Serverless is the future... or is it?
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Paul Johnston is an expert in serverless technologies and was formerly the CTO of a serverless startup. In the document, he discusses whether serverless is truly the future and compares it to container-based architectures. While containers can allow for increased deployment efficiency and scale, serverless architectures require less maintenance overhead and management burden. Serverless solutions are also more cost-effective since the provider manages the underlying infrastructure. Overall, Johnston argues that serverless will be the future for most use cases due to its automation, high availability, reduced complexity, and increased feature velocity compared to managing one's own servers and containers.
Serverless is the future... or is it?
- 1. Serverless is the future. (Or is it?) Paul Johnston @PaulDJohnston Medium/Twitter
- 2. Paul Johnston Twitter and Medium: @PaulDJohnston Discuss Serverless / Being a CTO / Climate Change Interim CTO/Consultant (currently available) Ex-AWS Senior Developer Advocate for Serverless Co-founder JeffConf and ServerlessDays Former CTO of Movivo - one of the world’s first Serverless startups
- 3. Cloud, Data Centres and Energy
- 4. Future of Cloud and Climate Data Centres currently 2% of Global Carbon Emissions (at least) Growth of Cloud/Data Centres likely to grow by at least 5x in next 7 years Efficiency is irrelevant due to Jevons Paradox - increased efficiency leads to increased demand) Not just climate, but energy security - energy price rises Whitepaper written by Anne Currie and myself (to be released soon)
- 5. ETHICS WHITEPAPER - THE STATE OF DATA CENTRE ENERGY USE IN 2018 bit.ly/2024wp
- 7. Please sign the pledge (and move to sustainable cloud/DCs)
- 8. Movivo Became CTO in 2015 Android App + AWS Lambda By early 2017 was in 20+ countries with over 500,000 MAU AWS bill was around $300/month (half was data backup) Team of 2 serverless and 2 android developers in total
- 9. Movivo Heavily used Terraform Lots of managed services ☹ 1 instance for fixed IP proxy to Lambda 100+ functions deployed No RDBMS - Primarily DynamoDB and Athena Dev envy + Staging + Prod + CI + GitHub
- 10. So why didn’t I use Containers? (it was 2015 after all)
- 11. Lazy Pragmatism
- 12. Serverless
- 14. It’s the NEXT BIG THING!!!
- 15. THE SECOND COMING OF CLOUD
- 16. Let’s get beyond the hype and FUD* *I was CTO of a serverless startup for 2 years
- 18. NOT PaaS * * Just because you don’t manage the server doesn’t make it serverless
- 20. NOT FaaS * * not just FaaS
- 21. NOT -insert favourite open source FaaS solution here- * * again not just FaaS
- 22. My point?
- 23. It’s not about the technology (and the word Serverless is VERY unhelpful)
- 26. No Maintenance?
- 28. A definition…
- 29. …ok ok *my* definition
- 30. – Paul Johnston (2017) “A Serverless solution costs you nothing to run if nobody is using it (excluding data storage)”
- 32. Why does it matter that the definition is economic not technological?
- 33. Economic makes it about business
- 34. How we used to do it Physical Servers Virtual Servers Instances Managed Instances … and Containers
- 35. How we used to do it Physical Servers Virtual Servers Instances Managed Instances … and Containers All the same underlying paradigm
- 36. Services and APIs Sockets Interfaces Web Services APIs SDKs REST
- 37. Services and APIs Sockets Interfaces Web Services APIs SDKs REST Avoid the complexity of “how”
- 38. Evolution in tech always tends towards Complexity Reduction
- 40. Evolution Physical Servers Virtual Servers Instances Managed Instances … and Containers Remove Hardware Management Programmatic Management Auto scaling/Orchestration Application Portability
- 41. And Serverless?
- 42. My Opinion? Serverless = evolutionary leap
- 43. * More than FaaS
- 44. So… let’s talk about containers
- 45. This talk could have been called…
- 47. Containers cgroups (resource isolation) - 2007 Docker - 2013 Kubernetes - 2014
- 48. Why Containers? https://cloud.google.com/containers/ Containerisation allows … development teams to: • Move fast • Deploy software efficiently • Operate at unprecedented scale
- 49. Is this true?
- 51. …it depends what you’re comparing against
- 52. I asked a friend what tech you needed to run Kubernetes
- 53. This next slide is all off the top of my friend’s head… Caveat: may well not fit your use case
- 54. Containers and…
- 55. What does it all do? • Service mesh • Service discovery • Key/Value store • Monitoring • Logging • Secure storage • Package management • etc…
- 56. Batteries not included • Web servers • Proxies • Database servers • Caching • Application stack • Analytics • … and a whole lot more
- 57. And you have to manage it all!
- 59. Lazy Pragmatism
- 60. Remember, I’m all about…
- 63. (I’ll use AWS as an analogue)
- 64. AWS Serverless AWS Lambda API Gateway DynamoDB S3 SQS Kinesis Step Functions IAM CloudWatch Cognito
- 65. Serverless basics v k8s basics AWS Lambda IAM CloudWatchS3
- 66. Uptime and maintenance is somebody else’s problems
- 67. So… does this allow you to
- 68. “Move Fast”
- 69. Serverless beats Containers • Similar CI/CD patterns • Easier deployment with serverless (debatable but fewer moving parts) • Easier management with serverless • Harder architecture with serverless (unless you know distributed systems)
- 70. … what about
- 72. In one sense… • Deployment of containers FTW • Deployment is independent of environment • Except…
- 74. Serverless beats Containers • You don’t have to maintain the containers as well as the code (feature velocity increases) • Providers manage maintenance (security win) • Efficiency is increased when you only have to manage one aspect
- 75. … and what about
- 77. So here’s the thing…
- 78. Who does that?
- 79. No Seriously… Who does that? (apart from Netflix and Apple and Amazon etc)
- 80. Well architected serverless solutions scale out of the box
- 81. For the 99% Serverless Wins • Serverless scales for most scenarios really well • If you’re that big (the 1%) then you can probably build a big team so do containers • Even then why would you?
- 82. Oh! One thing… • Serverless is built on Containers • Containers are still important • Managed Services will negate Containers • We will always need Containers… for the 1%
- 83. Serverless Wins • Increased Automation • High Availability by Default • Reduced Management Burden • Decreased Complexity • Increased Feature Velocity (no management headaches) • Increased Security • Increased Resilience
- 84. BUT…!
- 86. Serverless Thinking • Use a service whenever possible (because services are cheaper than people) • Local development is much less important (or useful) • Constraints are not bad (e.g. FaaS python version, memory and cores) • It’s easier with Greenfield but can have real value in replacing elements of legacy applications • Aim is to avoid running your own servers as much as possible • Vendors mostly have better engineers than you do • It’s an infrastructure solution not an application solution
- 87. Lock In? PICK A VENDOR
- 88. Don’t tell me legacy is hard with serverless because it’s hard with EVERYTHING ELSE TOO
- 89. So Serverless…
- 90. Is Serverless the Future?
- 91. Is Serverless the Future? Yes
- 92. Is Serverless the Future? Yes (imho)
- 93. Cloud, Data Centres and Energy
- 94. Fixing Climate Change is the hill I will die on (and with climate change, we’re all going to die on hills) – Paul Johnston (2018)
- 95. Serverless is what I do for work
- 97. Paul Johnston Thank you! Serverless Best Practices: bit.ly/ serverlessbestpractices Sustainable Servers by 2024: https:// www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers- by-2024 (or google it) Interim CTO/Consultant (currently available) Twitter and Medium: @PaulDJohnston paul@roundaboutlabs.com