Serverless Computing - Promises and Pitfalls - by Jonathan Schellack

An introduction to Serverless Cloud Computing, presented at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge 2019. This talk by Jonathan Schellack talks about "why serverless", as well as both the pros and the cons of this new way of architecting software systems.

Transcript

1. Serverless Computing:
   Promises & Pitfalls
   Jonathan Schellack @schellack / sal.us
   

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2. Why are we here?
   •Technology is the means,
   not the end
   •Business Problems > Buzzwords
   @schellack
   

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3. Defining a negative
   •Missing servers
   •Focus on what’s missing
   •Do only what you must
   •Disown everything else
   @schellack
   

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4. Constraints
   •Freedom
   •Limited resources
   •Finances
   •Time
   •Attention
   @schellack
   

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5. So what is serverless?!
   “Serverless is an event driven, utility based, stateless, code
   execution environment.”
   – Simon Wardley
   “Serverless architectures are application designs that incorporate
   third-party ‘Backend as a Service’ (BaaS) services, and/or that
   include custom code run in managed, ephemeral containers on a
   ‘Functions as a Service’ (FaaS) platform.”
   – Mike Roberts
   @schellack
   

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6. So what is serverless?!
   “Serverless is an event driven, utility based, stateless, code
   execution environment.”
   – Simon Wardley
   • Event-driven
   • Utility-based
   • Stateless
   • Code execution environment
   @schellack
   

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7. Event Driven
   • Publish/subscribe
   • CQRS
   • Backend-as-a-service
   • Rethink how we design applications
   @schellack
   

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8. Utility Based
   • Compute = commodity
   • Scale to zero
   • Performance (suddenly?) matters
   • IT + Finance
   @schellack
   

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9. Stateless
   • Global state was already bad, before serverless
   • Incompatible with serverless (mostly)
   @schellack
   

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10. Code execution environment
    • Code
    • Where are the functions?
    • Someone else’s environment
    @schellack
    

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11. Promises
    • Manage what matters
    • Autoscaling
    • Elastic
    • Scale to zero
    • Excellent fit for one-off compute tasks
    • Environment-enabled DRY
    @schellack
    

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12. Pitfalls
    • No state
    • Idempotency
    • Autoscaling (connections)
    • Difficult to cache
    • Difficult to coordinate between components
    • You have to plan and estimate
    @schellack
    

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13. Pitfalls
    • Security "
    • Public Internet
    • Common vulnerabilities (see top 10 guide)
    • Environment separation
    @schellack
    

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14. Pitfalls
    • Snowflakes ❅ ❆
    • Test automation
    • Deployment automation
    @schellack
    

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15. Pitfalls
    • Black Box
    • Traceability
    • End-to-end
    • Observability
    • Build systems that allow us to see (from outside) what is actually going on
    (inside) without shipping new code
    

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16. Let’s solve problems
    @schellack
    

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17. Let’s solve problems
    •Automation
    •Web apps
    •Analytics
    •Batch processing
    •Internet-of-things
    @schellack
    

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18. Session evaluations are ONLINE ONLY
    http://j.mp/SSBREVAL
    

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