Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

https://aws.amazon.com/serverless/build-a-web-app/

by munns • 9 years ago

153 148 9 years ago

aws.amazon.com

xahrepap2• 9 years ago

I am a believer in "Serverless" and that it will play a primary role in a large portion of developers' lives... in the future

My experience with servless is that while this may be true at a certain level:

No server management

I feel like in Amazon's current toolset, you are MORE aware of "servers" than you ever have been before. It's just abstracted into a different layer (cloudformations, etc). The boilerplate for severless projects it's a complete mess, imo.

Besides that, the Develop/Test/Deploy/Manage lifecycle is really difficult to reason about. I would hate to be the one on call when a serverless service goes down and I have to figure out what's going on!

I look forward to Amazon releasing more tools (or cleaning up the ones they have) to make Serverless a breeze to work in.

[EDIT] clarification of a couple minor things

keithwhor4• 9 years ago

That future is being created, you're probably just less aware of it than you think.

Serverlessconf just announced their NYC conference, expected to be the largest yet. If Austin is any indicator, it will be huge. [1] Tim Wagner at AWS likes to spout the stat that billions of financial trades are already being processed per day on AWS Lambda. The "serverless" market is gigantic and growing rapidly.

And then there's companies like StdLib [2], where we've built an abstraction layer on top of serverless architecture that turns remote procedure calls (and APIs) into first-class citizens of your development environment with a single package and allows you to ship applications without ever worrying about infrastructure. We just closed a $2M seed [3] and are announcing some transformative partnerships shortly. We're tackling some of the exact issues you have problems with, and we're not the only ones.

The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. ;)

Disclaimer: I am the founder of StdLib. :)

[1] https://nyc.serverlessconf.io/

[2] https://github.com/stdlib/lib/

[3] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/stdlib-just-raised-2-milli...

EGreg3• 9 years ago

Why are posts like this being downvoted? Is t because it contains self promotional links? I think the post is informative and adds value.

dang, I think there should be a feature to add an optional anonymous and private comment to the person when you downvote something, to let them know why (but with no arguments).

xahrepap2• 9 years ago

Oh, I know it exists, and I know tons of people are using it.

But like I said, I don't think that the tooling is there right now for mass migration (or anything like it). It's really difficult to test/debug. It's difficult to dianose issues. It's difficult to even set up a "Hello World" API Gateway that uses lambdas. It's painful... as are all new technoligies.

I guess what I mean to say is: I look forward when I just jump on AWS and start using it for a production app, and the boilerplate and amount of config files I have to maintain drops.

I'm also aware of the tool called "serverless" ( https://serverless.com/ ) which is also a step in the right direction.

l5870uoo9y• 9 years ago

I think the ease at which a VPS is configured (and scaled) is underrated. I mean you can literally install your tech stack with a few commands that you can copy-paste into the terminal and upgrade it with a few clicks.

Plus working with a command line just seems more "right" than clicking around in AWS backend.

isuckatcoding2• 9 years ago

Sorry what's new about this? Aren't all the pieces existing AWS services? They've just put it in a nice graphic with the architecture drawn out.

Not saying I don't like the architecture (actually think it's quite useful for many scenarios). Not sold on using DynamoDB (I'd rather use a traditional SQL store).

gamesbrainiac3• 9 years ago

I really agree with you on this one, my acquaintances that have actually used this, use it for running bulk jobs that are triggered by S3 changes.

jupiter90000• 9 years ago

I wanted lambda for a bulk data processing task that would have been a nice use of it, but the 5 minute max on a process wasn't going to work for my use case. Maybe someday I'll find a use for it

williamle8300• 9 years ago

Amazon wants to control markets by leading in with "convenience" factor but they will sheist you.

Buy stuff from Amazon... but for Pete's sake don't make them a core project dependency for your software projects. You only have yourself to blame when they start ratcheting up their prices.

keithwhor4• 9 years ago

AWS is the system architecture of the web, full-stop. Well, a system architecture, alongside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Avoid them at your own peril and detriment to your ability to execute as a business.

With the exception of a few masochists, we don't write software in machine code anymore. Same will be said for cloud infrastructure (actually, it's already there). Breathe and accept the future, focus on building what's next and / or adding value to your business.

