What is serverless computing?

Serverless computing is an approach to building and running applications that do not require provisioning or managing servers or virtual machines.

Serverless differs from the platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in that it is not an entire environment but a single function or application that can run in any environment or infrastructure without requiring the user to provision and manage the underlying platform manually.

Serverless computing is a model that allows developers to purchase backend services on a flexible, pay-as-you-go basis.

With this model, developers only have to pay for their services, which is analogous to cell phone plans that charge for each data byte instead of a monthly fixed limit.

The term ‘serverless’ can be misleading, as there are still servers that provide backend services. However, the vendor handles all of the server space and infrastructure concerns.

This means that developers can do their work without having to worry about servers at all.

With serverless, a cloud provider runs and manages the infrastructure. It automatically allocates resources as needed to execute and scale applications.

The companies & developers do not have to worry about maintaining the infrastructure. This is all handled by the cloud providers for them. AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions are some of the most popular serverless frameworks.

The adoption of serverless & its popularity is increasing because:

The workload on developers and DevOps reduces because they do not have to manage servers or handle infrastructure tasks.
Developers can concentrate on improving the business logic of the applications. Serverless applications have services such as databases and authentication managed within.
Serverless applications are cost effective because they work on a pay as you go model. We only need to pay for the function executions, rather than paying for unused capacity like with virtual machines.

How it Evolved? History!

For the first time in 2008, Google released a Google app engine. At that time, a developer successfully developed a program and launched it to run on Google’s Cloud without being concerned with details.

Later in 2015, Amazon launched a similar service named Lambda. Nowadays, these two are the biggest serverless computing service providers with many users.

What makes It differs from others?

IaaS: Within the cloud environment, IAAS or Infrastructure as a Service allows you to do almost everything about a website or an app.
PaaS: Users can develop and deploy products within the cloud environment. That’s why it’s known as a Platform as a Service.
BaaS: Backend as a Service has excellent features to outsource the administration of backend functions.

Business Use Cases of Serverless Computing

Store and manage Data files: The location of the open store, Inventories of available products, blog posts, and many other data need a home in the back end. Serverless Computing provides to store and manage this data.
Processing the data: It gives you powerful data processing features.
Security: It is one of the most trusted services for security prospects.
Automation: It helps users achieve operational and security benefits by automating some workloads.
Cost Reduction: It provides automation features that decrease your managing time and operating costs.

What are the Advantages & Disadvantages of Serverless Computing? Quick List?

Advantages

Dis-advantages

Cost Reduction

Complexity

Simplified Scalability

Latency

Simplified backend code

Contracts

Quicker Turnaround

Broken Authentication

Automation

Flexibility

Accuracy

Microservices Friendly

Pros and Cons of Serverless Computing

How Does Serverless Computing Work?

Serverless architecture is code-centric, using what is called FaaS, or functions-as-a-service. This service model allows developers to run their code directly in the cloud without worrying about building any packages or maintaining infrastructure.

People also read: Top 7 applications of cloud computing.

To make things more manageable, applications are broken up into individual functions that can be invoked and scaled as needed.

Examples of Serverless Computing

Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS): The backend is one of the essential parts of any software, especially web applications. It is the portion of the application that is responsible for all the business logic.

Know more about: IT Outsourcing: Everything You Need To Know.

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS): Function-as-a-Service is a cloud computing service that allows you to deploy your custom functions in the cloud to use on demand.

Serverless Databases: Serverless databases are a new model for writing and deploying software. They are an evolution of the NoSQL movement and are built on the idea that you don’t need to worry about infrastructure.

Serverless Frameworks: Serverless frameworks are infrastructure services that abstract the servers from the developers, making the application portable and easily deployable on the cloud.

Complete List of Serverless Providers

Major vendors are no longer the only players in the market for serverless architecture providers; new players have recently entered this market.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a computing service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers.

You pay only for the computing time you consume – there is no charge when your code is not running.

AWS Aurora

AWS Aurora is a MySQL-compatible database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open-source databases.

Aurora enables you to get started quickly and avoid the costs, delays, and complexity often associated with deploying new databases.

Azure Functions by Microsoft

Azure functions are Microsoft’s implementation of serverless computing. Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

Azure Functions is a serverless computing service by Microsoft. It will enable you to run code on-demand without provisioning or managing servers.

Azure Functions enables you to create small, isolated pieces of code with various triggers; It allows you to create a stateless HTTP request-response, timer, or storage trigger.

You can also retry and queue triggers and use templates for Visual Studio to do writing and debugging simple trigger functions easier.

Azure Functions uses the same programming languages, frameworks, and tools you’re already using, such as C# and .NET, node.js, PHP, Python, and Java. All languages run in the same execution environment.

Google Cloud Functions (GCF)

Google Cloud Functions is serverless computing which means there is no infrastructure management. Writing programmatically doesn’t require any workflow or deployment management.

There are two types of triggers – Scheduled invocation, which is triggered based on the schedule, and HTTP Request Triggers, which are triggered when Google Cloud receives an HTTP request.

Cloud Functions can be used to implement DNS Functions, data transformation, string manipulation, and many more. There are three types of resources in GCF – Functions, Triggers, and HTTPTrigger.

IBM Cloud Functions

IBM Cloud Functions is a serverless environment that is easy to build, deploy, manage and scale. Developers only need to worry about writing the function code and can focus on the application level.

