Why Serverless Computing………!!

Shiny Hettiarachchi
4 min readMay 30, 2022

Serverless concept is one of the trending concepts of the modern technologies.

What is the serverless concept…………….?

Serverless is modern concepts that defined as cloud-native development model that used developers to build and run applications without having to manage servers.

Serverless computing does not hold resources in volatile memory. Serverless computing can facilitate the process of deploying code into production. Serverless code can be used in conjunction with code deployed in traditional styles, such as microservices or monoliths(is an application delivered via a single deployment).

Languages which facilitate the serverless…………?

Serverless vendors offers runtimes known as function as service (FaS) platform. Java, Python and PHP are the common languages that facilitate serverless. Serverless computing can assists the process of deploying code into production.

Serverless Databases……….!!!

Various serverless databases have came up in the last few years. These systems extend the serverless execution model to the RDBMS, avoid the necessity to providing or scale virtualized or physical database hardware.

Nutanix offers a solution named Era which turns an existing RDBMS such as Oracle, MariaDB, PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server into a serverless service. Amazon Aurora offers a serverless version of its databases, based on MySQL and PostgreSQL, providing on-demand, auto-scaling configurations.

Azure Data Lake is a highly scalable data storage and analytics service. The service is hosted in Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud. Azure Data Lake Analytics provides a distributed infrastructure that can dynamically allocate or de-allocate resources so customers pay for only the services they use. Oracle Cloud offers a serverless version of its Oracle Autonomous Database, which is the Autonomous Transaction Processing service.

Why we need serverless computing…………?

Serverless architectures offer greater scalability, more flexibility, and quicker time to release, all at a reduced cost. With serverless architectures, developers do not need to worry about purchasing, provisioning, and managing backend servers. Nevertheless, serverless computing is not a magic bullet for all of the web application developers.

No server management is necessary
The ‘serverless’ computing takes place on servers, developers never have to interact with them. The provider is in charge of them. This can minimize costs by reducing the amount of DevOps effort required, and it also allows developers to design and evolve their apps without being limited by server capacity.

Developers are only charged for the server space they use, reducing cost
Developers are only charged for what they use, like to a ‘pay-as-you-go’ service plan. The code only runs when the serverless application requires backend functionalities, and it automatically scales up as needed. In a traditional’server-full’ architecture, on the other hand, developers must forecast how much server capacity they will need in advance and then acquire that capacity, whether they use it or not.

Greater scalability
As the user base or usage develops, applications built on a serverless architecture will scale automatically. If several instances of a function are required, the vendor’s servers will launch, execute, and stop them as needed, often using containers. As a result of that, a serverless application will be able to handle an unusually high number of requests just as well as it can process a single request from a single user.

Fast deployments and updates are possible
To release a working version of an application using a serverless infrastructure, there is no need to upload code to servers or perform any backend configuration. Developers may upload code and deliver a new product in a matter of minutes. Because the application is not a single monolithic stack but rather a collection of functions provided by the vendor, they can upload code all at once or one function at a time.

What are the drawbacks of using serverless computing………..?

Testing and debugging become more challenging
It’s tough to replicate the serverless environment to see how code will behave after it’s deployed. Because developers have no access into backend processes and the application is divided up into several, smaller functions, debugging is more challenging.

Serverless computing introduces new security concerns
It may not be able to completely assess suppliers’ security when they run the entire backend, which can be an issue for applications that handle personal or sensitive data.

Serverless architectures are not built for long-running processes
This restricts the kind of programs that can be operated in a serverless architecture at a reasonable cost. Because serverless providers charge by the amount of time code runs, running an application with long-running processes in a serverless infrastructure may be more expensive than in a traditional one.

This article may useful to get an idea about serverless computing concept.

Thank you.

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_Framework#:~:text=Serverless%20is%20developed%20by%20Austen,2015%20under%20the%20name%20JAWS.

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