EGreg3• 9 years ago

That's just silly. The internet was supposed to have no single point of failure. Now the Big Five have centralized everything. Why do you need to build centralized services on giant AWS server farms?

wolco• 9 years ago

The cloud will look different in the future. Adopting the locked in model puts all of your eggs in one basket. What you gain in ease you lose in flexibility and cost while increasing your risk

kyledrake2• 9 years ago

Right now I spend $240-600/mo for 192TB of bandwidth. I just used AWS's calculator and they charge $38,876.48/mo for the same thing.

I don't subscribe to the theory that this is "the future".

vidarh2• 9 years ago

If you're a startup and use AWS, and face a competitor that isn't, chance is you're going to be blowing money on infrastructure 2-3 times faster than your competitor. For some companies that won't matter - if e.g. your hosting cost is dwarfed by your development cost - and then it may be worthwhile to pick them.

For others, e.g. if bandwidth is a large part of your cost, picking them will mean your competitors who go with other providers will be able to sell well below your cost and still have a healthy margin.

Avoiding them (and Google Cloud and Azure) is often essential if you want to survive.

35bge57dtjku• 9 years ago

Does that mean I shouldn't buy a car because they might decide to raise gas prices?

fulafel• 9 years ago

Yes. Well, either gas prices will rise or some other way of disincentivising private car use will appear, or we'll have runaway climate change, and it'll be your fault.

013a• 9 years ago

You might buy an EV because ICEs are worse for the planet.

Point being, you have a problem that needs solved (transportation, cloud hosting). You can pick options which mitigate downsides imposed by your personal values (environmentalism, cloud vendor lockin). You don't have to stop driving.

AbstractCache2• 9 years ago

Is Amazon really a core project dependency for software projects that use them? If prices get jacked up, I don't see why a get obect from S3 couldn't be replaced the equivalent call to Azure/Google Cloud or even an open(3)? Yes, migrating projects is a pain, but there has to be a point where it makes financial sense, and if not, what's the problem?

cyberferret2• 9 years ago

I've used AWS since pretty much the first year they offered EC2 instances, and in that time, I believe their costs have only gone DOWN over the years.

Not just EC2 - we use S3, Glacier, Elastic Beanstalk, IoT, DynamoDB, RDS, Lambda, VPC, CloudFront, CloudWatch, Polly, Rekognition ... and I don't think I have ever seen a price increase /hr or /Gb in all that time.

vidarh2• 9 years ago

That may be true, but the only reason they're not increasing their prices is that their prices are insanely high to begin with. E.g. their bandwidth prices are about 40 times as high as what I'd pay if I ever reach the included cap for my servers.

ranman10• 9 years ago

Disclaimer: I work for AWS

Computing / storage tends to get cheaper - even adjusted for inflation.

AWS has decreased prices 62 times. I'm not aware of a time where their prices increased - (maybe mechanical turk)?

Are you?

In fact I'm not aware of any cloud vendor ratcheting up their prices (I don't consider Oracle a cloud vendor). I've seen misbillings / changing terms on google cloud that resulted, unfortunately, in a few specific types of workloads having increased costs... even then I'm pretty sure they addressed that responsibly... but I'm not aware of any vendor ever increasing costs... only decreasing them... over the past 10 years.

buckbova• 9 years ago

Has anyone used RDS from lambda? Don't want to use Dynamo but perhaps for some key Val store.

cyberferret2• 9 years ago

Not RDS, but we've had good results with KeyVal stores using RethinkDB running on a Micro EC2 instance from Lambda...

djhworld• 9 years ago

Yep, very easy with JDBC + APIs like JOOQ.

The "interesting" part is how to secure user credentials to login to the RDS instance, and manage connection pools etc, but it's not that difficult

jedberg3• 9 years ago

The "interesting" part is how to secure user credentials to login to the RDS instance, and manage connection pools etc, but it's not that difficult

You can run your RDS instances and your Lambda's in the same private VPC. It doesn't secure your credentials per se, but it does prevent anyone else from accessing your database with Lambda.

jaxondu• 9 years ago

Hopefully we will see AWS release a managed serverless SQL db solution at re:Invent 2017. Like DynamoDB but for SQL.

davnicwil2• 9 years ago

Like DynamoDB but for SQL

This would basically be the game-changer for building backends on lambda.

The absolute key and most valuable piece in most backends is the persistent datastore. I absolutely want to build functional stateless business logic on lambda, but I absolutely will not, no matter the gain from not having to manage servers, have my database be dynamodb or any other non-RDBMS, for any serious application in 2017.

noway4212• 9 years ago

There's Aurora which has scalable read replicas.

justrossthings• 9 years ago

Mostly stoked about serverless because I won't have to deal with grumpy backend devs anymore

sumedh• 9 years ago

Care to elaborate?

