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Cloud Computing
Serverless Architecture
 What is Serverless Architecture?
Serverless – a fancy word to hear These functions can start in very less time and can
especially when we have countless be executed anywhere, and after execution, they can
options for containers and servers be stopped, and resources are free in comparison to
available to choose from for application microservices where we have to keep them running
deployment. All this started with for long. One good example of serverless architecture
physical servers where one had to go or FaaS is AWS Lambda, and we will discuss it here
manually deploy the code on virtual in a while.
machines, where anyone can deploy or
recover it irrespective of geographical There is another perspective of serverless architecture
presence. Now we have containers which is BaaS (Backend as a Service), here in this model
with swift deployment times, higher application will call these cloud services via some API
availability, and recoverability. When all or connection or SDKs and use the capabilities in the
these capabilities are available with an application without actually implementing it. BaaS based
architecture having a server, then why services have their storage, code, file management, user
do we need Serverless at all and does it management and they also have their APIs which allows
mean “NO SERVER”? outside applications to integrate with them using these
APIs. Some BaaS even has a UI in between, so calling
Serverless architecture does not mean application has to handle this part and application which
that it can be executed sans server but it is calling BaaS also need to consider that most of these
is a service on its own, and it also means BaaS come with some contractual agreement made with
that developer no longer has to worry the vendor. This is a downside of BaaS since that will be
about the server on which code will having impacts in case if we like to move to another similar
get executed. Serverless architectures feature providing BaaS.
refer to applications that significantly
depend on third-party services (knows So, far we have discussed what serverless architecture
as backend as a Service or “BaaS”) or and FaaS and BaaS techniques which are based on this
on custom code that’s run in ephemeral architecture is. Now we will take a look at different
containers (Function as a Service or cloud vendors and what they are offering in Serverless
“FaaS”). Since it functions on its own, Architecture space.
it is often called as Faas(Function as a
Service), and serverless also means that
the organization need not purchase,
rent or provision servers.The need
to depend on virtual machines to
develop and deploy the code is no
more there. Instead, organizations can
build functions and trigger them based
on events. We can also understand
serverless architecture by comparing it
to a traditional microservice architecture
where large enterprise applications are
broken down into smaller services, and
then these services can be enhanced,
managed and scaled independently.
Now with the serverless architecture,
this is further be divided into functions.
 Microsoft Azure - Serverless Architecture
Microsoft Azure is cloud computing service developed
and owned by Microsoft. Azure is used for building,
testing, deploying and managing applications/services
in the cloud through Microsoft managed data centers.
In Serverless computing world, Microsoft Azure has
developed a feature called Azure Functions. Azure
Functions are a small piece of code, or we can call it as a
function which can be executed in cloud infrastructure.
The way Azure Functions work is that developer will
create a function or piece of code without worrying
about infrastructure and scalability. To create functions,
a developer can choose languages like PHP, Python,
Java, and Node.js, etc. which is excellent as we no longer
need to worry about which programming language a
developer can choose.
Azure Functions can be used to do lots of prevalent
scenarios which we perform in any enterprise
applications, some of these scenarios are executing
a batch process, calling an HTTP method, processing
related to messaging infrastructures like queues or
topics can also be used to trigger a timer task based
on certain events. Azure functions can also support
web hooks, like for example if a code checked into a
GitHub repository, an Azure Function can be written to
track that event and do some operation based on that
event which happened in GitHub repository so saying
that Azure Functions can do data processing, help in
integrating different systems, creating simple HTTP APIs
is a correct statement.
Azure Functions are capable of
integrating with different Azure services
or even 3rd party services like GitHub
or Twilio(communication services API).
By integrating means that these services
can trigger or can be used as providing
data to the Azure Functions.Azure
Functions support dependencies as well,
so while writing functions which have
some dependencies, Azure Functions are
capable of bringing these dependencies
while execution, common examples of
dependencies are NuGet and NPM. If you
look at pricing wise, Azure Functions are
only be charged for time duration they
are executing and the resources which are
used in executing these Functions.
Scalability is also not a concern since that
will be managed by cloud infrastructure
where your function will get executed.
