Are Multi-Cloud and Serverless Good or Bad?

Is Multi-Cloud good or bad? How about Serverless? The answer to all these questions is Yes, sometimes. Whether you're new to all this or a long-time industry veteran, you'll surely come away from this approachable talk with a new understanding of cutting edge technology and actionable insights on how to make smart trade offs.

Presented at the Vancouver Cloud Summit 2024 (2024-04-22), on the main stage of Vancouver's historic Orpheum theatre.

Transcript

1. Slides
2. 👍 👍
3. 👍 👍
4. Agenda 1. Context: R E P 2. Serverless: S3, Shape, S3, S3 3. Multi-Cloud: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 4. Recap: Actionable Takeaways
5. MATTIAS ANDERSSON ‣ SFU Computing Science grad, 2001 ‣ Dev on Microsoft Office Shared Services ‣ Many hats in software development: architecture, security, leadership, etc. ‣ Taught hundreds of thousands to architect, build, & run cloud systems ‣ AWS Community Builder, Serverless
6. Agenda 1. Context: R E P 2. Serverless: S3, Shape, S3, S3 3. Multi-Cloud: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 4. Recap: Actionable Takeaways
7. This is… The Control-Responsibility Spectrum Control Responsibility
8. This is… The Control-Responsibility Spectrum Control Responsibility NOT
9. This is… The actual Control-Responsibility Spectrum Control Responsibility
10. Control-Responsibility Spectrum Control Responsibility Not My Problem It Just Works “Managed” We hope trust to fix problems
11. Control-Responsibility Spectrum Manual Work Control Managed Time-Efficient Possibly resource-efficient (maybe) (certainly not certain)
12. Control-Responsibility Spectrum Manual Work Control Managed Time-Efficient YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS ONE SIMPLE TRICK!!!
13. Control-Responsibility Spectrum Manual Work Error-prone Expert-Managed Time-Efficient
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesperson_problem
17. Travelling Salesman Problem Efficiency https://xkcd.com/399/ Super-easy, barely an inconvenience 0h, really?
18. premature optimization is the root of all evil — Donald Knuth
19. “Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.” — Donald Knuth
20. Responsibility Efficiency Programmers
21. Programmers? Java C++ C Assembly Machine Language Transistors Javascript R Python Scratch Spreadsheet Mail Client
23. “I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL… I could say 'Subtract income tax from pay' instead of trying to write that in octal code” — Grace Hopper
24. The most damaging phrase in the language is “We’ve always done it this way!” — Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper in an interview in Information Week, March 9, 1987, p. 52
25. I think many developers look down on configuration as “not real programming”. There’s an idolatry of coding today. We’ve been told that “software is eating the world”, and we’ve inaccurately translated that to “coding is eating the world” … Configuration is your friend. Days of programming can save hours of configuration. — Ben Kehoe
26. Effort ≠ Value
27. Work Smarter, Not Harder
28. Responsibility: Now, for everything you are outsourcing, you are still accountable. Your users don’t care if their bad experience is caused by a third party you’re using, it’s still your problem… Accept the discomfort of not owning your own destiny Efficiency: The business value that your organization is trying to create is the point… You should go serverless because you want to focus on creating value Programming: Configuration is your friend. Days of programming can save hours of configuration. — Ben Kehoe
29. You should go serverless
30. Agenda 1. Context: R E P 2. Serverless: S3, Shape, S3, S3 3. Multi-Cloud: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 4. Recap: Actionable Takeaways
31. S3 Time! Surprising Serverless Stories!
32. Serverless Story 1: How Many Australians Can You Fit on a Website? ‣ “Austin Wilshire and Bernd Hartzer received world-wide attention in August [2016] when they built an alternative Australian Bureau of Statistics Census website for $10 million less than the Australian government.” ‣ “The kicker? The official ABS site crashed almost immediately after launching. Whereas, the site created by Austin and Bernd at a weekend hack-a-thon remained stable because it was built using serverless architecture. It also cost less than $500 compared to the government’s $10 million price tag.” ‣ Said Austin: “[T]o set up the actual architecture, it took me most of Saturday because I’d never touched AWS in my life.”