AbstractCache2• 9 years ago

Typical front end dev drivel.

hobolord• 9 years ago

they're still going to be grumpy about how to test and set up development

zepolen• 9 years ago

I'm stoked too, as it means frontend devs will finally understand why backend is grumpy about frontend.

staofbur3• 9 years ago

We're not all grumpy :)

nickthemagicman• 9 years ago

Am a backend dev. Feel the same way.

kirillzubovsky3• 9 years ago

In principle I really like this way of developing, and especially prototyping, but as it stands right now Google is doing a significantly better job with their tools than Amazon.

Amazon got the same guts, but their presentation of these tools is horrendous. It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, with the only problem that these are the same people who can spin out servers with more pleasure and probably in the same amount of time.

Google meanwhile, with their purchase of Firebase, makes some really appealing tools that are not just easy to use, but also easy to understand. Besides, their dev outreach is quite stunning, and so is the email support.

Would love to see Amazon compete, but they have a long road ahead.</2c>

jedberg3• 9 years ago

The value in serverless is not the serverless itself, but the ecosystem. If you've already got petabytes of data in AWS, you're gonna use Lambda. It's true that Google will win the truly greenfield serverless applications, but I suspect those are few and far between.

In most cases people are trying to enhance what they already have which means needing access to what is already there.

ramblerman• 9 years ago

Would love to see Amazon compete, but they have a long road ahead

Amazon is absolutely dominating this space

factsaresacred• 9 years ago

Firebase is fantastic and that's because they built their toolset and UI before being acquired by Google.

They recently Google-ified their website but it's still less of a mess than Google cloud console (which feels like navigating a helicopter's dashboard).

First impressions matter and I think Firebase nailed it. The website presents the value clearly while also allowing you to get into the weeds if you need to. They ought to put their design team in charge of the rest of Google's cloud platform.

kirillzubovsky3• 9 years ago

Agreed. Google cloud console is a mess. In 5 years Firebase acquisition cost would be considered peanuts for the value they've added to Google.

ranman10• 9 years ago

It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink,

Do you have any advice on how we could make this stuff more accessible to new developers?

When you say the presentation do you mean the overall marketing, the UX, or just the CSS?

digger250• 9 years ago

I think AWS needs a good UX designer. I find that using AWS can be overwhelming at first. Here's a few suggestions:

1. Take "Amazon" out of every product name. Have a look at this list for example: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_service_lim... This adds nothing but clutter to the page.

2. Stop calling everything "Simple". If it's simple, people will be able to tell for themselves. Calling things simple potentially makes people feel dumb if they have a problem with it.

3. The sheer number of offerings (over 18 groups with multiple items) on the "Services" tab of the AWS management console is overwhelming. I'd have a designer see if there was a better way of organizing things.

kirillzubovsky3• 9 years ago

All of the above. AWS is the Google Cloud right now, but it's missing the "Firebase" equivalent.

I know a ton of people who have no problem spinning out an EC2 instance to scrape the web for all their needs in a heart beat, and yet I don't know many who just want to make software for people, without all the complexity of setting things up.

Look at Firebase, they have "Authentication", "Database", "Storage", and "Functions". If I want to Auth users into my app, it's quite literally a one line of code. Meanwhile Amazon has "Cognito," which requires setting up identities, rules, connecting it to other AWS services ... head explodes.

That's a small example, but AWS is built for some serious enterprise business, and if you want to make something like Firebase, you need to repackage it all, and dumb it down to a simple use case. Run whatever 265 services are necessary in the background, but give the user 1 thing to worry about.

I fully understand that would be really hard to do, but that's the point. Gotta do the hard thing for the user, and they will come.

As far as UX/css/visual, it's all of it. Like another commenter mentioned, in order to make things pleasant you gotta move away from the AWS style guide and towards something unique and friendly. Right now the entire AWS website look like it's been built in a spare time by a sys admin (because it probably has been).

IMO it's okay to make "AWS Light" a stand-alone offering, like Heroku, but that means you need to commit to maintaining such a service, and from what I hear through the grapevine Amazon is quite happy to be the piping for the internet, without having to run the consumer side of things.

sriram_iyengar3• 9 years ago

- watchout for latencies (multi-zones apps) time of your lambda functions.

