Note:
These points are taken from the book “Programming AWS Lambda” by John Chapin and Mike Roberts.
It is an excellent read and helps you get started with AWS Lambda using Java programming language, nevertheless, it also explores short history and state of serverless.
Serverless can be divided into two ideas: backend as a service (BaaS) and functions as a service (FaaS). Backend as a service (BaaS) allows us to replace server-side components that we code and/or manage ourselves with off-the-shelf services. A good example here is authentication – Auth0 and Amazon’s Cognito.
The other half of serverless is functions as a service (FaaS). FaaS, like IaaS, PaaS and CaaS, is another form of compute as a service – a generic environment within which we can run our own software.
Differentiating Serverless
There are five key criteria that differentiate serverless services – both BaaS and Faas that allow us to approach architecting applications in a new way.
These criteria are as follows:
- Does not require managing a long-lived host or application instance: this is the core of serverless – there is no long-lived server process or server host, that we need to manage – they are not our concern or responsibility.
- Self auto-scales and auto-provisions, dependent on load: auto-scaling is the ability of a system to adjust capacity requirements dynamically based upon load. Serverless services self auto-scale. They also perform auto-provision.
- Has costs that are based on precise usage, up from and down to zero usage: Serverless costs are precisely correlated with usage.
- Has performance capabilities defined in terms other than host size/count: It’s reasonable and useful for a serverless platform to expose some performance configuration.
- Has implicit high availability: HA means that a service will continue to process requests even when an underlying component fails.
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