So, in a nutshell, Azure Functions are
the perfect example of Serverless
Computing where a developer can create
any functions without worrying about
infrastructure or server where it will get
executed and they can be very easily
deployed in Azure App Service platform
in the cloud.
Google Cloud Platform - Serverless Architecture
Similar to Microsoft Azure Functions, Google also
has come up with a feature called Google Cloud
Functions in the space of Serverless Architecture. As
per the official documentation released by Google,
Google Cloud Functions are lightweight, event-based
and asynchronous. They allow developers to create a
single small function which can be triggered based
on an event or this function could also possibly
respond to an event, and again here this function can
be developed and deployed without worrying about
a server or a runtime environment.
Google Cloud Functions are written in Javascript,
and they can be executed in a NodeJS runtime or
environment in Google Cloud. Since it is written in
easy executable Javascript, it makes it portable and
testable.
Google Cloud Functions are provided with a capability
of easy integration with other Google Cloud Services
like Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Pub/Sub,
Google Cloud Dataflow, etc. An example of this would
be, Google Cloud Function can be triggered based
on file upload in Google Cloud Storage, or it can be
triggered if some message is received on Pub/Sub
topic. Google Cloud Functions can also access the
authentication services of Google Cloud Platform so
no need to worry about any Google Cloud Function
getting unauthorized access or executed on the
wrong resource.
Google Cloud Functions can also be triggered
on HTTP/S, and this capability makes them
more compelling since with this they also are
integrated with API gateways or even web
hooks. Google Cloud Functions comes up with
a local emulator which developer can use to
test function in local before actually deploying
the function to cloud, also if a function has any
dependency, then it can be resolved by running
npm install in the cloud which can bring in
all the dependencies needed to execute the
cloud function.
As far as scaling is concerned, we need not
worry when executing functions since Google
Cloud Platform manages it. A function can
scale from a single execution a day to millions
of executions and for that developer does not
have to do anything, yes, of course, function
execution will be billed as per the resources
and time it takes to execute the function on
the cloud.
So, these cloud functions are capable of
integrating with all cloud services of Google
Cloud Platform, these are secure, easy to write,
test and integrate and at the same time can be
scaled as per the usage needs and frequency
and these all together makes them a perfect
example of Serverless Architecture.
Amazon Web Services – Serverless Architecture
AWS defines Lambda as “AWS Lambda lets you
run code without provisioning servers. One pays
only for the compute time consumed - there is
no charge when your code is not running. With
Lambda, one can run code for virtually any type
of application or backend service with almost no
administration.
Just upload your code and Lambda takes care of
everything required to run and scale your code
with high availability. One can set up the code to
automatically trigger from other AWS services
or call it directly from any web or mobile app.
This indicates that this AWS service is a perfect
example of Serverless Architecture since it is all
code but no infrastructure.
AWS Lambda is one of most famous and widely
used service in Serverless Architecture space.
No server management, flexible scaling, high
availability and no idle capacity or no cost when
idle are key advantages of AWS Lambda which is
no different than advantages provided by other
cloud players.
AWS Lambda can easily be integrated with other
AWS services like AWS API Gateway, Simple Storage
Service (S3), Kinesis, Athena or even with Dynamo
DB. Due to this easy integration, AWS Lambda can
be used in wide variety of applications like mobile,
desktop or even in data processing or analytics
application; it can also be used with IoT backend.
Zillow, Localytics, Bustle and many other big and
successful products are using AWS Lambda.
Node.js, Java, C#, and Python are supported
by AWS Lambda which means a code can be
written in any of these programming languages
and then can be executed as Lambda function
in the cloud on event triggers. AWS Lambda
comes up with versioning and aliases so you can
always keep different versions of a single lambda
function and it can easily be monitored, logged
and troubleshoot through AWS’s Cloud Watch.
There are certain limits regarding how much a
single lambda function can process request and
response, and that can be looked in AWS Console.
 AWS – Serverless Web Architecture
BaaS - reduced development cost
IaaS and PaaS are based on the assumption that
server and operating system management can be
commoditized. Serverless Backend as a Service, is
a result of entire application components being
commoditized.
