Serverless

[chef]

I thought I’d heard it all with bulltulip bingo words but it seems the new trend in my area is “Serverless” which is effectively just outsourcing your hardware and apps to a 3rd party running a cloud (e.g Amazon).

However, because it says “serverless” then all middle/upper management think it will mean less costs and keep suggesting this as a solution to everything.

Anyone else notice this trend?

[AtW]

9999

[BlueSharp]

Wait time some hosts some code in a logic app instead of a service app and finds out how expensive that is on the Azure platform. Or gets in to the detail of the billing structure to find the minimum per execution price!

All good fun as it calls out the tulip developers who cant write decent code.

[TwoWolves]

I thought I’d heard it all with bulltulip bingo words but it seems the new trend in my area is “Serverless” which is effectively just outsourcing your hardware and apps to a 3rd party running a cloud (e.g Amazon).

However, because it says “serverless” then all middle/upper management think it will mean less costs and keep suggesting this as a solution to everything.

Anyone else notice this trend?

I'd say the main problems are it scales every problem in much the same [sub-optimal] way and cost per execution could lead to eye-watering costs.

[squarepeg]

Serverless is model in which you only pay for the CPU time spent running your code, e.g. the CPU time to return a response to a request. You still have to pay for data storage and transfer, but you do not have to keep the machines running 24x7. AWS Lambda is a good example, there are others. Is it cheaper? Depends on the load, but works very well for those cases when you just don't know how busy the servers will be.

[woohoo]

Use azure in a small software house and it’s a great time saver.

Also run a few production websites on it and the speed is excellent.

Deploying and setting test and staging environments again is very simple.

More time saved means more time to spend on making money.

Support is hit and miss but generally it’s another tool in the toolkit.

[tazdevil]

I thought I’d heard it all with bulltulip bingo words but it seems the new trend in my area is “Serverless” which is effectively just outsourcing your hardware and apps to a 3rd party running a cloud (e.g Amazon).

However, because it says “serverless” then all middle/upper management think it will mean less costs and keep suggesting this as a solution to everything.

Anyone else notice this trend?

Serverless simply means you don't own your own critical infrastructure but have some sort of contract hire deal on it. Like outsourcing giving away critical business functions. Lunacy when the facilities are critical and hold valuable data and functionality that your business depends on.

I don't get the cost saving angle. Looking at my own micro business it's cheaper for me to have my own server running in a nearby data centre than buy a virtual version. The plus is my own server is multi core, multi TB, v fast everything, dedicated to me and cost <£3K all in including 3 years co-location. That's naff all cost in the grand scheme of things

[BlueSharp]

I'm working with an organisation at the mo who have gone into azure big time. IoT type project reporting millions of bits of data an hour.

The ability to setup Enterprise level infrastructure but consume it as a service is a game changer for us. I want a messaging hub that can scale and has full redendency and not even have to think about server sizing or networking this is the way to do it.

[tomtomagain]

I thought I’d heard it all with bulltulip bingo words but it seems the new trend in my area is “Serverless” which is effectively just outsourcing your hardware

"Serverless" is not really about outsourcing your hardware. It's about removing the "Server" from your thinking.

As a developer you just want your code to run right? You don't really give a stuff about whether it is running on Windows/UNIX/Whatever.

In my SAAS I have about 12 Functions, running Azure, doing a variety of tasks. They execute reliably and run quickly. I don't care what the environment is that they run it. I only care about the function.

The great thing is that it decomposes your application. If I want to update one of the functions, I can do it, without worrying about the rest. If I want to scale one up, I can do it. If I want to alter the schedule or trigger, I can do it.

In the past I would have had to spin up a VM or VM's to run a small bit of code. Now I just concentrate on the code.

I am sure you could write an entire application "Serverless" ... I don't think that would make any sense as with any technology, you can abuse it and using it wrong will make your life harder.

But it works well for me in the parts I have used it for.

[Lance]

"Serverless" is not really about outsourcing your hardware. It's about removing the "Server" from your thinking.

As a developer you just want your code to run right? You don't really give a stuff about whether it is running on Windows/UNIX/Whatever.

In my SAAS I have about 12 Functions, running Azure, doing a variety of tasks. They execute reliably and run quickly. I don't care what the environment is that they run it. I only care about the function.

The great thing is that it decomposes your application. If I want to update one of the functions, I can do it, without worrying about the rest. If I want to scale one up, I can do it. If I want to alter the schedule or trigger, I can do it.

In the past I would have had to spin up a VM or VM's to run a small bit of code. Now I just concentrate on the code.

I am sure you could write an entire application "Serverless" ... I don't think that would make any sense as with any technology, you can abuse it and using it wrong will make your life harder.

But it works well for me in the parts I have used it for.

THIS^^^^^^

Serverless is basically a cloud service that is SAAS or PAAS.
So you avoid the costs of supporting an OS or hardware. IAAS is a stop-gap solution as you still have to maintain the OS (patching backups etc.).

My business is almost serverless now. I have a couple of Micro Servers gathering dust as everything is on Azure. I do have one VM on Azure as Azure AD doesn't provide everything I need.

In reality serverless is just another word for cloud, but it's less misunderstood than cloud (well it is now but that may change).