The cloud community is focused on serverless computing or function as a service. Although this technology does not entirely do away with servers, this technology does make it more cost-effective, more comfortable to deploy and manage complicated applications, reduce overall cloud costs, and boosts flexibility.
Cloud providers have monitored the growth in interest in serverless computing and have rolled out their services to support it. AWS was the first to market with lambda and then came along Azure functions and Google cloud functions. All three make serverless technology more accessible to companies of all sizes.
Serverless Computing A help to Enterprises
Enterprises will use serverless computing because it allows developers to focus on application features rather than on provisioning virtual machines. It also simplifies deployment. Many enterprises are using serverless computing for task management, workflows, notifications, and image processing.
Other benefits of using serverless computing models for many enterprises are cost-savings compared to traditional, on-demand instances, flexibility, and reliability. Even though there are benefits to serverless computing, enterprises need to review and analyze workloads to determine if they can benefit from serverless technology.
Evolving Your Cloud Cost Strategy for Serverless Computing
The cost of serverless computing is based on a per-instance charge when you execute an application component. You will not have CPU or VM costs as you do for idle applications in the public cloud. It is essential to beware of the fact that a heavy workload can end up costing you more than you planned.
Always look and compare provider pricing. Prices are generally based on the number of executed application events, how many resources the events use, and the time they take to run. Identify any additional features such as databases that your serverless application will need because they add to extra costs.
Once you understand provider pricing plans, you should review the applications and workloads that you would like to be on serverless computing. Know how many components they have and how often those components run. In general, serverless computing is most cost-effective for highly variable workloads that are small in size. It is a good idea to test your serverless applications to estimate costs.
Impacts on Your Operations Team
Serverless computing is a technology that will force your operations teams to rethink their processes. Because serverless computing is event-based, it changes cloud cost management and scaling practices. It is no longer possible to climb all serverless apps and individual components on-demand with serverless computing. Your operations team will need to stay on top of new members used to handle load spikes to ensure your core business apps’ performance does not suffer. It will also be essential to provide your operations team with the right tools to manage serverless applications.
Ensuring your Serverless Apps Can Scale
Serverless technology presents particular challenges for scalability, but these can be managed with the appropriate tools. Always follow best practices and maintain control over your deployment because that is the key to achieving scalability. Keep the number of application copies to a minimum and scale back when there is no more demand. It is also important to strictly enforce the parameters when it comes to end-user application copies.
