Docker isn't serverless
serverlesscode.com
Docker isn't serverless
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Re: Docker isn't serverless
#2Related recently published podcast: http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/08/23/serverless-ar...
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#3Kudos to the author for writing this. Serverless is a thing, but Docker definitely isn't it. Nor is AWS lambda.
Serverless is client-only code, or even Peer-to-Peer between self-coordinating clients.
There's a lot of stuff that overlaps in this domain, including microservices, containers, serverless, and if we want to talk about them we should use the right terminology.
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#4[deleted]
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#5Kudos to the author for writing this. Serverless is a thing, but Docker definitely isn't it. Nor is AWS lambda. Serverless is client-only code, or even Peer-to-Peer between self-coordinating clients. There's a lot of stuff that overlaps in this domain, including microservices, containers, serverless, and if we want to talk about them we should use the right terminology.
>Serverless is client-only code, or even Peer-to-Peer between self-coordinating clients.
That's a valid definition but it's just one of many. The Function-as-a-Service has also been called "serverless".
Your definition of "serverless" demarcates on where the code runs.
The FaaS "serverless"[1] differentiates on what part of the stack you don't have to manage the housekeeping for. With FaaS-serverless, you don't worry about upgrading a particular Linux kernel version if you can decompose a computation into a function that runs on AWS Lambda. So, deploy computation to the cloud without the Linux server embedded inside an image (AMI) -- and it seems natural for a bunch of human beings to call that "serverless".
Likewise, the "server" in X Window X11 is the display services to differentiate it from the "client" of a terminal app.[2]
All 3 meanings of "server/serverless" can coexist without confusion and it doesn't seem like terminology we have to bikeshed. Personally, the context surrounding serverless always makes it clear what we're talking about. Is anyone truly confused between SQLite being "serverless" and AWS Lambda being "serverless" because they happen to use the same word?
As for Ryan Scott Brown's definition of "serverless", is there near universal consensus on his criteria?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_as_a_Service
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#Software_archi...
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#6I would consider a project in Docker serverless if it is used in something like AWS EC2 Container Service (ECS).
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#7I kind of feel that Erlang programmers are shaking their heads in frustration at all this and saying "we've been doing things this way since the 80s and saying they're great but nobody listens".
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#8> In the demo, a new container is created for every function invocation which would introduce latency that wouldn’t really be acceptable for most user-facing systems.
That seems like an implementation issue that can be overcome, an alternative approach could be to spin up a few containers, deploy the function artefact/JAR/script/whatever and then continuously invoke it via a load balancer.
Then if the function isn't called for a while, terminate or scale down the container(s)
I believe AWS lambda works in a similar way to the above approach.
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#9I would consider a project in Docker serverless if it is used in something like AWS EC2 Container Service (ECS).
Why? Even with ECS the container's host is maintained by you. It's hardly more "serverless" (less serverful?) than just running docker on EC2.
Re: Docker isn't serverless
#10I kind of feel that Erlang programmers are shaking their heads in frustration at all this and saying "we've been doing things this way since the 80s and saying they're great but nobody listens".
Erlang programmers aren't shaking their heads. They're too busy writing useful
things to pay attention to each and every fad.