• What is serverless architecture
  • How does serverless
    architecture work?
  • Real world serverless examples
  • Serverless architecture vs. Container architecture
  • Benefits of serverless architecture
  • Start building with serverless architecture
 

What is serverless architecture?

The DevOps lifecycle consists of continuous software development, integration, testing, deployment, and monitoring, and to foster your business's growth, it's paramount that you meet users' various needs . But provisioning and patching servers 24/7 to meet these scaling demands comes at the cost of much effort. With serverless, your operational overhead reduces drastically, as you're not responsible for provisioning the physical infrastructure.

Serverless architecture is a software design pattern where application hosting is outsourced to a third-party cloud-based vendor. Serverless does not imply an absence of servers, but rather that the cloud provider maintains and manages the servers to run your application, databases, and storage systems at scale. Hence, the servers remain invisible throughout your software development lifecycle.

"Serverless architectures enable developers to focus on what they should be doing — writing code and optimizing application design — making way for business agility"

Source - Gartner: The CIO's Guide to Serverless Computing

How does serverless architecture work?

When you build serverless applications, you aren't just replacing traditional backend servers with function-level computing services; rather, you're relying on an array of third-party services to orchestrate your system. Since serverless architecture involves provisioning those third-party services, both Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) are important elements for building a serverless application. FaaS runs your code where the application logic is written as discrete functions, and is commonly used for real-time data processing. BaaS enables you to focus only on writing the frontend code by offering cloud storage, user authentication, database management and hosting, and many more.

Example of serverless architecture working
serverless architecture
Let’s check out how FaaS — the most popular serverless architecture — works:
  • Choose the type of function based on the operation: Basic I/O, Advanced I/O, Event Functions, Cron Functions, or Integration Functions.
  • Write a function that serves a specific purpose within the application code.
  • Define the event when the function is invoked. For an event like an HTTPS request, a user click is considered an event trigger and the cloud service provider will execute the function.
  • The cloud provider checks if an instance of the function associated with the event is already running. If not, it starts a new one for the function. This execution process is abstracted away from the developers.
  • The result of the executed function is sent to the client, which is viewed by the user. Since multiple messages are processed in parallel by instantiating multiple copies of the function code, scaling is quick.

Real-world serverless examples

Consumer goods

  • A beauty tech data platform uses serverless computing for API ingestion, bulk data loading, and post-loading transformation. Since the serverless ecosystem scales on demand, the tech team doesn't need to perform capacity planning for computational and analytics components of the system.
  • A major soft drink brand previously used infrastructure as a service to build an integrated communication system to connect their vending machines, which skyrocketed their costs. After moving to a serverless framework, the team was able to cut their costs down from $13,000 per year to $4,500 per year. Whenever a user buys a drink, the machine calls the payment gateway to verify the purchase and triggers the serverless function. Since they pay only when the communication happens (i.e. less than 1 sec), the cost is minimized.

Retail

  • America's largest chain of departmental stores made the switch from data-driven applications to building applications based on individual events, which helped their teams scale with ease.
  • A start-up based out of Los Angeles helps small businesses move from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to the online world. The business wanted an inexpensive infrastructure that helps them build and ship applications at a blitzscaling rate. Moving to a 100% serverless platform ensured that their varying needs were met and helped them stay ahead of their competitors.
Check out more real-world serverless applications

Serverless architecture vs. Container architecture

Both serverless architecture and container architecture are cloud-based, abstract the host environment, and reduce the infrastructure overhead. Plus, both architectures facilitate breaking down the application into smaller components, called microservices. However, key differences between them are as follows:

  • Features

    Serverless

    Container

  • Server maintenance

    Handled by the cloud provider.

    Update and maintain all containers, system settings, and dependencies.

  • Longevity limitations

    Ephemeral functions and quick scaling.

    Always running and slow scaling.

  • Dev environments/ Language support

    Restricted to the languages supported by the FaaS provider.

    Work with any heterogeneous dev environment and tech stack.

  • Testing

    Backend environment is tough to replicate in a local environment. Hence, it may be difficult to test serverless web apps without a local debugging environment.

    Containers run the same wherever they're deployed, so they're easier to test.

  • Scalability

    Apps scale automatically.

    Need orchestration platform like Kubernetes.

  • State persistency

    Stateless; hence, no caching.

    State can be persisted; hence, supports caching.

  • Startup latency

    Serverless startup time may be high. Requires cold start.

    Least startup time.

  • Time of deployment

    No system dependencies, so it takes only milliseconds to deploy. Apps are live as soon as code is deployed.

    Necessary to configure system settings so it takes a few seconds to set up initially.

Features

Server maintenance

Longevity limitations

Dev environments/ Language support

Testing

Scalability

State persistency

Startup latency

Time of deployment

Serverless

Handled by the cloud provider.

Ephemeral functions and quick scaling.

Restricted to the languages supported by the FaaS provider.

Backend environment is tough to replicate in a local environment. Hence, it may be difficult to test serverless web apps without a local debugging environment.

Apps scale automatically.

Stateless; hence, no caching.

Serverless startup time may be high. Requires cold start.

No system dependencies, so it takes only milliseconds to deploy. Apps are live as soon as code is deployed.

Container

Update and maintain all containers, system settings, and dependencies.

Always running and slow scaling.

Work with any heterogeneous dev environment and tech stack.

Containers run the same wherever they're deployed, so they're easier to test.

Need orchestration platform like Kubernetes.

State can be persisted; hence, supports caching.

Least startup time.

Necessary to configure system settings so it takes a few seconds to set up initially.

Benefits of serverless architecture

Elastic scalability

With zero administration required to manage dependencies or underlying infrastructure, serverless architecture offers automatic scalability. According to the usage demands of your application, the serverless vendor handles all the scaling on demand.

Simplified backend code

The workload on developers is drastically reduced, since they can concentrate on creating simple functions that focus on only a single purpose and work independently. This reduces the cost of hiring backend infrastructure engineers and the liability for existing developers to maintain backend infrastructure.

Process agility

With no infrastructure or dependencies to be set up, serverless architecture enables rapid iteration, and therefore brings the application to the market in the least time. Along with built-in services for common requirements like payment processing, you can save the time of building your own.

Pay per use

Pay only for what you use and not for the idle infrastructure like provisioning servers and maintaining them 24/7. With serverless architecture, you pay based on resource utilization and function executions, meaning costs can rise quickly. A clear and easy-to-understand pricing model is essential for your serverless platform.

Start building with serverless architecture

If you have a small number of functions that need to be hosted, setting up serverless is quick. For complex applications, you may want to architect your application very differently. For any existing complex application, you can migrate small pieces of the application into serverless components over time.

Catalyst by Zoho offers you the simplest, most cost-effective platform to embark on your serverless journey. We help build and ship serverless applications for your various needs. Below are a couple of simple use cases that you can use to get started:

Furthermore, Catalyst by Zoho provides up to $250 wallet credits * in production and a fully featured sandbox** with a free local debugging environment. Get started today!

*Free for the first year upon deploying your first project to production and considering single credit operations like Select Query in Data Store and heavy usage pricing
** Free sandbox until 31st December 2023