What is AWS Serverless?
AWS Serverless is a set of services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allow developers to create and run applications without having to manage servers or infrastructure. The system is based on a "pay-as-you-go" model, where users only pay for the use of resources without dealing with operational tasks such as scaling, security management and maintenance.
The main features of AWS Serverless:
Auto Scaling: AWS Serverless automatically scales based on the number of requests and application load. This allows developers to avoid overload or resource shortage issues.
Zero infrastructure cost: Server services are not billed when not in use. This means organizations don't have to pay for infrastructure that is not actively being used.
Fast application deploys: AWS offers tools like AWS Lambda, API Gateway, and others that speed up the application development and deployment process.
With AWS Serverless, developers can easily add new features and scale them according to application needs without having to change infrastructure.
Serverless technologies are part of the AWS services we use in our projects. Here are some of them:
Lambda Functions – a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. You can trigger Lambda from over 200 AWS services and software as a service (SaaS) application, and only pay for what you use.
EventBridge - a serverless event bus that lets you build event-driven applications at scale across AWS and existing systems.
SQS - a message queuing service enabling you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. SNS - a highly available, durable, secure, fully managed pub/sub messaging service that enables you to decouple microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. Amazon SNS provides topics for high-throughput, push-based, many-to-many messaging. Using Amazon SNS topics, your publisher systems can fan out messages to a large number of subscriber endpoints for parallel processing, including Amazon SQS queues, AWSLambda functions, and HTTP/S webhooks. Additionally, SNS can be used to fan out notifications to end users using mobile push, SMS, and email.
S3 - an object storage service offering industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. Customers of all sizes and industries can store and protect any amount of data for virtually any use case, such as data lakes, cloud-native applications, and mobile apps. With cost-effective storage classes and easy-to-use management features, you can optimize costs, organize data, and configure fine-tuned access controls to meet specific business, organizational, and compliance requirements.
It should be mentioned that using Serverless services has some drawbacks, so it is good to tailor it to the requirements of the task. Here are what they are:
Runtime and Resource Limitations: AWS Lambda has limitations on the maximum runtime of a function and the amount of memory that can be allocated for each instance of the function. This can be a limiting factor for applications that require long execution times or process large amounts of data.
Cost: Although using AWS Serverless can be economical for low-load applications, for high-load applications the cost can be higher than expected, especially if the configuration and scalability of services is not properly managed.
Maximum upload package size limits: AWS Lambda has a limit on the maximum package size that can be uploaded, which can limit the ability to upload large libraries or files to features. This can be an issue when working with larger projects or dependencies.
Serverless services are a powerful tool for modern application development, providing flexibility, scalability, and cost optimization. By using Serverless, developers can create applications without having to worry about managing the infrastructure. This enables rapid development and release of new features and applications, as well as efficient management of high load and volatile workloads. Although it has some challenges and limitations, Serverless represents an important and innovative architectural paradigm that is continually evolving and improving the way we develop and deploy software applications in the cloud.
Amexis Team