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Serverless Map/Reduce

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Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#121

Post by edblarney »

ralusek wrote: post #15

This is a screenshot of my google search from 2 days ago: http://i.imgur.com/BNAcSsn.png I've been using Lambda quite a bit, I think it's SO amazingly useful. Tasks that are highly parallelized and CPU intensive can literally be infinitely scaled out. I find it weird that their poster child use case is still always a reactive event like watching S3 and formatting images. There are so many use cases for directly invok…

" I find it weird that their poster child use case is still always a reactive event like watching S3 and formatting images."

Because those are the things that need to be done in the real world, 99% of the time.

Sadly, we don't all get to work on cool stuff :)

But I think as more people get access to the power and find uses cases, it will get used more.

The 'next' step for Lambda is serverless hosting for web-sites, something which Lambda is 'almost but not quite' ready for, the limiting factor being transactional latency, especially in some weird cases. Once they have that sorted out, I will never want to see a server again :)

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#122

Post by coredog64 »

plandis wrote: post #61

I've always had one big question about Lambda. Is it really worth the cost you get for the convienience of it? Is anyone using it in production that can comment?

I'm not using it for anything like this, but I am using it for production. I scrape CloudWatch metrics into our standard time series metrics repo. Total cost for every service I care about (ELB, ASG, RDS, ElasticSearch, SNS, and SQS) has been about a dollar for the last 3 months.

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#125

Post by edblarney »

plandis wrote: post #61

I've always had one big question about Lambda. Is it really worth the cost you get for the convienience of it? Is anyone using it in production that can comment?

I think you can do the math yourself - the costs are published.

FYI - we did some experiments and the limiting factor was latency. 250-300ms on average, you have to go through their API feature as well, and that's part of the delay. But worse - Lamda's that have not been called for several minutes (I'm assuming they are not 'hot') often take several seconds, up to 5s to be called. So it creates a problem for intermittent traffic.

If that kind of latency is acceptable to you, it might work for you so long as the cost equation is right.

I think some other people had issues with versioning, it's a problem we didn't go far enough to observe.

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#126

Post by edblarney »

aikah wrote: post #80
badminton1 wrote: post #52

I do not agree with term serverless. Amazon Lambda is a service, therefore there is a server involved. It's like saying deathless meat, because someone else killed the animal you are consuming.

Fight the good fight, you're not the only one standing up against this ridiculous moniker. Never back down. Keep calling out the bullshit every time and everywhere this term is promoted. People ask "what's the big deal?" well the big deal is ,calling a service "serverless" is both a lie and misleading for marketing purposes.

It's not a lie, and it's not misleading.

The concept of 'server' loses all meaning in this given architecture.

You create 'Lambdas' - units of functionality - and they do that they are supposed to do entirely independent of the underlying architecture.

In fact, using the concept of 'server' in a Lambda situation probably obfuscates the situation and adds unnecessary complexity.

A 'server' is an implementation detail that concerns only those providing the container/Lambda services. As long as the implementation lives up to the SLA (i.e. performance, uptime, security, price, redundancy) that you have agreed to - then it doesn't matter how it works.

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#127

Post by edblarney »

yumaikas wrote: post #92
badminton1 wrote: post #52

I do not agree with term serverless. Amazon Lambda is a service, therefore there is a server involved. It's like saying deathless meat, because someone else killed the animal you are consuming.

I think a better term would be FAAS (Functions as a service), since that's what it is. Lambda looks kinda neat as far as tech goes however.

The term 'Lambda' has a basis in Computer Science as a type of 'anonymous function' - in which case the name is reasonably well suited.

'Serverless Computing' as a term to describe the paradigm I think is very neutral, descriptive and apt. It's even a little bit boring but it does the job.

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#128

Post by raarts »

badminton1 wrote: post #116
mypalmike wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a term. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about roman numbers! It's just a representation. Don't worry about them. Just keep doing your math in roman numbers. It's fine. It bothers me that some people don't like my roman numbers. They work! Look!! I + I = II MMMCMXCIX - CXXIII = MMMDCCCLXXVI There's absolutely no way of making this better through representation! Anyone who says otherwise is a bike shedder! In fact, also don't worry about words ei…

You're being downvoted but I feel your pain.

Re: Serverless Map/Reduce

#129

Post by badminton1 »

raarts wrote: post #128
badminton1 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry about roman numbers! It's just a representation. Don't worry about them. Just keep doing your math in roman numbers. It's fine. It bothers me that some people don't like my roman numbers. They work! Look!! I + I = II MMMCMXCIX - CXXIII = MMMDCCCLXXVI There's absolutely no way of making this better through representation! Anyone who says otherwise is a bike shedder! In fact, also don't worry about words ei…

You're being downvoted but I feel your pain.

I have over 1000 HN karma, I have some karma to spare.
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