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The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

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Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#331

Post by petre »

tomc1985 wrote: post #321
mark242 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that "cheap dedicated server" isn't all that cheap. Just the documentation for backups on your Hetzner server is ridiculous. Why, in the 21st century, should I as an application developer ever have to worry about that? Let's say that Hetzner server goes completely toast at 2am and you get a pingdom message. You log in, realize you have to restore from backup. You fire up a new instance, and go through your re…

> Just the documentation for backups on your Hetzner server is ridiculous. Nothing a server template, code repo, and daily db dump cronjob can't solve

I used snapshots. It was super easy. They can do a snapshot every day and keep N copies. The cost is easy to factor, not a runaway bill.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#332

Post by tomc1985 »

crehn wrote: post #330
tomc1985 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just the documentation for backups on your Hetzner server is ridiculous. Nothing a server template, code repo, and daily db dump cronjob can't solve

I’m assuming this is a joke, but this is exactly what most people who just want to run some code don’t want to deal with.

Then maybe they should learn how to deal with it

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#333

Post by waheoo »

justinram11 wrote: post #220

As someone on a two-man-team who runs a lot of little "utility" functions in AWS Lambda with the Serverless Framework[1] to support our DevOps / Build processes, it's been one of the most productive tools in my toolkit (after the initial learning curve, of course). It allows me to stand up a practically maintenance-free endpoint in a matter of hours (usually to glue separate services together): * Want to run a quick…

That sounds great but if I already have the ability to quickly prototype and stand up one off type services / endpoints in my code base what's the selling point here?

To me it's just full of risk and costs where as adding a new function, getting it reviewed and deploying takes all of a few minutes with none of the cost.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#334

Post by tobib »

konjin wrote: post #245
Demiurge wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is owning an AWS account easier than a cheap dedicates server? You should have a code repo and backups in either case. At least some people mention "but I can scale this lambda x1000" and that's one advantage... But you can do all those tasks on a hetzner server in same amount of type, just python scripts.

Because you need two servers. One to run the application. One to run the application while the first is being upgraded. Now you need three servers, one to run the application, one as backup and one as load balancer. 99.99% uptime means you can be down no more than an hour a year. Which is really easy to overshoot when you're dicking around with a dist upgrade on three linux boxes. So that's why you end up with a serv…

You don't need multiple servers to achieve what you described.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#335

Post by erikerikson »

notanotherycomb wrote: post #312
justinram11 wrote: post #220

As someone on a two-man-team who runs a lot of little "utility" functions in AWS Lambda with the Serverless Framework[1] to support our DevOps / Build processes, it's been one of the most productive tools in my toolkit (after the initial learning curve, of course). It allows me to stand up a practically maintenance-free endpoint in a matter of hours (usually to glue separate services together): * Want to run a quick…

I'm ignorant How does a build trigger the serverless function to notify all of you? I kind of assume serverless means it activates on a timer or when you visit a specific URL. So a build script executes it by visiting a URL when it's finished? And the script executes from any internet connected machine? Why is it better than having a VPS? I currently use a VPS for a few one off scripts. Cron does the timer ones and t…

The serverless framework is an open source tool that you can use to "deploy" "serverless" assets. Basically it covers most of those scripts you usually have to write and gives you a declarative format with some great variable capabilities that help you managed config and declare your components clearly. Running the tool deploys to your cloud of choice and results in functions, APIs, workflows, databases, or whatever you declare now existing and ready for use.

That framework is separate from the class of services regarded as serverless. The star that kicked it off was AWS Lambda. Serverless colloquially means you are dealing with an abstract service contract rather than a server (e.g. the oldest is S3). This removes patching and other maintenance that usually does not directly support business value. More formally, serverless includes auto-scaling to zero, paying only for what you use, high availability, and other design patterns most outside the large tech houses cannot use at low to no cost.

Your VPS is always on and always paid for. It can crash or get in a bad state. It can go out of date and need patching. It is mutable and more vulnerable. It is limited in resources.

Nike reported AWS Lambda scaling in production at 20K RPS/S (0RPS@0s, 20K RPS@1s, 60K@2s, 120K@3s, ...).

serverless-artillery, with loosened account "safety" limits can scale from nothing to producing billions of requests per second on target systems.

Full disclosure: I contributed to the serverless framework and serverless-artillery. I'm a biased fanboy.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#336

Post by chillfox »

ethanwillis wrote: post #316
mark242 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have run AWS vs colo at scale. For the cost of precisely 1 engineer fully loaded, I can have 500TB of bandwidth per month, every month. Guess what, it isn't going to take just 1 engineer to maintain your homegrown worldwide CDN. Does it make sense for FAANG to run their own datacenters? Yes of course. Does it make sense for you? No. This is what I don't get about arguments for running a bunch of VPSs-- for literall…

Maybe it's hubris, but I'm 99% sure I could run a homegrown worldwide CDN for the cost of one engineer salary. I'd be willing to take that bet from anyone who thinks it can't be done.

Yep, something like terraform + your favorite config management tool and monitoring system would do nicely for a mostly automated setup once done. I am guessing that a really nice setup could be created in under a month.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#337

Post by erikerikson »

spyspy wrote: post #277
crehn wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The psychological effects of technology seem often overlooked—and they’re hard to quantify. I wish there was some easier way to quantify the “soft” aspects of everything that surrounds us, e.g. the long-term impact of beautiful and usable UI design, the reduction in “ambient” psychological stress, the impacts of chaos/consistency on how we feel, any robust measures of happiness, excitement, relaxation, etc. They seem…

My joke around the office is some people optimize for latency, some for throughput, some for memory usage. I, however, optimize for sleep. My entire goal is for my services to never wake me up. And if they do it had better because I clearly messed up and am the sole human alive able to fix it.

We optimize for good engineers

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#338

Post by ethanwillis »

stephenhuey wrote: post #323
ethanwillis wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's hubris, but I'm 99% sure I could run a homegrown worldwide CDN for the cost of one engineer salary. I'd be willing to take that bet from anyone who thinks it can't be done.

Maybe you’re extraordinary, and for most people it’s not worth it.

I wouldn't say I am. But I think the perceived complexity(fear) of managing hardware is overblown. However as time goes on and people become more afraid of it due to the loss of institutional knowledge it won't be an overblown fear anymore. At that point institutions will have no choice but to contract out their infrastructure to a centralized institution or an oligopoly of institutions.

And we're approaching that because as these types of skills are outsourced to these institutions the amount of people with the skills necessary to carry them out are diminished in number from attrition. Amazon doesn't need 10 company's worth of engineers to have the requisite skills. If everyone buys into this model then eventually the market will only bear the number of engineers having that knowledge as Amazon needs.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#339

Post by nojvek »

When you run a k8s cluster on an auto scaling nodepool on a cloud provider, is that considered serverless?

At the end of the day it’s either your hard metal server or someone else’s servers (cloud)

It’s then just layers of abstraction to see what is a good fit.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#340

Post by chillfox »

stephenhuey wrote: post #323
ethanwillis wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's hubris, but I'm 99% sure I could run a homegrown worldwide CDN for the cost of one engineer salary. I'd be willing to take that bet from anyone who thinks it can't be done.

Maybe you’re extraordinary, and for most people it’s not worth it.

extraordinary here would be either a developer with solid Linux admin skills, or a Linux admin with basic developer skills.
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