The platform will automatically handle the underlying infrastructure. IBM Cloud Functions has capabilities for both developers and operations.

It provides a highly scalable, on-demand, event-driven execution environment that supports coding using Python and Node.js. Developers can test their code using the sandbox mode and seamlessly deploy their application in production without any changes.

The platform scales with the cloud and is backed by IBM’s high-quality, on-demand cloud services.

Apache OpenWhisk

Apache OpenWhisk is a serverless platform as a service that lets you run code without thinking about servers.

Apache OpenWhisk powers web, mobile, and IoT applications with a 100% event-driven architecture that scales on demand.

Apache OpenWhisk is a cloud-first distributed event-processing platform, a completely open-source and Apache-licensed project.

It lets you run code—such as microservices—without thinking about servers. Apache OpenWhisk is a cloud-first distributed event-processing platform that enables you to run code without thinking about servers.

Spotinst

Spotinst is an infrastructure capacity planning and management service that helps AWS users plan and manage their EC2 instance capacity in real-time.

Spotinst automatically identifies at-risk EC2 instances and helps AWS users avoid over-provisioning their fleet.

Spotinst is built and tested specifically for AWS cloud infrastructure and allows AWS users significantly reduce costs and improve application performance by enabling them to leverage excess EC2 instance capacity consistently.

Cloudflare Workers

Cloudflare Workers provides a JavaScript serverless execution environment that is lightweight and adds performance, security, and reliability to your website.

With Cloudflare Workers, developers can build and extend the capabilities of serverless sites without having to configure or maintain the infrastructure.

Oracle Fn Project

The Oracle Fn Project is an open-source, serverless computing platform that you can run anywhere, on any public, private, or hybrid cloud.

It supports all programming languages and has been written in Go for ease of use and performance.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for managing containerized applications. It is an implementation of the design principles described in the blog post by Google called “Pet Sets.”

It was developed by Google and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Linux-based system where containers can be easily managed and deployed to a cluster.

Kubernetes is a production-grade system to manage containerized applications across groups of hosts and provides APIs to automate everyday operations like deploying, scaling, and maintaining the containers.

Most Popular Serverless Frameworks

Many different serverless frameworks allow developers to explore new aspects of serverless computing without any commercial constraints. Here’s a roundup of some of the most popular ones:

List of Serverless Frameworks

Amplify Framework

Amplify Framework is a free and open-source Mobile Development Framework for building applications for Android and iOS.

It uses the same design, architecture, and UX patterns for developing applications for both platforms. Currently, it supports Java or Kotlin for Android applications and Swift or Objective C for iOS applications.

Architect Framework

Architect Framework is the best architecture developed by the Yii framework developers. It helps you to build and design your application; that is, your application may be a web application or a mobile application, but the architect framework will help you to structure your applications in the best way.

Up

Up is a robust, open-source Node.js web framework that makes it easy to build web applications and APIs. Up supports the MVC pattern and provides scaffolding tools, making it easy to create stunning applications.

Claudia.js

claudia.js is a web framework for node.js. It depends on express and angular but keeps things simple and easy to learn by providing a straightforward module system and interesting middleware and adding a powerful and flexible routing solution.

Jets

“Jets” is a framework that helps startups and entrepreneurs to validate, test, and launch their ideas. It is a framework that allows us to come out of our ignorance.

It is a framework that helps us to eliminate our fear of exploring, creating, and taking risks. It helps us to reverse engineer (with the help of our customers)to validate, test, and launch our product.

Kubeless

Kubeless is a framework for creating serverless applications built on top of Kubernetes. It offers a framework to develop and deploy event-driven applications based on other capabilities of Kubernetes, such as horizontal scaling.

Kubeless has been built on top of Kubernetes because it is the most productive and affluent platform for deploying applications, whether cloud-native or not.

Kubeless is a framework on top of Kubernetes that focuses on serverless applications. These are applications that make use of event-driven programming to remove the need for a server.

It has been built on top of Kubernetes because it is the most productive and affluent platform for deploying applications, whether cloud-native or not.

Fission

Fission is a simple, powerful, and highly extensible serverless framework for building event-driven microservices. It uses the Serverless Application Model (SAM) to deploy functions to AWS.

You can start using Fission immediately using the included command-line tool or the included Go, Python, Node.js, and Java SDKs.

Fission also has first-class support for JavaScript, including full support for async/await and a runtime that automatically manages function execution.

Pulumi

Pulumi is an open-source project that enables you to build, deploy and manage cloud-native apps. It works with your existing tools and languages.

Whether a developer or an IT Pro, you can use Pulumi in the development, continuous integration, and deployment cycle.

Pulumi code is a combination of your code and metadata. The metadata, a JavaScript object, is built using Pulumi SDK and stored on the cloud.

Pulumi uses this metadata to keep track of your cloud resources. You can use the Pulumi command line tools or the Pulumi SDK to deploy your code.

Pulumi SDK is a set of libraries that allows you to build and manage your Pulumi metadata. Pulumi also supports continuous deployment, and you can use Pulumi in your development cycle.

Serverless

A free and open-source web framework written using Node.js that enables you to build applications on AWS Lambda.

This Framework is excellent for building microservices-based applications using the language and runtime of your choice (Node.js, Ruby, Python, Go, C.