Reply to: Serverless

[tazdevil]

but the trend is moving rapidly towards more and more service lock in.

It's the new dynamic, a way of forcing customer loyalty by locking out competitors. I'm repeatedly having issues with clients buying hosted services only to find the hosting company assumes proprietorial rights over the data and makes efficient access very difficult for other 3rd parties.

[vwdan]

^This. Current cluster**** I'm working on is implemented using all this proprietary Amazon guff. If Amazon hike the prices or pull the services, the client will be up tulip Creek without a system.

This is where my concern comes in - cloud service providers seem willing to drop services whenever they feel like it. Yes, keeping your ancient server running in a basement isn't much better, but giving up all this control and then being forced into a corner really worries me.

And not only that, but the trend is moving rapidly towards more and more service lock in. At least if your Azure VM gets taken away you can spin up the same stuff on another VM anywhere else. When they take away your Azure serverless service you're going to be left floundering.

[NigelJK]

Start learning UWP if you want to be truly serverless

[squarepeg]

That's where Microsoft beat Amazon (and Google). Azure might cost a little more but you know where the data is (roughly anyway by geographic area).

Same with Amazon and Google cloud... you know which geo region your data sits in.

[Lance]

I'm sort of wondering, how everyone is going to prove themselves inside EU GDPR. They don't have a fooking clue where their data is, or who is looking after it.

That's where Microsoft beat Amazon (and Google). Azure might cost a little more but you know where the data is (roughly anyway by geographic area).

[Mordac]

^This. Current cluster**** I'm working on is implemented using all this proprietary Amazon guff. If Amazon hike the prices or pull the services, the client will be up tulip Creek without a system.

And this: And to think, the mongs in charge of making these decisions think everything will be alright. I'm sort of wondering, how everyone is going to prove themselves inside EU GDPR. They don't have a fooking clue where their data is, or who is looking after it.

[DimPrawn]

This line of argument is stupid; if you're using a specific instruction set, a generic runtime isn't for you; depending on the language you could always toggle syscalls / specific ASM instructions depending on architecture.

That said... I'm not actually a big fan of serverless - from my experience with AWS Lambda you're just tying yourself into another vendor in most cases, by virtue of gluing together your Lambdas / state machines (step functions) using proprietary AWS infra - Kinesis, SQS, DynamoDB events. This stuff will be the Oracle legacy systems of the future.

^This. Current cluster**** I'm working on is implemented using all this proprietary Amazon guff. If Amazon hike the prices or pull the services, the client will be up tulip Creek without a system.

[TheGreenBastard]

The problem I see here is if my 25 lines of C# code require hardware calls then what runs on x86_64 won't run on ARM64 so I still need to know the hardware I'm running on. Maybe I'll ring up someone who hosts serverless systems and say I have some code I want to run and then try to deploy some APL, I mean it doesn't matter what hardware does it, it just deploys...

This line of argument is stupid; if you're using a specific instruction set, a generic runtime isn't for you; depending on the language you could always toggle syscalls / specific ASM instructions depending on architecture.

That said... I'm not actually a big fan of serverless - from my experience with AWS Lambda you're just tying yourself into another vendor in most cases, by virtue of gluing together your Lambdas / state machines (step functions) using proprietary AWS infra - Kinesis, SQS, DynamoDB events. This stuff will be the Oracle legacy systems of the future.

[squarepeg]

So you're still coding for a specific hardware stack which means you know the hardware so not really serverless...

No, you are coding for a specific runtime.

[darmstadt]

Serverless providers tell you in advance which stack and what version they support. E.g.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/azure-functions/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/l...-model-v2.html

https://cloud.google.com/functions/

So you're still coding for a specific hardware stack which means you know the hardware so not really serverless...

[squarepeg]

The problem I see here is if my 25 lines of C# code require hardware calls then what runs on x86_64 won't run on ARM64 so I still need to know the hardware I'm running on. Maybe I'll ring up someone who hosts serverless systems and say I have some code I want to run and then try to deploy some APL, I mean it doesn't matter what hardware does it, it just deploys...

Serverless providers tell you in advance which stack and what version they support. E.g.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/azure-functions/

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/l...-model-v2.html

https://cloud.google.com/functions/

[darmstadt]

Does it run on a server? Well it runs on a computer somewhere. But I have no idea what flavour it is. It might be Windows, it could be UNIX, it could even be some special ".NET Only Machine" I am not exposed to the server, I don't have responsibility for maintaining it. It might all be running on a single box in one of Microsoft Azure DC's, but its most likely running in some sort of distributed, highly resilient Farm. The sort of infrastructure that not even a major FTSE company can afford. Again, I don't know, and I don't care.

I simply wrote my 25 lines of C# and deployed it.

The problem I see here is if my 25 lines of C# code require hardware calls then what runs on x86_64 won't run on ARM64 so I still need to know the hardware I'm running on. Maybe I'll ring up someone who hosts serverless systems and say I have some code I want to run and then try to deploy some APL, I mean it doesn't matter what hardware does it, it just deploys...

[Mordac]

So all companies should own their own power-supply? After all, if the leccy goes off, nothing can get done.

And that happens almost never. And if you were at risk of such an event, you'd have a UPS backup facility, and generators etc. I've specced out several such plans, the most expensive came out at £600k, and they paid it. Grudgingly, it has to be said. Since nothing has actually gone wrong in the intervening decade, they probably think it's money down the drain, but what if something terrible happened.....?

[Lance]

Then I'd need to deploy onto a VM, which gives me a hosting cost ( About £11 a month for the cheapest option in Azure ), then I've got a server to worry about .... all for a bit of useful code that runs occasionally.

And the cheapest VMs are sloooooooooow.
The A0 is waste of time. A1 not much better.
A2 works as a single use, low volume server, but costs upwards of £80 a month. Which, now I've just checked and realised, is about to be downgraded to A1 until I need it.

[tomtomagain]

It's just another buzzword for clueless management to put into plans and reports. This came up in a webcast last year I had with a large SW/HW corporation and even the employees were laughing and there were some quite serious discussions being held about it. In the end the actual developers ignored it as regardless of whether you have the server or someone else hosts it for you, there is still going to be a server there. Management continue to use it...

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/cloud-comp...ure-openwhisk/

IT has been, and always will be, full of buzzwords. But I would not right-off Serverless. It's an additional deployment option and in some instances makes perfect sense. In others, it won't.

An example of how I use it.

My SAAS is listed in AppSource. When some when registers an interest in it Microsoft push their details into an Azure Storage Table that I own. My Azure function is notified that the table changes, reads the data, processes it. Ends.

It's worked flawlessly for months and runs about 15 times a day. Costs a few pence a month to run.

Does it run on a server? Well it runs on a computer somewhere. But I have no idea what flavour it is. It might be Windows, it could be UNIX, it could even be some special ".NET Only Machine" I am not exposed to the server, I don't have responsibility for maintaining it. It might all be running on a single box in one of Microsoft Azure DC's, but its most likely running in some sort of distributed, highly resilient Farm. The sort of infrastructure that not even a major FTSE company can afford. Again, I don't know, and I don't care.

I simply wrote my 25 lines of C# and deployed it.

Compared to the more traditional options it's trivial. I'd have to code my 25 lines as before, but then I'd need more "Fluff" around the side, maybe create a REST API, Hook up the notification handlers etc etc.

Then I'd need to deploy onto a VM, which gives me a hosting cost ( About £11 a month for the cheapest option in Azure ), then I've got a server to worry about .... all for a bit of useful code that runs occasionally.

What took me an around an hour to do could easily have taken a day.