- keep your lambda functions warmed up

- node has better warmup time than java lambdas (not sure of python)

- memory size impact of lambda functions (negligible in most cases)

- manage lambda timeouts

- dynamodb latencies are negligible

- api gateway typically does not introduce latencies

- multitenancy challenges with single store of dynamodb

jedberg3• 9 years ago

node has better warmup time than java lambdas (not sure of python)

Python and node are both sub-second, compared to Java's 10+ seconds.

kagx2• 9 years ago

api gateway typically does not introduce latencies

I haven't checked my function thoroughly yet, but I think API gateway introduce quite a bit of latency (at least in my case). My maximum invocation time is 600ms, according to AWS Lambda monitoring tool, but network request takes around 1s (checked in chrome dev tools).

Also, worht noting is that my code is hosted in the us-east region and I'm based in Europe. I'm not sure how much latency this introduce.

sriram_iyengar3• 9 years ago

> Also, worht noting is that my code is hosted in the us-east region and I'm based in Europe. I'm not sure how much latency this introduce. Very much possible, if your regions are different.

watter2• 9 years ago

Probably about 100ms or more on each request (to and from). Slower depending on location and network conditions.

jondubois3• 9 years ago

Amazon Lambda is like Microsoft Windows was in its early stages. It's a fast-growing, closed/proprietary system for running apps.

I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves a near-monopoly for a while... But I think that eventually more flexible open source solutions will take over. Open platforms like Docker and Kubernetes will likely replace Lambda just as Linux replaced Windows on the server-side.

techno_modus• 9 years ago

Open platforms like Docker and Kubernetes will likely replace Lambda

I am not sure if Docker/Kubernetes are comparable with Lambda. But currently there are some attempts to develop an open source alternative to Lambda and other proprietary FaaS (Function as a Service) platforms like OpenWhisk for Cloud Foundry: http://openwhisk.org/

brianzelip• 9 years ago

Thanks much for linking openwhisk, good to know about it.

jondubois3• 9 years ago

True, not directly. So it's not as clean a comparison as Windows vs Linux so I meant it more in terms of the ability of one to replace/supersede the other.

_pmf_• 9 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves a near-monopoly for a while.

I wonder why Google is so passive in this regard; sometimes I think they have an aversion to honest money and real products.

lucian1900• 9 years ago

They've had App Engine for many years. They're the pioneers in this field, if anything.

melvinram5• 9 years ago

They have their own Function As A Service offering:

https://cloud.google.com/functions/

aerique• 9 years ago

I don't think Linux ever replaced Windows on the server-side. Rather, Windows never made serious inroads into the server-side.

Or perhaps I missed the point of your last sentence.

StevePerkins2• 9 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if it achieves a near-monopoly for a while...

Are you serious? Every major player in the market has a more or less equivalent offering. They started appearing within weeks of AWS Lambda's launch.

https://cloud.google.com/functions/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/functions/

https://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/openwhisk

There are also a number of open source projects emerging... to support migrating between providers to reduce lock-in, or to roll your own service:

http://openwhisk.incubator.apache.org/

https://github.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-function

jondubois3• 9 years ago

Just because these others exist doesn't mean that Lambda cannot be a monopoly. Minix was around when Windows had a monopoly, but Minix never had any meaningful market share.

skyisblue• 9 years ago

Has anyone used Zappa in production? What has your experience been like?

ranman10• 9 years ago

I have and I had no issues. Website had peak load of only a few hundred requests per second and was Zappa running flask. Not sure if you consider that production or not.

Disclaimer: I work for aws

Sephr• 9 years ago

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer?

If you are paying for servers, your app isn't serverless. Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

superplussed• 9 years ago

It actually has lead to confusion before when I assumed that someone I was talking to knew what this usage of "serverless" meant. And it was only 15 minutes of talking that we realized our conversation had wildly diverged and neither side knew it.

perilunar• 9 years ago

Not just peeved, but confused.

"With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers"

So it's not serverless? Why are you calling it serverless?

virtualized3• 9 years ago

Because server has become a synonym for "Ubuntu pet machine that developers SSH into to paste random commands from Stack Overflow". People who do that are the target audience of "serverless".

eriknstr• 9 years ago

The very first time I heard "serverless" I thought P2P, but even though I agree somewhat with what you said, think of it as serverless because you don't have to manage the servers yourself.

richmarr• 9 years ago

Serverless refers to your workflow & division of responsibility, not the literal stack. Personally I think there are enough things to be peeved about in the world without adding this.

melvinram5• 9 years ago

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control:

* how many real or virtual servers are running your code.

