Why & What of Serverless Computing

Unraveling serverless computing and why you should give it a closer look. In this session at AITP Atlanta Meetup, I talk about the serverless movement, the trend, the hype, and what it really means. I talk about the evolution of architecture, the tenets of serverless computing, its use cases & challenges, security implications. I also touched upon the total cost of ownership and adoption of serverless computing in the industry.

Transcript

1. @rupakg rupakganguly.com
   Why & What of Serverless
   unraveling serverless computing
   and why you should give it a closer look
   AITP Atlanta Meetup, Atlanta
   Rupak Ganguly
   May 16th, 2019
   Solutions Architect, Docker Inc.
   

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2. Rupak Ganguly
   technologist | enterprise architect | entrepreneur
   rupakganguly.com
   @rupakg
   Solutions Architect, Docker Inc.
   

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3. @rupakg
   rupakganguly.com
   Why & What of Serverless
   unraveling serverless computing
   and why you should give it a closer look
   • The serverless movement
   • Evolution of architecture
   • Tenets of serverless computing
   • Use cases & challenges
   • Serverless TCO
   • Adoption in the enterprises
   We will look at:
   

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4. The Serverless Movement
   trends and the hype
   

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5. @rupakg
   rupakganguly.com
   the serverless movement
   Google Trends
   searches for ‘serverless’
   

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6. @rupakg
   rupakganguly.com
   serverless definition
   serverless: though servers exists, the developer
   does not have to think about them
   

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7. @rupakg
   rupakganguly.com
   “Serverless usually refers to an architectural pattern
   where the server side logic is run in stateless
   compute containers that are event-triggered,
   ephemeral and fully managed by third party.”
   - Martin Fowler of ThoughtWorks
   

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8. evolution
   monolithic
   architecture
   bare-metal servers
   tightly coupled components,
   deployed as single-unit
   data centers
   service-oriented
   architecture
   bare-metal, VMs, IaaS
   decoupled components,
   deployed as web services
   cloud
   micro-services
   architecture
   shift from infrastructure mgmt.
   API centric,
   single responsibility services
   platform-as-a-service
   zero admin of infrastructure
   serverless
   architecture
   functions as
   unit of deployment
   functions-as-a-service
   how we got here
   

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9. @rupakg
   rupakganguly.com
   serverless architecture
   shortest time to market
   greater developer productivity
   lowest total cost of ownership
   values
   applications run code in FaaS services
   and leverage other managed services
   

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10. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    faas providers
    AWS Lambda Azure Functions
    Google Cloud Functions IBM Cloud Functions
    

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11. serverless architecture
    it’s all about events
    

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12. serverless architecture
    it’s all about services
    http://blog.tonyfendall.com/2015/12/serverless-architectures-using-aws-lambda/
    

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13. serverless architecture
    real-time stream processing
    

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14. serverless architecture
    restaurant waiting list
    https://coderecipe.ai/architectures/96083665
    

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15. Serverless Computing
    myths, benefits and qualities
    

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16. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    microservices
    zero administration
    FaaS
    pay-per-execution ecosystem
    auto-scaling
    event-driven
    serverless computing
    FaaS qualities
    

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17. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    zero administration
    • no servers to maintain
    
    • no OS upgrades, no patches
    
    • renewed role of devops teams
    
    • paradigm shift, no ssh
    
    • no control over infrastructure
    

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18. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    pay-per-execution
    • no paying for idle
    
    • upfront cost savings
    
    • micro-billing, per 100 ms *
    
    • 1 million requests free tier *
    
    • $0.20 per million requests
    post free tier *
    * AWS Lambda pricing
    

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19. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    microservices
    • promotes single responsibility
    principle based services
    
    • no more death stars, monolithic
    apps
    
    • varied language support
    
    • small, autonomous, polyglot teams
    
    • agility, quick & frequent
    deployments
    

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20. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    ecosystem
    • use provider services
    
