A Jedi's Guide to Migrating to Serverless

Transcript

1. A Jedi’s Guide to Migrating to Serverless CloudConf 2018 Aleksandar Simovic Torino, Italia
2. What we’ll be covering • Stepping stones to serverless • Serverless monoliths • Rethinking application processes • The function-by-function approach
 “Divide and conquer”
3. STAR WARS NERD ALERT If you have Star Wars phobia or mania, take care!
4. Serverless means… • No longer need to manage or configure servers • Pay only for used time • Automatically scaled per usage • Auto-failover and automated high scalability
5. Sounds great!
6. How do we go serverless?
7. “We’ll just build applications on serverless instead of cloud” Initially serverless seems like…
8. Simply… Attribution: Simon Wardley
9. Also known as “The Luke Skywalker approach”
10. “We just don’t think about servers anymore.” “I have a light saber, I am a Jedi.”
11. ANTI PATTERN ALERT Welcome to Serverless Monoliths!
12. Serverless Monoliths = Dark Side • Hard to maintain and test • Slower starting time • Kept all drawbacks from your previous state • Higher cost
13. Bundling many functionalities into a serverless function also means… every time you wanted to use your car, 
 you would have to assemble it first.
14. “Now we just don’t think about servers anymore.” Serverless is much more than
15. Migrating to serverless requires us to change how we think about application development …not just jump to serverless.
16. So, how should we migrate?
17. Learn from Luke’s mistakes
18. Function-by-function approach “Divide and Conquer” 1. Pick your already isolated services first
 “the low hanging fruit”
19. Function-by-function approach “Divide and Conquer” 2. Rethink and separate services into functions Hint: you don’t pay for your function storage, just usage.
20. Function-by-function approach “Divide and Conquer” 3. Divide your business processes into functions
21. Case Study: • Can’t predict the popularity of their pens • Have lots of unexpected peaks • Being able to serve is the key business goal • Spending lots on provisioning servers • Keeping lots of servers idle Problems:
22. Case Study: • Low hanging fruits 
 = preprocessors • Migrated all preprocessors into serverless functions • Separated their business process into functions • > 200,000 requests / h
23. Case Study: • Converters were eating too much resources • Too expensive Heroku dynos • Less isolation, could collide over resources • Hard to experiment Problems: MINDMUP
24. Case Study: • Low hanging fruits 
 = converters • Migrated all converters into functions • Separated business processes for payments, notifications, file storage • Half a million active users each month • Grew 30% in the migration period, 
 while reduced costs by 30% MINDMUP
25. Key points to remember • Identify your isolated problems. • Apply the “function-by-function” approach. • Analyze the remaining monolith services. • Repeat the approach.
26. “But can we use this approach everywhere?”
27. No. 
 Look at your current situation.
28. Case Study: Migrating User authentication
29. Reuse existing serverless components • Plug-and-play authentication and authorization services: AWS Cognito, Azure Active Directory, etc. • Easily add other authentication providers. • User groups. • Automated permission and policy systems.
30. Revised Steps • Identify isolated problems. • Check and replace these problems with existing serverless components. • Apply the “function-by-function” approach. • Analyze the remaining monolith services. • Repeat.
31. Summary • Serverless is much bigger than just 
 “no longer managing servers”. • Don’t just rush going serverless. Rethink. • Remember your context. Reuse. • Pick the low hanging “fruits” (services) first. • “Divide and conquer” your business processes into functions.
32. Learn more? Use code claudia40
33. Thank you! Questions? @simalexan