33. Serverless Story 2: Serverless Startup Shoots for the Stars ‣ Sam Kroonenburg took 4 weeks off work (as a Dev Manager at Microsoft) ‣ With the goal to build a Learning Management System w/ Video Lessons, Quiz Engine, Online Store, Sign Up / Login, etc. ‣ And asked himself what he could reuse instead of rebuilding ‣ AWS: S3, Lambda, CloudFront, Elastic Transcoder, etc. ‣ Other services: Auth0, Webtask, Firebase DB, Stripe
34. True cloud-native is simpler, not more complex. https://turnoff.us/geek/enterprise-vs-startup-journey-to-cloud/
35. Serverless Story 3: Wait, What?!? ‣ Enterprise setting, traditional system project of 20 people ‣ 7 months into a 9-month timeline; overrun guaranteed ‣ 2 people built it over the weekend, using Serverless ‣ Took them 1 month to convince team; whole project finished 1 month early !!!
36. Another Enterprise: Capital One ‣ “It’s been nearly a decade since Capital One made the decision to transition to the cloud… ‣ “In 2021, we closed our last remaining data center… ‣ “Much of our success goes to technologies like AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), which enables our talented developers to do in minutes what previously took months to do.”
37. Another Enterprise: Capital One Serverless… enables… talented developers to do in minutes what previously took months to do. — Capital One, Fortune 150 Company
38. What is Serverless? To truly spell it out, the term “serverless” is a bit of a misnomer. The servers are still there — they’re physically in Amazon’s data centers — SAM simply removes any infrastructure concerns. — Capital One, Fortune 150 Company
39. What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
40. Value Cost What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
41. Value Cost What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
42. Value Cost What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
43. Value Cost What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
44. Value Cost What is Serverless? Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed)
45. The Shape of Serverless Scales: 1. Automatically 2. Linearly (or less) 3. Continuously 4. From zero 5. Based on usage 6. Infinitely 7. Transparently (i.e. expertly-managed) Value Cost
46. My Favourite Serverless Service ‣ S3 (or Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage) ‣ Core to virtually every system ‣ Storage durability is a… ‣ Early serverless service (truly cloud-native) ‣ Non-compute (enlightening some who assume Serverless = Lambda/Functions) MAJOR PAIN IN THE BUTT
47. Sample Serverless Services (AWS) ‣ S3 ‣ DynamoDB ‣ Lambda ‣ API Gateway ‣ CloudFront ‣ Certificate Manager ‣ EventBridge ‣ StepFunctions ‣ Cognito ‣ SQS ‣ SNS ‣ Rekognition ‣ Transcribe ‣ Comprehend ‣ Translate ‣ Polly ‣ Lex ‣ Elastic Transcoder ‣ Kinesis Firehose ‣ Glue ‣ Athena ‣ SageMaker Serverless Inference ‣ KMS ‣ IAM ‣ CloudWatch ‣ CloudFormation ‣ …
48. Sample Serverless Services (GCP) ‣ Google Cloud Storage ‣ BigQuery ‣ Firestore ‣ Cloud Functions ‣ Cloud Run ‣ Pub/Sub ‣ Workflows ‣ Eventarc ‣ Cloud Translation ‣ Cloud Vision ‣ Text-to-Speech ‣ Speech-to-Text ‣ Document AI ‣ Vertex AI Recommendations Predictions ‣ Vertex AI Generative AI ‣ Cloud CDN ‣ Cloud Build ‣ Artifact Registry ‣ Cloud Shell ‣ Cloud Monitoring ‣ Cloud Logging ‣ Cloud Trace ‣ Error Reporting ‣ …
49. Sample Serverless Services (Azure) ‣ Azure Blob Storage ‣ Azure Functions ‣ Durable Functions ‣ Azure CDN ‣ Queue Storage ‣ Application Insights ‣ App Service Platform ‣ Azure Container Apps ‣ Azure Cosmos DB Serverless APIs ‣ Azure Repos ‣ Azure Artifacts ‣ Azure AI Speech ‣ Azure AI Language ‣ Azure AI Translator ‣ Azure AI Vision ‣ Azure AI Content Safety ‣ Azure AI Document Intelligence ‣ Azure OpenAI Service ‣ Azure Front Door Classic ‣ API Management v1 Consumption ‣ Azure Active Directory External Identities ‣ …
50. How to Architect and Develop Serverlessly 1. Think Event-Driven 2. Build Statelessly 3. Embrace Managed
52. Agenda 1. Context: R E P 2. Serverless: S3, Shape, S3, S3 3. Multi-Cloud: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 4. Recap: Actionable Takeaways
