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Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#91

Post by watter »

kagx wrote: post #70
sriram_iyengar wrote: post #30

- watchout for latencies (multi-zones apps) time of your lambda functions. - keep your lambda functions warmed up - node has better warmup time than java lambdas (not sure of python) - memory size impact of lambda functions (negligible in most cases) - manage lambda timeouts - dynamodb latencies are negligible - api gateway typically does not introduce latencies - multitenancy challenges with single store of dynamodb

> api gateway typically does not introduce latencies I haven't checked my function thoroughly yet, but I think API gateway introduce quite a bit of latency (at least in my case). My maximum invocation time is 600ms, according to AWS Lambda monitoring tool, but network request takes around 1s (checked in chrome dev tools). Also, worht noting is that my code is hosted in the us-east region and I'm based in Europe. I'm…

Probably about 100ms or more on each request (to and from). Slower depending on location and network conditions.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#92

Post by melvinram »

etatoby wrote: post #88
melvinram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracte…

We still run and manage our servers and save a metric ton of money wrt. "cloud" offerings. When "cloud" or "serverless" will be cheaper than managing your own dedicated servers, then it will actually be useful. Until then, it's just marketing.

Both "cloud" and "serverless" are cheaper if capacity needs are opaque (high growth or unpredictable swings.) If you have predictable capacity needs, I agree that dedicated servers are a better value.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#93

Post by mysterydip »

melvinram wrote: post #56
Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracte…

If the goal is to have a black box that we just send apps to and they just work, I propose a new buzzword: "black cloud".

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#94

Post by _m8fo »

Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

It's interesting how most of the responses to this post agree that "serverless" isn't literally what's happening but agree to that name and say to get over it.

It's akin to someone saying it's "free" because you don't have to think about the money, e.g. you pay with a credit card.

Perhaps the name it should be called is adminless or backend as a service. In any case, there's probably not much one can do about the name at this point.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#95

Post by watter »

kyledrake wrote: post #15
keithwhor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS is the system architecture of the web, full-stop. Well, a system architecture, alongside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Avoid them at your own peril and detriment to your ability to execute as a business. With the exception of a few masochists, we don't write software in machine code anymore. Same will be said for cloud infrastructure (actually, it's already there). Breathe and accept the future, focus on buil…

Right now I spend $240-600/mo for 192TB of bandwidth. I just used AWS's calculator and they charge $38,876.48/mo for the same thing. I don't subscribe to the theory that this is "the future".

Look at the cost a different way: your data is clearly important and you just saved having to hire an ops person to help manage it part-time.

I get that this isn't reality though. Once you provision something the amount of maintenance is minimum if done well.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#96

Post by melvinram »

_pmf_ wrote: post #54
jondubois wrote: post #36

Amazon Lambda is like Microsoft Windows was in its early stages. It's a fast-growing, closed/proprietary system for running apps. I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves a near-monopoly for a while... But I think that eventually more flexible open source solutions will take over. Open platforms like Docker and Kubernetes will likely replace Lambda just as Linux replaced Windows on the server-side.

> I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves a near-monopoly for a while. I wonder why Google is so passive in this regard; sometimes I think they have an aversion to honest money and real products.

They have their own Function As A Service offering:

https://cloud.google.com/functions/

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#97

Post by ranman »

vizzah wrote: post #87

Amazon has invalid 404 links to the tutorial sections on the main page. "This workshop is broken up into five modules." And most of those module links are broken too ;-) Can only be viewed in a step-by-step mode.

Where are the 404s? I'll notify some folks to fix them. I'm not finding any but I'm also on mobile.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#98

Post by ranman »

kirillzubovsky wrote: post #23

In principle I really like this way of developing, and especially prototyping, but as it stands right now Google is doing a significantly better job with their tools than Amazon. Amazon got the same guts, but their presentation of these tools is horrendous. It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, with the only problem that these are the same people who can spin out servers w…

> It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink,

Do you have any advice on how we could make this stuff more accessible to new developers?

When you say the presentation do you mean the overall marketing, the UX, or just the CSS?

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#99

Post by ranman »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #52

Is there any evidence other that actually backs the notion that you save money on a serverless architecture? As far as I can tell, it feels like once you use this kind of mechanism, you're tied to AWS for the foreseeable future.

I did this analysis in my (admittedly crappy and rushed) pycon web talk - in some cases you can save a lot of money. In other cases you'll pay more. Skip to the 20 minute mark. Also I work for AWS so general disclaimer that I'm biased.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-y_d7l-2c

An interesting thing to note is that efficiencies in this space only increase. Which theoretically lowers prices. You also get some pretty rapid and massive parralellization when you need it. The pywren project has some insightful examples and benchmarks of teraflops of compute and 10s gigabits/s of data arriving as part of a single function call. It's a different paradigm that will transform a lot of workloads but not all.

It's hard not to get swept up in the frenzy around it.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#100

Post by mgkimsal »

le-mark wrote: post #89
Herald_MJ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not peeved by the "misnomer". What is getting a bit annoying is every conversation about serverless being dominated by snarky comments about there being no such thing. As software professionals, we all know there is a server involved in responding to requests for our applications. But 'serverless' does accurately describe services like AWS Lambda, because the experience of development is such that you don't r…

Agreed, it is very annoying, maybe 'serverless' isn't the best name, but 'adminless' is no better. All the banal comments about the name have really impeded discussion about this topic. I personally am angered at the 'everyone should be a sys admin' culture we've come into as a profession, it completely trivializes the role of sys admins who are critical to any product/company. Good sys admins bring a lot to the tabl…

As with many positions, there's a middle ground. I don't expect people to be able to dive in deep in to the innards of MSSQL and understand all the nuance between types of indexes and how different hardware choices can impact said index types. However, when working with "sr software engineers" who are responsible for SQL, I do expect someone to be able to set up a local test database and create some tables with sample data to demonstrate an idea (in whatever tech they choose).

I would argue that "sys admins" - in the form of dedicated personnel - are not "critical to an product/company". I know plenty of smaller companies who are successfully bringing in profits, making payroll, etc, but do not have any sysadmins employed. At some point, they will need those skills (and probably stronger DB skills) but these aren't always critical to every project/company/org. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

EDIT: middle ground.

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