FaaS - scaling costs
With serverless FaaS horizontal scaling is completely
automatic, elastic, and managed by the provider.
There are several benefits, and the biggest benefit
is on the basic infrastructural side, where you only
pay for the compute that you need.
Easier Operational Management
On the Serverless BaaS side, of the fence it’s obvious
why operational management is simpler than other
architectures: fewer components that you support
equals less work.
On the FaaS side there are some aspects of play
though, let’s dig into a couple of them.
Scaling benefits of FaaS
In the previous section we discussed scaling,
it’s important noting the scaling functionality of
FaaS not only reduces compute cost but it also
reduces operational management because the
scaling is automatic.
Reduced packaging and deployment
complexity
While API gateways are quite complex, the act
of packaging and deploying a FaaS function is
pretty simple compared to implementing an
entire server. All you’re doing is compiling and
zip’ing / jar’ing your code, and then uploading
it. No puppet/chef, no start/stop shell scripts,
no decisions on deploying one or many
containers on a machine.
Serverless architectures have a lot of promise
in them, but they come with significant trade-
offs drawbacks.
Vendor control
In any outsourcing strategy, you are giving up
control of some of your systems to a 3rd-party
vendor. Lack of control can manifest as system
downtime, unexpected limits, cost changes, loss
of functionality, forced API upgrades, and more.
Multitenancy Problems
Multitenancy is a strategy to achieve the economy
of scale benefits as earlier. Service vendors try their
best to convinces customers that they are the only
ones using their system and usually good service
vendors do a great job doing that. But sometimes
multitenant solutions have challenges with security
(one customer being able to see another’s data),
robustness (an error in one customer’s software
causing a failure in a different customer’s software)
and performance (a high load customer causing
slow down in another.)
Vendor lock-in
It’s very likely that Serverless features offered by
one vendor will differ from another vendor and will
be implemented differently by them. For switching
vendors you’ll almost certainly need to update
operational tools (deployment, monitoring, etc.),
probably need to change your code, and you may
even need to change your design or architecture
if there are differences in how competing vendor
implementations behave.
Security concerns
This deserves an article in and of itself but
embracing a Serverless approach opens you up to
a large number of security questions.
Repetition of logic across client platforms
With a ‘full BaaS’ architecture, need for writing
custom logic on the server-side is not there- it’s all
on the client. This works well for first client platform,
but as soon as you need your next platform, you
will need to repeat the implementation of a subset
of that logic that you wouldn’t have done in a
more traditional architecture.
Loss of Server optimizations
Again with a ‘full BaaS’ architecture, there is
hardly any opportunity to optimize server-
design for client performance. The ‘Backend
For Frontend’ pattern exists to abstract certain
underlying aspects of the whole system within
the server partly, so that the client can perform
operations more quickly and use less battery
power in the case of mobile applications. Such a
pattern is not available for ‘full BaaS.’
Serverless, despite the confusing name, is a style
of architecture where we rely to a smaller extent
than usual on running our server-side systems
as part of our applications. It is done through
two techniques - Backend as a Service (BaaS),
where third-party remote applications services
are tightly integrated into the front-end of our
apps, and Functions as a Service (FaaS), which
moves server-side code from long-running
components to ephemeral function instances.
Serverless is not the only approach to every
problem, so be careful of anybody who says
it will replace all of our existing architectures.
While there are benefits (of scaling and saved
deployment effort), there also are drawbacks (for
debugging, monitoring) lurking right around
the next corner.
There are significant positive aspects of
Serverless Architecture, including lower
operational and development costs, efficient
operational management, and reduced
environmental impact. The most important
benefit is the reduced feedback loop of creating
new application components, and the reduced
time-to-market.
In conclusion, serverless platforms today are
used for critical tasks, where high-throughput is
key and where individual requests are completed
in a relatively short time. The economics of
hosting such tasks in a serverless environment
make it a compelling way to reduce hosting
costs significantly and to speed up the time to
market for the delivery of new features.
 For more information contact YASH today
at info@yash.com or visit www.yash.com

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