53. Buying Decisions
54. Buying Decisions
55. Cheaper Insurance — Half Price!
56. Ugly: LCD Multi-cloud Lowest Common Denominator (Everything you build should be able to run on any cloud) i.e. Don’t use any new technology i.e. Only use commodity old stuff i.e. Very little serverless i.e. Super-inefficient 1/3 3/4 -6/61 5/99 8/25 “Avoid Vendor Lock-In!”
57. Ugly: LCD Multi-cloud 59 minutes 59 minutes ≈ 1h Serverless… enables… talented developers to do in minutes what previously took months to do. 1.1 months 1.1 months * 25 days / month * 8h / day = 220h 1h vs 220h? >220x longer to stick with the old way and avoid lock-in? Yikes!
58. Ugly: FUD Fear Uncertainty Doubt
59. Good: Combo Cloud Remember S3-2? A Cloud Guru
60. Good: Combo Cloud ‣ AWS: S3, Lambda, CloudFront, Elastic Transcoder, etc. ‣ Other services: Auth0, Webtask, Firebase DB, Stripe ‣ Combo Cloud ‣ “Best in Class” Multi-cloud
61. Bad: Complexity Beware overconfidence Don’t assume Be careful with security!
62. Multi-Cloud The Good The Bad The Ugly Combo Cloud! Complexity LCD / FUD
63. Agenda 1. Context: R E P 2. Serverless: S3, Shape, S3, S3 3. Multi-Cloud: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly 4. Recap: Actionable Takeaways
64. Recap of Actionable Takeaways
65. Manual Work Error-prone DIY Expert-Managed Time-Efficient Try to Live Here Limit to 3% 1. Mind the Control-Responsibility Spectrum
66. Serverless is the New Black (and the True Cloud-Native) 2. Build solutions, not programs/systems (No one cares about your code, only how you can help them.) So… 3. Seek out and use expertly-managed services/apps (You’re probably not as good as you think at the details.) 4. Architect systems to be stateless and event-based (This helps align your system costs to value achieved.)
67. Serverless is the New Black (and the True Cloud-Native) Value Cost 5. Remember that Serverless comes in many forms, not just functions 6. Always look at the pricing page early 7. Recognize the shape of serverless:
68. Navigating Multi-Cloud 8. Decline the overpriced insurance offered by Lowest Common Denominator Multi-Cloud (People will happily take your gorilla-protection money.) 9. Don’t buy the FUD; Multi-Cloud can work (Ignore the haters; do what works for you.) 10.Embrace Combo-Cloud when its ROI is high enough to outweigh the complexity cost (And only then.)
69. More Resources 11.Read “Serverless is a State of Mind” (And Ben’s other articles.) https://ben11kehoe.medium.com/serverless-is-a-state-of-mind-717ef2088b42 12.Read “Multi-Cloud is the Worst Practice” (By the always-snarky Corey Quinn.) https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/multi-cloud-is-the-worst-practice/ 13.Do the Cloud Resume Challenge (It’s not just for finding a job, it’s about realizing the potential of today’s tech.)
70. MATTIAS ANDERSSON https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattias-andersson 14. Reach out!
71. One more thing… All the QR codes in this talk point to a serverless link-redirecting system that I bootstrapped in a day with no functions; just config Like this one
72. Wrap-Up Questions? Feedback?
73. MATTIAS ANDERSSON https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattias-andersson Reach out! Slides