Serverless, also known as serverless computing, is a technology where cloud providers such as AWS and Azure are responsible for the provision and maintenance of servers that help developers deploy code continuously and smoothly. The name is completely misleading, you do not need to keep an eye on servers when developing, updating, and supporting your software applications. Below you will understand the basics of Serverless and which cloud provider and framework supports server-less architectures.
Serverless seems to be a natural evolution, following the same path as VM (Virtual Machines), where every step in the abstraction layer leads to the VM. This means that resources are dynamically allocated without any code being executed. It can be seen as a way to provide a single outage point for developing and maintaining your software applications and for deploying servers.
NIST defines PaaS (Platform as a Service) as “a capability provided to consumers that are capable of deploying consumer-created or purchased applications in a cloud infrastructure built with a programming language or tools supported by the provider.” According to this definition, users are expected to control the delivery of applications and have control over the configuration of the hosted environment. FaaS (Function as a Service) is the next step in the development of cloud computing, where you abstract the technical aspects of application development, deployment, management, and maintenance of your application.
The application is divided into individual functions that can be scaled and executed independently. The business logic is executed as an independent function and can implement different programming languages. Server-side logic remains the responsibility of the developer and runs in a stateless, volatile machine triggered by various types of events.
This means that many functions can be executed simultaneously without overloading a server or saturating the network environment.
Serverless computing is a new paradigm of application development and operation that is able to create and operate applications without the need for cloud servers. It connects traditional servers to server-only applications that do not use a server. Application development does not require developers to manage a cloud server, network connection, or even a physical server in the application environment.
Serverless computing is an area where application developers focus on
programming application functions, saving time and effort in configuring and managing the resources required to deploy and operate the application.
Microservices and containers are an integral part of digital transformation strategies because they enable better scaling, scalability, and performance than traditional servers. Containers are the most efficient and optimal way to operate microservices, as Kubernetes is required for the running time operation in a container cluster.
Server-less applications, also known as Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), are a major advantage of most cloud providers, allowing users to write code only and manage infrastructure behind the scenes. In this paradigm, cloud infrastructure providers must set up the necessary sanitation facilities to instantiate the application as soon as a request for it is received. This is done so that users can concentrate exclusively on writing code and leave the task to the cloud provider.
Users can then write multiple functions to implement the business logic, and these functions can be integrated into a single application without having to talk to each other.
The system that includes the use of the above model is known as serverless architecture, and the delivery technology has moved away from a model that depends on containerization.
AWS has revolutionized the state of the art in server-less technology and literally reshaped the term. This movement has solidified with offerings from Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, as well as offerings that are designed to compete directly with AWS Lambda.
As the serverless base technology matures along party lines, third-party tools such as the Serverless Framework are emerging to give developers more choice. This means you no longer have to spend your time focusing on developing business logic or tinkering with infrastructure to ensure that your database works in a cluster. The Serverless Application Model helps you to spin your application stack and to organize and manage the state of the cloud resources connected to your applications easily.
Cloud providers, who are striving to reduce overhead and enable faster deployment of resources on their platforms, are quickly recognizing the need to develop new types of hardware-accelerated hypervisors. These enable faster deployment and execution in container environments. AWS Lambda, for example, allows you to write logs in a specific language to AWS CloudWatch and store those logs in the cloud.
Serverless architecture is a new approach to writing and deploying applications that allow developers to focus on the code. Serverless can also:
block accelerated hypervisors, virtual machines, and cloud services by using a combination of hardware, eliminating the need to set up and configure physical servers and virtual machines.
help you to spin your application stack and to organize and manage the state of the cloud resources connected to your applications easily.
In the future, we can expect more support for serverless architectures in the form of the IronFunctions API, which will help to avoid vendor lock-ins and allow you to run serverless applications on different cloud providers or even on-terrain.