For people unfamiliar with the concept of serverless frameworks, the task of running software without a server seems impossible. The truth is, there are servers involved in a serverless framework, but they exist in a cloud environment somewhere and manage the allocation of resources dynamically in the usual way. So, why are they called ‘serverless’? The answer is simply because the user doesn’t get involved with the server. For them, it’s as if the server doesn’t exist. There’s no need for an organization going serverless to configure and manage the server. The organization develops, builds, and deploys applications or processes. The servers don’t have to be paid for if they remain unused.
Organizations also need not worry about capacity because applications scale up and down as required by end-user demand. The cloud provider controls everything – provisioning, managing, allocation, and scaling. They are also responsible for guaranteeing maximum reliability. Some providers call their serverless services a Function as a Service: This is because the server-side logic is run in stateless compute containers.
Benefits and drawbacks There are a lot of advantages to the serverless approach, but the one that most people quote is cost saving. This comes about because organizations do not pay if the server is idle. Secondly, organizations are no longer responsible for server maintenance, so they don’t need to pay staff for that work. And companies are safe in the knowledge that if demand for the application increases, the server will automatically scale to handle the increased demand. Because the actual servers are in the service provider’s data center, if any hardware error occurs, they can quickly swap to alternative devices so that the service continues to be available. The serverless company doesn’t have to worry about software updates to Linux etc., because the service provider handles them. Nor does the company need skilled staff to select, purchase, and configure servers.
Frameworks worth considering So, which serverless frameworks should IT pros consider this year? Firstly, organizations need to decide what programming languages they want to use. Some frameworks are targeted at specific languages, e.g., Python, and some are not language-specific. Do you want to use Kubernetes? And the last choice is which of the main cloud vendors will allow your ‘serverless’ application to run optimally, i.e., without any memory constraints, for example.
For specific programming languages, the available tools include:
AWS Chalice allows users to build and deploy apps through AWS Lambda. Serverless applications can be written in Python.
Claudia.js enables AWS Lambda and API Gateway deployments of Node.js apps simple. It automates all the time-consuming and error-prone deployment and setup chores and puts everything up the way you want it. Java's Script developers can anticipate out of the box.
Midway Serverless is a serverless framework used to build Node.js cloud functions.
Ruby on Jets is a framework that allows users to build serverless applications using Ruby. It includes everything needed to build and deploy applications to AWS Lambda.
Zappa is a serverless framework for creating applications in Python.
More general serverless framework tools include:
Apex Up makes serverless apps, APIs, and static webpages endlessly scalable.
Architect is considered as IAC (infrastructure as a code) framework. Architect defines a high-level manifest file in multiple open text formats and turns formerly complex cloud infrastructure provisioning into a build artifact.
AWS Amplify framework allows users to build extensible, full-stack web and mobile apps faster (although they don’t say faster than what!).
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