Today, the software world has witnessed fundamental changes in how software is designed and has provided significant facilities for users.
The motto of serverless architecture is (focus on the application, not on the infrastructure). This sentence is very reassuring because it eliminates the need to implement care and monitoring and debugging, and you can put all your focus on the functionality of the application. Due to the increasing development of technology in this article, we will introduce you to the Faas service and provide you with its advantages and disadvantages.
I also suggest you see examples of cloud-based technology services (There are also examples for Faas)
What is FaaS?
Serverless architecture is a general concept and a cloud computing model that is objectively presented and offered to users in the form of a service called Function as a Service or FaaS in short.
This architecture measures the length of time the Function uses server resources and only considers the time it takes for the Function to execute. In other words, Looper writes the Function and deploys it on the cloud, and as long as it takes for the Function to execute, it is necessary to pay a fee.
Functions are executed in various ways, no matter what the operation of your Function is, but the only important issue is how long it takes for the Function to execute. This type of cloud architecture allows us to write code to do it easily and quickly without worrying about managing the server.
Serverless does not mean the lack of a server, but the providers of this service allow web developers who are its users to perform their activities without servers.
History
A quick look at the history of the Web reveals why serverless computing came into being.
In the early days of the Web, every user who built a web application had to build a physical server, which was costly and complicated. With the advent of the traditional cloud system in web users, several servers and their resources paid a fixed fee and rented a remote server. However, they got rid of the complexity of maintaining physical equipment, but it created the problem that users had to pay for all the resources that were not used.
But in the modern definition of cloud computing, due to the existence of auto-scaling models, this problem is almost solved, and the user only pays for the number of resources he uses at any given time.
Of course, this method can also incur additional costs because there may be cases such as DDoS attacks.
Occur, and the user also will have to pay for attackers using the service.
But in the final definition of the Serverless method, the user is exempt from paying such resource costs but pays based on the functions and Blackend provided to him, and other concerns such as DDoS attacks are the responsibility of providers who need to manage it.
FaaS, abbreviated as functional as a service, is a cloud service that provides a platform for programmers to build, execute, and manage their program functions and reduce the complexities of building and maintaining infrastructures such as servers and resources. It means that functions are executed without server management, and the user is not limited to using a specific library or framework. FaaS act like independent functions, having unique input and output that is not dependent on another function.
Managing and using this application is not difficult and does not require much effort. Meanwhile, deploying the desired Function is very new so that the desired code is uploaded on the server. The rest of the work is done by the provider of this system (FaaS), and its functions are executed based on what the provider has specified.
It should be noted that it is necessary to use functions that do not require much time to execute To save costs.
A valuable feature of this service is that users only pay for the time they use it, so there is no need to pay as much as the amount of bandwidth or the number of servers used, and it is very economical.
This valuable service also allows you to run your software packages as a function without the need for infrastructure.
This service is a way to run a serverless architecture by which programmers plan their business and then run it on counters on the Linux platform. This method is mostly used in micro-services. The benefits of this service can be Making it possible to focus on code and business value mentioned. As a result, this architecture provides an abstract form of infrastructures, such as a server and its resources.
The programmer will be able to write the Function and deploy it in the cloud and leave the tasks to the FaaS, and interestingly, it will cost as much as the time that Function is executed.
Companies providing FaaS
The most important companies providing this service are:
Google Cloud Functions
Azure Functions
IBM OpenWhisk
AWS Lambda
Advantages of using serverless technology
1. Reduce server rental costs
Using this technology can significantly reduce your costs during hours when your website is low-traffic, but if you own a high-traffic website because your server is continuously responding to incoming requests, There is not much difference in your costs
2.deploy by the host company
In traditional hosting, you had to put the program on the server yourself and load the code form and do the initial configuration was the user’s responsibility, which was difficult and inconvenient in large configuration programs. Still, in this technology, the host company’s whole setup process, and the work becomes much more comfortable.
3. Scalability
Scalability means that if site fans and consumer traffic and the number of requests increase, server resources need to be increased to respond to this amount of fan traffic and requests.
In traditional hosting, to increase the website’s scale, you have to contact the support and pay a new fee, which sometimes causes specific problems that are not easily solved. But these problems do not exist in serverless technology because scalability is done automatically by the host company, which offers you a particular service.
Disadvantages of using serverless technology
1. Lower speed and performance than traditional methods
One of these technology’s possible problems is the program speed because it is not frequently in standby mode. After receiving each request, it takes a few milliseconds for the handler to activate the request and do its job. In large programs with various components, these interrupts come together and take a considerable amount of time, so this technology is not recommended for huge applications. However, some people believe that due to this technology’s better scalability in extensive applications, we will have faster speed.
2. Debugging
Since there is no access to the server in such services, it is impossible to receive errors and check them on the server.
Of course, most server hosting services have created logs for debugging logs so that you can access these items as a client. However, the impossibility of controlling server details and the need for frequent coordination with support is undesirable.
3. It is not possible to transfer the website to another hosting company
Migrating to serverless websites is difficult and almost impossible. It will incur costs, but in the traditional web hosting method, this is easily possible, and you and you can transfer your website to another hosting company that can provide the services you need.
I hope this article has provided you with useful information about FaaS.
Follow our next articles.
