Serverless Architecture and Applications- All you need to know!

JavaScript is a programming language that has been around for a long time. Last year it completed 25 years after its launch as a web programming language. Unlike others of its type, this language has continually developed with the changing time. A variety of applications like web apps, games, and art can be coded with JavaScript. One such application is developing serverless functions. In this article, I will introduce serverless architecture and applications.

What does Serverless mean?

Serverless is a cloud computing execution model where the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation and provisioning of servers. A serverless application runs in stateless compute containers that are event-triggered, ephemeral (may last for one invocation), and fully managed by the cloud provider. The pricing of these applications is based on the number of executions rather than computation capacity.

Serverless architecture is defined as the way to build and run applications and services without having to run infrastructure by many organizations. It provides a way to remove architecture responsibilities from one’s workload, including responsibilities like scaling, and maintenance. Scaling and other such activities can be automatic, and one has to pay only for the services that one use. This architecture allows the users to write and implement code without giving them trouble to think about the underlying infrastructure. Even though the name suggests otherwise, serverless does not mean that the code runs without servers, but it means that developers no longer have to be concerned about server management. For this reason, in this architectural model, there is no need to purchase or rent servers in advance to host and execute the server-side code. Whereas, Serverless applications, also known as Function-as-a-Service or FaaS, is a service provided by most of the industry cloud providers in which they allow the users to only write code. The infrastructure behind the scenes is managed by them. Users can write various functions to implement business logic and then all these functions can be easily combined to talk to each other. Some of the most popular FaaS offerings from the cloud providers are namely:

• Azure Function (Microsoft)
• AWS Lambda (AWS- Amazon Web Services)
• Google Cloud Function (Google)

These serverless applications with serverless architecture have some inherent traits that define them. They are as follows:

• Low barrier-to-entry: It means that it is relatively straightforward to start getting ones’ code running in a serverless architecture. Not many pre-requisites are required for learning to use serverless. It thus has a very low knowledge requirement for entering into this field.
• Hostless: Using a serverless architecture implies that one does not have to interact with servers anymore. And because there are no servers to work with, this brings a significantly less operational overhead on their maintenance.
• Stateless: This means the state of these applications is created when the execution starts and destroyed when the function has been executed successfully. There is no state information being store automatically about these functions. In case, the users need to store the state information, a separate storage system like a database can be used.
• Elasticity: Using a serverless architecture provides great elasticity. It provides a huge scope of scalability. This also means there is no need for the manual management of resources. Thus many challenges in resource allocation disappear.
• Distributed: Since deployment units are very small, serverless architecture is intrinsically distributed. Many components have to be integrated via the network like authentication, database, queue, and so on.
• Event-driven: This means that you need an event that occurs before executing these functions. An event can be anything like a REST API request, a message added to a queue, etc. The response from the event, also known as a trigger, can be used to fire the execution of a serverless application.

Building a Serverless Application

ADVANTAGES:

1. The usage of Serverless application and architecture poses many benefits as it provides a cost-effective model where one only pays for the services being used and does not have to worry about investing in the internal architecture.
2. The function-as-a-Service architecture i.e. FaaS implementation allows the developers to create independent, resourceful functions like an API call.
3. With the cloud provider providing all the services, the user does not have to worry about infrastructure security and maintenance.
4. For the people starting their own ventures, it increases the time to launch the whole application in the market because of its modular nature which makes it possible to launch the application in parts and not the whole thing at once.
5. Using serverless allows the developer to shrink or invest in the application according to its usage and popularity. It also helps deploy the applications and code faster and provides more flexibility as discussed above.

Thus using serverless architecture provides developers with many benefits when compared the conventional hosting methods.

LIMITATIONS:

Though serverless applications provide a variety of benefits to both users and developers it does have some limitations too.

1. One of the major disadvantages of using serverless is that one has to depend upon the cloud provider for monitoring and maintaining the system because the developer has limited access to the internal architecture.
2. Also, because many small components are to be integrated into the system, the system tends to become very complex with an increase in modularity.
3. With everything running in the cloud there is no local environment to test and debug code in the development stage. This becomes a problem for the developers who are not very skilled and lack experience.
4. If considered over a long duration, serverless turns out to be more expensive than the conventional hosting methods because of integrating many small components.
5. In this architecture, cloud providers have control over the interaction between the components and thus the flexibility and customization of the system are compromised.
6. Cold starts are also one of the significant limitations that serverless applications face.

CONCLUSION

Serverless architecture is certainly very exciting, but it comes with a bunch of limitations. The validity and success of architectures depend on the business requirements and by no means solely on technology. In the same way, Serverless can shine, only when used in the proper place as it is not the solution to every problem. Thus Serverless architecture is just one more option for deploying applications with many benefits if used in the right manner.

Hope I could explain the basics of serverless architecture. You can refer to the websites given in the reference section below to learn more about serverless in detail.

References:

1. https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/traits-serverless-architecture/
2. https://newrelic.com/blog/best-practices/what-is-serverless-architecture