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Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

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Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#1

Post by buf »

Long time Rails/Django/Express user here. I've been reading about serverless for about 3 years now and have setup minor apps for fun.

Forgive my lack of imagination, but I'm failing to come up with anything serverless can do better than wiring up a queueing system can do.

Let's take rails + sidekiq for example. Out of the box, I get stats, retries/error handling, a web UI, weights, great debugging remote and local, and enormous community support + years of SO questions to google. Setting up sidekiq + rails is basically a 10 minute operation.

I'm struggling to understand a good use case for serverless. What am I missing?

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#2

Post by viraptor »

> Setting up sidekiq + rails is basically a 10 minute operation.

Standing up a toy sidekiq + rails environment for experiments and for tiny projects is a 10 minute operation. Standing one up for large projects, taking care of deployment without breaks, restarting sidekiq without losing jobs, scaling the environment in reaction to traffic, etc. is a lot more work.

Also standing up sidekiq requires managing your backend storage. If you have time and skills for that, great. Otherwise, a managed service may be better.

On top of that, you need to actually deal with system maintenance for all of those components normally. Any managed solution (whether that's serverless, or effectively-close-to-serverless like heroku) may be a good idea.

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#3

Post by buf »

viraptor wrote: post #2

> Setting up sidekiq + rails is basically a 10 minute operation. Standing up a toy sidekiq + rails environment for experiments and for tiny projects is a 10 minute operation. Standing one up for large projects, taking care of deployment without breaks, restarting sidekiq without losing jobs, scaling the environment in reaction to traffic, etc. is a lot more work. Also standing up sidekiq requires managing your backen…

Right on. I guess I've done it so many times that I hadn't thought about it. I have a medium sized site, about 12 rps, using rails with a bunch of backend operations (it's a social network), so I think I just have rose-tinted glasses on the complexities of doing that.

Other than setup time, are there any other really great reasons to use serverless?

Or, why is serverless so much more popular than heroku (currently)? With heroku, you have a lot more control.

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#4

Post by fenwick67 »

buf wrote: post #3
viraptor wrote: post #2

> Setting up sidekiq + rails is basically a 10 minute operation. Standing up a toy sidekiq + rails environment for experiments and for tiny projects is a 10 minute operation. Standing one up for large projects, taking care of deployment without breaks, restarting sidekiq without losing jobs, scaling the environment in reaction to traffic, etc. is a lot more work. Also standing up sidekiq requires managing your backen…

Right on. I guess I've done it so many times that I hadn't thought about it. I have a medium sized site, about 12 rps, using rails with a bunch of backend operations (it's a social network), so I think I just have rose-tinted glasses on the complexities of doing that. Other than setup time, are there any other really great reasons to use serverless? Or, why is serverless so much more popular than heroku (currently)?…

Heroku is a bit pricy, that's probably related.

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#7

Post by CyberFonic »

I prefer to think of serverless as: events triggering backend processes without needing a user interface.

A very simple example would be receiving emails to a helpdesk address, extracting pertinent information, looking up the user's priority and their system's details, reformatting the information and posting to a helpdesk system's queue.

You have to remember that the term "serverless" is a misnomer, you are using the provider's servers and infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis -- with a significant markup. Of course, that markup is the value of you not having to configure, administer, allocate servers, processes, etc on your own.

Serverless, like most IT, is well suited to some use-cases and not to others. It takes skill and experience to design the optimal solution for any given requirement.

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#8

Post by viraptor »

CyberFonic wrote: post #7

I prefer to think of serverless as: events triggering backend processes without needing a user interface. A very simple example would be receiving emails to a helpdesk address, extracting pertinent information, looking up the user's priority and their system's details, reformatting the information and posting to a helpdesk system's queue. You have to remember that the term "serverless" is a misnomer, you are using th…

The "markup" depends on your needs. If you have a process to run every hour or so, you're likely saving money and time by not running a full instance.

Re: Ask HN: What are some practical uses for serverless?

#9

Post by viraptor »

buf wrote: post #3
viraptor wrote: post #2

> Setting up sidekiq + rails is basically a 10 minute operation. Standing up a toy sidekiq + rails environment for experiments and for tiny projects is a 10 minute operation. Standing one up for large projects, taking care of deployment without breaks, restarting sidekiq without losing jobs, scaling the environment in reaction to traffic, etc. is a lot more work. Also standing up sidekiq requires managing your backen…

Right on. I guess I've done it so many times that I hadn't thought about it. I have a medium sized site, about 12 rps, using rails with a bunch of backend operations (it's a social network), so I think I just have rose-tinted glasses on the complexities of doing that. Other than setup time, are there any other really great reasons to use serverless? Or, why is serverless so much more popular than heroku (currently)?…

> Other than setup time,

Not just setup time. Ongoing management time as well.

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