
Sales App that creates
Quotes. Fully authenticated
and authorized access

44. OnPrem
…

45. OnPrem
1
2

46. So what's the problem ?

50. What are these Durable Functions?
•Write stateful processes in a serverless
environment
•“Run” for weeks, still only pay for execution time
•Workflows in code
•Reliable execution of orchestrations

51. Durable Functions – Avoid !
•Orchestrator code must be deterministic
•Non-blocking: no I/O calls or Thread.Sleep
•No async operations. Use the API
•Avoid infinite loops

52. Charge
Customers
Card (PSP)
Mail Receipt
to customer
Update
Inventory
System
Checkout Workflow

53. Charge
Customers
Card (PSP)
Mail Receipt
to customer
Update
Inventory
System
Checkout Workflow

54. Charge
Customers
Card (PSP)
Mail Receipt
to customer
Update
Inventory
System
Checkout Workflow
Process Manager

55. Process Manager – Orchestrator pattern in Azure Durable Functions
Charge
Customers
Card (PSP)
Mail Receipt
to customer
Update
Inventory
System
Checkout Workflow

57. Orchestrations and Actions
•StartNewAsync HTTP Trigger
•Orchestrator
•Activity

58. Shopping Cart
2FA
Checkout

59. Pattern: External Events

60. Pattern: Function Chaining

61. Pattern: Human Interaction

62. Azure Durable Functions takeaways
Code Stateful Durable
Sleeping =
not billed
Automatically
wake up
Scalable