Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is also known as cloud computing execution model. There are no servers/operating system to manage , Serverless platform provides easy and efficient scaling, Applications have built in availability and fault-tolerant , Serverless platforms are managed by Cloud Providers. The resources we spend on building, securing and scaling can be invested in the applications themselves. A good physical infrastructure is needed for cloud computing.
Investment in Serverless Computing
The three places where you can invest are serverless monitoring, serverless security, and serverless infrastructure. Organisations are creating solutions within serverless monitoring (including tracing and alerting) because problems arise.
Serverless security has helped the security professionals in protecting serverless applications. An advanced serverless security focuses on tight permissions, ensuring code integrity, and behavioural analysis. It has to be seen if smaller players will be used or if companies build their own serverless infrastructure.
Serverless infrastructure is still a challenging market for AWS, Google, and Azure. Serverless is still at its beginning Serverless is still at its beginning and many innovations are on the way to take birth. Cloud providers The various cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure or Google or another, is responsible to allocate resources to individual tasks and applications.
Advantages:
1) Operational overhead is reduced
As there are no servers to manage, the developers are worry free about installing and scaling infrastructure. There is no need to maintain agents or invest in any operation related to infrastructure.
2) Greater innovation ability
The planning and management system of the businesses are redefining their objectives. The responsibility of infrastructure lies with the cloud providers. Serverless computing helps in proper utilization of organisation’s time. It saves the organisation’s money as well. This type of computing helps in better functioning of the applications and creates the opportunity for faster innovation.
3) Scalability
One of the main advantages of serverless is that it provides instant scaling. It can scale a large number of short running tasks, even if it is a billion number of events.
4) Validation can be accessed efficiently
Serverless can handle loads of high data because they are well designed at the back end to access the data quickly. AWS lambda is a very good example. However, serverless is still at its beginning stage. There are many factors which have to be considered while investing in it.
5) Agility is increased
Serverless applications depend mostly on managed services for authentication and databases. Therefore, developers can focus on the actual tasks of the application, which will typically run on a FaaS, such as Lambda or Google Cloud Functions.
6) More Time For UX
If your application is customer oriented, then you have to keep in mind that customers will not care for infrastructure. They don’t see all the code at the back-end. They will notice only the front-end code. So, the experience which they will have with your application becomes important. You have to focus on allocating resources that will make your customer happy.
Disadvantages
1) It’s a complex system
There are few complexities relating to serverless computing. Though it’s excellent, the overall system requires constant monitoring. For example, additional deployment scripts and effort of increased configuration makes it complicated.
2) Huge upfront costs
The upfront costs involved in serverless computing is huge. Though the investment can be cost-effective in the long run, business organizations have to consider the factor of maximising ROI.
3) Serverless Attack Vectors
Even though serverless security ensures great security, new attack vectors have emerged. In serverless environments, similar attacks have occurred. Please refer the article on Cloud Security Alliance’s “Top 12 Risks for Serverless Applications”
4) Event Data Injection
Even now, Injection flaws arise in applications. These types of flaws occur when an untrusted input passes hu directly to the interpreter before evaluation. Serverless architecture does not have strict limits in relation to the functioning of event-data injections.
5)Vendor lock-in
If you build serverless functions on one platform, It becomes very difficult to migrate to another platform. You will need to write the code again. APIs that exist on one platform may not exist on another, resulting in additional manpower and additional investment. We can take the example of say, AWS to Azure or Google Cloud. When you are investing in a serverless platform, make sure that your vendor has everything you need. It can happen that you are not satisfied with your serverless computing provider after a few months which can be a major problem.
6) Impacts on performance
One of the major disadvantages is that performance in terms of serverless computing forecasts are very difficult. A single request may take three milliseconds or another hundred. If more data is cached, there is more accessibility and the performance is better.
Views about serverless computing
Innovative developers are often to increase their boundaries when it comes to operating in the business environments. Many developers have views that serverless technology is an immature technology and the learning opportunities relating to it are in limited numbers. But, as time will move on, in time, serverless technology is on the way to become the future. Reports say that serverless technology has a growth rate between six-hundred and seven-hundred percent. When cloud technology was introduced , it did not bring any change about the way companies conducted business. But, it has been assumed that serverless technology will change the world of software development.
Enthusiasm about serverless computing
It is often appreciated that the ability of serverless computing implements event-driven architecture. But serverless computing does not have good portability. Users want it to have features of greater local control and debugging tools. Serverless computing maintains back-end work such as capacity planning and scaling in an automated fashion. A developer has less to worry now. He only has to care about integrating code for the business problem.
This survey was conducted among a group of people who proposed serverless. It focused trends and preferences among those who were established within the serverless world. Majority of the users said that the serverless maturity level was high.
The best advantage of serverless technology is that it has the ability to deploy event-driven architectures. It has low cost resources required to build applications. It also supports the applications in an easy way. Serverless computing helps in quick scaling of applications as per the requirement. But serverless technology lacks portability which is considered very important.
When it was asked to IT professionals about the missing features, they said cold-start management, better debugging, flexibility in use and greater monitoring were the missing features. Serverless computing supports private clouds. Most of the production workloads utilize serverless. This can be through managed services like FaaS. But this is not the case mostly with on-premises environments. Majority of the users reported that not many serverless workloads touch their internal infrastructures.
Serverless is applied to both greenfield and brownfield applications. But IT professionals say that their organizations are more interested in building a greenfield serverless application as compared to brownfield applications.
Is a serverless solution right for you?
For most of the services in serverless computing, the customer only pays for usage. For example, with AWS Lambda, customers have to pay only for its execution. Therefore, the costs are low.
The major advancement in software development also brought security risks. In olden days, IT and security professionals used to be involved in finding new ways to defend their infrastructure. When it comes to the security of the applications in the business, serverless applications play a very demanding role.
Serverless computing is less expensive and reduces complexity for many businesses. Investment in a serverless platform is important if it is a good match for the business’s current needs as well as the future goals. If your business needs computing for short-running tasks which have a single purpose, then you can invest in serverless computing because it will save you a lot of time and money. But if you are in need of open-ended systems which have to do a lot of analysis in depth and also perform long-running computations, then serverless computing is not a good option.