Five Things Enterprises Should Know About Serverless. by Greg Brail

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Five Things You Should
Know
About Serverless
Greg Brail

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What is “Serverless?”

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Execution model in code runs in a fully managed,
environment; the provider handles the servers,
operating systems and runtime environments

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No servers to manage Automatic Scale
Pay by request
Lightweight Code with No
State
Attributes of Serverless

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Deployment = VM Code
Event based
No access to file system
Pay by request
Built-in logging / monitoring
Google Cloud Functions
AWS Lambda
Azure Functions
What is FaaS?

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Technologies: Amazon Lambda
Reinvigorated the “serverless” craze
Functions in Node.js, Java, Python, or
.NET.
Functions invoked by HTTP APIs
through “API Gateway”
Functions also invoked by changes to
S3, DynamoDB, etc.
Priced by request count and CPU usage
by second
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Technologies: Azure Functions
C#, F#, Node.js, Python, bash, or custom
function types
Triggered by HTTP APIs plus various events in
the Azure platform
Priced by CPU usage in seconds
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Technologies: Cloud Functions
Functions written in Node.js
Called as HTTP APIs, from Cloud
Storage, or Cloud Pub / Sub
Alpha release so far
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Technologles: App Engine
The original “serverless,” but technically “PaaS”
in some forms
Python, Java, PHP, Go, Node.js, Ruby, and
custom runtimes
Invoked via an HTTP API
Priced by machine instance hour (”standard
environment”) or by CPU usage (“flex”)
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How Serverless Changes Things
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Application Design Matters
Not everything can work in a
serverless world
Developers working with
PaaS learned that as well
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By Adam Wiggins, 12factor.net

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Faa
S
Baa
S
PubSub
API Gateway
Async
Events
Sync
Events
Reimagined Stack

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Simple database as a service
Usually NoSQL
Limited index configuration
Pay by request / storage
Built-in logging / monitoring
API BaaS
(Usergrid)
Firebase
DynamoDB
Cloud
Datastore
SimpleDB
Google BaaS
AWS BaaS
What is BaaS?

14. Cloud Datastore Transactions Per Second
(50x Actual Traffic, 5X Worst Case Estimate, 1X Target Traffic)
Original Launch Target Estimated Worst Case Actual Traffic

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● Economies of Scale
● No Less Ops
● Simplified Programming
Model
BaaS Benefits

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Faa
S
PubSub
API Gateway
Async
Events
Sync
Events
Communication Patterns

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/order
function getOrder(..)
function createOrder(..)
function updateOrder(..)
function deleteOrder(..)
APIs for REST <-> RPC

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Design
Develop
Secure
PublishMonitor
Analyze
Monetize
Scale
Full Lifecycle API Management

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Example Production Deployment

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When does Serverless Make
Sense?
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Serverless == Different Constraints
Faster code deployment
Lower initial cost
More flexible overall architecture
... But …
Have to stay “in bounds”
Should keep deployments small
Many potential dependencies
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Flexibility vs. Convenience
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Serverless
PaaS
Containers
Virtual
Machines
More Limited
Environment
Limited
Environment
Containers
Only
Fully Flexible
Most
Convenient
Least
Convenient

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Serverless PaaS Containers VMs
Run Servers depends ✔
React to many
event types
✔
Billed by request depends container VM
Local state ✔ ✔
Run any
environment
✔ ✔
Customize OS ✔ ✔
How Do I Choose?

25. 27
Your turn!
apigee.com/about/developers
https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/samples/
@pbhogill

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Stack Reimagined Simplified
Cheap Lots of fun
Some Gotchas
Five Things to Know

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Conclusion
As developers, we live in a world full of options
It’s up to us to learn them try, them, and apply what we learn
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28. Thank you
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