Serverless Computing

[deanwebb]

FaaS... Functions as a Service...

Cloud providers are offering this as a way to be even more incremental in their offerings. Don't want to manage VMs or security or stuff like installing libraries? No worries, the cloud guys will do it for you! This leaves you free to focus on code development and save, save save!

I'm guessing that looking at a bill once this gets into full swing for a firm trying to do traditional stuff with this new method will look something like this:

or this:

And then the company will try to get out of the contract and incur loads of penalty costs, at which point the CIO goes back to the C-level merry-go-round to wreck things at another company.

This will make sense for applications written for FaaS types of delivery, but just like the guys in the articles Wintermute posted, there will be lots of mishandling of this delivery method, and it will end in tears for some managers and execs.

[that1guy15]

Serverless is one of those areas I still cant fully wrap my head around and what its hook is.

Too me it seems alot like containers or micro-services. But looking over how AWS markets Lambda you dont have a container to worry about. Just your apps code.

I dont see any traditional application fitting with this service. I can see, just like containers, new apps and designs being built specifically for this model. 

[deanwebb]

My guess it's for small companies that are 100% app developers all crammed into a San Francisco townhouse. They don't know about and don't care about VM tech and just want to bang out code for all their unsecure apps to cram into the Apple and Android stores.

BUT... it's going to get marketed to big players that will get taken to the cleaners when the execs *think* they'll be boosting share prices by cutting costs.

[mlan]

at which point the CIO goes back to the C-level merry-go-round to wreck things at another company.

I believe that is called CaaS = CIO as a Service

[that1guy15]

My guess it's for small companies that are 100% app developers all crammed into a San Francisco townhouse. They don't know about and don't care about VM tech and just want to bang out code for all their unsecure apps to cram into the Apple and Android stores.

BUT... it's going to get marketed to big players that will get taken to the cleaners when the execs *think* they'll be boosting share prices by cutting costs.

I dont think this is the case. There is nothing saying "serverless" has to live in the cloud. Its a way for an application to function. Its not for running your mail server or any other long live server. Its not even something you want to run continuous. I see this as a place to run very specific processes and functions over the course of a session or couple second timeframe then die.

Why have a VM dedicated to this? Hell one step further why go through all the hassle of spinning up a container?

I dont see this as a central repository with a bunch of scripts and repos that are called to run. But Im thinking its more like a python virtualnv spun up segmented off with its own memory/CPU reservation.

Sure I can see there are security concerns. Hell all this stuff came from developers who could give two shits about networking or security. They just want a no-resistance way to build their code and maintain it through out its life-cycle. Just like virtualization, this stuff will mature and become more prod friendly for the masses.

[deanwebb]

I dont think this is the case. There is nothing saying "serverless" has to live in the cloud. Its a way for an application to function. Its not for running your mail server or any other long live server. Its not even something you want to run continuous. I see this as a place to run very specific processes and functions over the course of a session or couple second timeframe then die.

Why have a VM dedicated to this? Hell one step further why go through all the hassle of spinning up a container?

I dont see this as a central repository with a bunch of scripts and repos that are called to run. But Im thinking its more like a python virtualnv spun up segmented off with its own memory/CPU reservation.

Sure I can see there are security concerns. Hell all this stuff came from developers who could give two shits about networking or security. They just want a no-resistance way to build their code and maintain it through out its life-cycle. Just like virtualization, this stuff will mature and become more prod friendly for the masses.

Sounds like we've rediscovered the mainframe, really... get a bunch of memory, CPU, storage, keep it off to the side somewhere... and then spin up processes as needed, making sure they're terminated on time so that one's timesharing charges don't get too big.

Did a quick check of some articles and I realize I'm getting schooled... that mainframe is still handling 80% of the world's data, especially in financial institutions. I did not know that. And IBM is releasing its z14 system, which is supposed to Encrypt. All. The. Things.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/16/ibm-dangles-carrot-of-full-encryption-to-lure-buyers-to-new-z14-mainframe/

Read some other articles on how mainframes still have popularity due to some salient facts: often they have better than five nines uptime, even with unscheduled and scheduled maintenance. Mad props to that. They also have done a lot of work on their licensing and can actually beat similar processing/memory/storage combinations of virtual servers.

FaaS running on a z14, fully encrypted... it might not get me to *buy* a mainframe, but it can get me to upgrade my existing mainframes instead of looking for ways to shed them. And that z14 encryption is a very reasonable response to today's security challenges.

Thank you, that1guy, you got me to take another look at this and learn something cool.

[Dieselboy]

It's very cool and over my head

[deanwebb]

It's very cool and over my head

At the end of the day, you're either putting in a route to the datacenter or to the cloud for developers that don't want to have to mess with VM provisioning. Good news is that this should get the dev gang to quit spinning up VMs on their local boxes for production work.