The serverless approach made easy.
Find out why some businesses should be serverless as well as the benefits and disadvantages of this cloud approach.
In the last few years, the software world has been euphoric with a phenomenon called serverless. Find out what serverless is, how it works and why I think small businesses should try this model.
First of all it is necessary to define cloud computing.
The term cloud computing is a buzzword, there are many definitions, so let’s focus on the definitions of the tech giants :
Amazon :
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of computing power, database storage, applications and other IT resources through a prepaid Internet-based cloud services platform.
Microsoft :
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services — servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence and more — over the Internet (“the cloud”) to deliver faster innovation, flexible resources and cost savings. scale. Typically, you pay only for the cloud services you use, helping to reduce your operating costs, operate your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change
Types of cloud computing:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Serverless
Serverless is a type of cloud computing, it is common for people to be confused between both terms.
Serverless
With serverless there are no worries about the server. There are many factors at stake when it comes deliver our app or website to the internet , it is necessary to take care of the infrastructure, configure and maintain security on the servers. If there is poor management of resources or downtime , we will have costs that go beyond hosting. With the serverless approach , configuration, capacity planning and server management are invisible because they are managed by the cloud provider..
Serverless is so attractive because everything is taken care of. The task of provisioning a server is done for you and you are free from the ongoing burden of ensuring that everything is secure, up to date and optimized.
There are 2 different serverless approaches that are :
- BaaS —Backend as a Service: it is the model where the backend is offered as a service, basically they are SDK’S or API’S that serve as a backend for a web or mobile application such as Firebase or as the AWS Mobile Hub.
- FaaS —Function as a Service: it is the model where the developer is responsible for developing a function and the entire infrastructure part is up to the Cloud Providers, it is in this model that services such as AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions gain space.
Elastic features
Most websites — apps at the beginning do not need great resources, however a website can explode out of nowhere and can grow slowly. When your application needs more memory, it gets more memory allocated in real time. When your application receives 1,000 requests from the web, it provides the computing cycles and bandwidth to deliver those requests. When your website or app needs more resources serverless ensures that it will have exactly what it needs, when it needs it, making everything highly ecalavel.
Pay as you go
While the common definition of cloud computing talks about “pay only for what you use”, Serverless delivers on that promise more literally.
With Serverless, you pay only for the exact amount of resources needed to perform a function. If your site is currently consuming only 3.39 GB of memory, that’s all you’ll pay for. For most sites, there will be a steady flow of resource usage as a result of fluctuating demand. Serverless automatically adapts to these fluctuations (a term called elasticity) so that you literally pay only for what your application uses each time.
Case study
Netflix is an online streaming service that allows its customers to watch a wide variety of series, films and documentaries on thousands of devices connected to the internet in more than 190 countries around the world, it uses AWS as a Cloud Provider and uses AWS Lambda to manage your entire infrastructure.
You can see more companies using AWS Lambda here.
Benefits
- Simplified operational management
- Fast innovation
- Reduced operating cost
- Flexibility
- Reducing the risks of direct threats to the infrastructure
- Integration of different sectors of the company
- Significant competitive advantage
Disadvantages
- Unexpected limits
- Cost changes
- Loss of functionality
- Forced API or SDK updates
- Inflexible services
- Support plans
Boost your business
It is incredible that today anyone can have their platform in an infrastructure similar to that of the technology giants and even similar software in our own applications thanks to BaaS and FaaS.
I find it incredible that instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on servers, business can have impressive results with 10/20 dollars. The barrier of entry to the business world is greatly reduced, it is possible to validate an idea in a short time and with very few resources. With serverless it is possible to maintain existing businesses with few resources in a safe and highly scalable way.
With serverless, entrepreneurs and developers can focus on innovation.
Final thoughts
I think serverless is quite innovative and just brilliant, it is the future. The technology giants are going to offer more and more incredible innovations and features.
I believe that depending entirely on the Baas model, that is, depending entirely on the SDKS, Apis of the providers is not very viable for a commercial application, as we are totally dependent on the providers, which is not good in the long run, but for specific functionalities there is no harm.
With FaaS we don’t have the dependency problems, with it we can solve a series of problems and automate our entire infrastructure, we have Netflix as the greatest example of this.
It is necessary to analyze which problem we are solving and which would be the best solutions and combine those that best solve our problems.
What do you think about the Serverless model learned something new? want to use, already use? leave your opinions in the comments.
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