    • use of third-party services
    
    • S3, Kinesis, SNS, SQS
    
    • DynamoDB, Firebase, GraphQL
    
    • Cognito, Auth0, Synk, PureSec
    
    • CloudWatch, X-Ray, IOPipe
    

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21. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    auto-scaling
    • auto scaling Lambda
    
    • auto scaling DynamoDB
    
    • based on load, throughput
    consumption
    
    • no need for auto-scaling
    group policies
    
    • enables high-availability
    

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22. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    event-driven
    • trigger & respond to events
    
    • http events (API Gateway)
    
    • webhook events
    
    • scheduled events
    
    • rich ecosystem of event
    sources
    

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23. Considerations
    use cases, challenges & security
    

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24. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    use cases
    • real-time/streaming, batch processing: kinesis -> lambda
    
    • REST APIs, Graph APIs: lambda -> API Gateway endpoint
    
    • event-driven workflows, scheduled tasks, data transforms
    what are others building
    

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25. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    use cases
    • web, mobile & IoT
    backends
    
    • form processing
    
    • authentication
    
    • devops
    automation
    
    • chatbots
    
    • file manipulation
    
    • voice apps (Alexa)
    
    • ETL workloads
    
    • image resizing
    
    • video transcoding
    
    • security audits
    
    • dynamic websites
    
    • ecommerce stores
    
    • web hook listeners
    
    • CRON jobs
    
    • CI/CD pipelines
    
    • log analytics
    what are others building
    

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26. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    challenges
    • cold start latency, more
    with VPC
    
    • price at high volumes
    
    • developer experience
    
    • provider limits
    
    • fear of vendor lock-in
    
    • application lifecycle
    management
    
    • metrics & monitoring
    
    • service discovery
    
    • team collaboration
    
    • standardization
    it’s not all rosy
    

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27. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    security
    • Least privileges across resources
    
    • Reduce access to sensitive data, handle exceptions and
    validate input
    
    • Avoid embedding secrets, access keys and credentials in
    code
    
    • Throttle and define quotas
    
    • Encrypt data on the wire and data stored at rest
    
    • Scrutinize 3rd-party libraries & APIs for vulnerabilities
    
    • Be aware of new input/event sources
    guidelines & recommendations
    

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28. Serverless TCO
    is it really cost-effective?
    

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29. costs compared
    https://theburningmonk.com/2019/01/you-are-thinking-about-serverless-costs-all-wrong/
    

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30. cost of solution
    https://theburningmonk.com/2019/01/you-are-thinking-about-serverless-costs-all-wrong/
    

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31. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    cost breakdown
    •direct costs:
    • pay-per-invocation (no paying for idle)
    • Lambda cost, service(s) cost, data transfer cost, API
    Gateway cost
    •personnel costs:
    • building a devops team is not cheap, and involves a huge
    learning curve.
    • ~ 100,000+ per year per engineer
    https://theburningmonk.com/2019/01/you-are-thinking-about-serverless-costs-all-wrong/
    measurable costs
    

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32. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    •overhead costs:
    • delegate ops responsibilities to your cloud provider
    reduced responsibilities for devops team
    • frees developers to focus on building business functionality
    •opportunity costs:
    • ability to iterate faster & business can test ideas faster than
    competitors
    https://theburningmonk.com/2019/01/you-are-thinking-about-serverless-costs-all-wrong/
    cost breakdown
    non-measurable costs
    

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33. total cost of ownership
    https://theburningmonk.com/2019/01/you-are-thinking-about-serverless-costs-all-wrong/
    

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34. Adoption
    who are using serverless?
    

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35. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    adoption
    serverless in production
    

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36. adoption
    the CNCF serverless landscape
    https://landscape.cncf.io/format=serverless
    

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37. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    serverless and containers
    are complementary technologies
    what about containers?
    live side-by-side
    

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38. @rupakg
    rupakganguly.com
    https://rupakganguly.com/posts/dockercon-2019-oss-serverless/
    

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39. @rupakg rupakganguly.com
    it’s a wrap
    thank you. questions?
    

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