[design] Serverless Architecture (FaaS)

Watching note for Serverless: the Future of Software Architecture • Peter Sbarski

cross reference:
Designing distributed system

Function as Service (execute custom code)
Backend as a Service (3rd-party services)

Adopt

• Pipelines as code
• APIs as a product
• Decoupling secret management from source code
• Hosting PII data in the EU
• Legacy in a box
• Lightweight architecture decision records
• Progressive web applications
• Prototyping with invision and sketch
• Serverless architecture

e.g

AWS Lambda for compute

S3 for storage

Principles of Serverless Architecture

• Use a code-execution compute service to run code on demand
• Write single-purpose statelesss functions
• Design push-based, event-driver pipelines
• Create thicker, more powerful front ends
• Embrace third party services

Use a code-execution compute service to run code on demand

Do not run on a server.
Focus on function, not application update/upgrade
(e.g patch Apache web server etc.)

Compute as backend:
API-Gateway is needed for REST API

Compute as glue:
Act as Pipeline

Write single-purpose statelesss functions

Pure function

Only 0 or 1 transformation

Design push-based, event-driver pipelines

One event triggers another event.
e.g

e.g.

Use websocket, push based.

Create thicker, more powerful front ends

traditional way:

Changed way:

Embrace third party services

Benefits

• time to market
• scale effortlessly (deal with spikes traffic)
• disruptive cost model
• no more server to manage
• versatile
• lower cost
• less code
• easy to scale and flexible

Cons

• Not for everyone
• Service level and customization
• Vendor lock-in
• Decentralization

Architecture

Go for microservices

Use API-Gateway

https://www.algolia.com/ as search service