* how the servers were provisioned or setup.

* how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs.

* what happens when the servers break.

* what causes the servers to disappear.

* etc.

The "server" concept has been abstracted out of the equation and you're no longer required to think in terms of servers. (there is one exception: RAM usage is still something you need to predict for AWS Lambda.)

Instead, you're thinking in terms of limitations and usage of the service.

With the above said, serverless has a bit of journey to make. The toolchain is growing and the workflow of local development, testing and deployment is still a work in progress. I feel like it's a great time to jump in because there is a lot of exciting work to do and a good foundation to build on top of.

virtualized3• 9 years ago

These were already the promises of "the Cloud" until everyone started calling their Raspberry Pis at home a "cloud".

Now the same thing has got another stupid name: Serverless. I wonder what the same stuff will be called two years from now.

etatoby2• 9 years ago

We still run and manage our servers and save a metric ton of money wrt. "cloud" offerings.

When "cloud" or "serverless" will be cheaper than managing your own dedicated servers, then it will actually be useful. Until then, it's just marketing.

mysterydip• 9 years ago

If the goal is to have a black box that we just send apps to and they just work, I propose a new buzzword: "black cloud".

kagx2• 9 years ago

Serverless term is a little bit confusing at the beginning, but it is the same thing as saying that WiFi is wireless.

cpach• 9 years ago

A mesh network can be wireless ;-)

virtualized3• 9 years ago

WiFi can do without a wire where it matters.

A server cannot do anything without being a server.

inopinatus• 9 years ago

Not peeved at all. Actually I find the persnickety language-lawyering far more irksome.

It is even specifically incorrect to claim that AWS lambda functions always run on servers; they have at least three distinct execution environments, one of which is IoT devices via AWS Greengrass another being inside the Cloudfront CDN. It's also a stretch to suggest that the primary execution environment for AWS Lambda is a server device; that is not AFAIK specified anywhere.

So, although the term itself may annoy you, the counter-claim that "it must be servers" is a demonstrably false assumption.

honestoHeminway• 9 years ago

Yes, i expected it to be something akin to a peer 2 peer client, where one user hosts it for another. Stopped reading when AWS showed up.

gluczywo• 9 years ago

It's not only a misnomer but the term is not needed. We've had SOA, web services, microservices, now serverless. I'm not saying it's all hype. It's rather a steady, lasting a few decades, transition towards outsourcing by encapsulating complexity into services. For me we've just arrived to the point where web services are mature enough so they can be consumed directly from the browser.

developer2• 9 years ago

Amazon goes to the extent to fully explain in the very first two sentences: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS."

"Serverless" had no previous meaning - it's not like Amazon bastardized an existing term. The word will ultimately be defined once people expect it to mean something specific. Personally I like Amazon's use of the term here.

A recent similar example: the word "performant". The number of stubborn people who screamed "performant isn't a word!" was ridiculous. Everyone understands the intention behind the word "performant" without needing to have it explained to them. The introduction and wide adoption of a word is exactly how new words are folded into language. Language is fluid! Language has never been static and inflexible, and pouting because we have extended the dictionary over and over again for thousands of years is frivolous.

amelius• 9 years ago

Agreed. When I first read the term, I thought it was about some P2P service.

Why not call it "hosted" or "virtually-hosted" instead?

thinkMOAR• 9 years ago

I'm agreeing with you, and their own text does too

I quote: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers."

Serverless clearly is not serverless.

down voted edit: LOL

Herald_MJ2• 9 years ago

No, I'm not peeved by the "misnomer". What is getting a bit annoying is every conversation about serverless being dominated by snarky comments about there being no such thing. As software professionals, we all know there is a server involved in responding to requests for our applications. But 'serverless' does accurately describe services like AWS Lambda, because the experience of development is such that you don't really have to think about servers, along with all the complexity of provisioning, configuring and managing them.

TL;DR: It's just a name. Get over it.

le-mark• 9 years ago

Agreed, it is very annoying, maybe 'serverless' isn't the best name, but 'adminless' is no better. All the banal comments about the name have really impeded discussion about this topic.

I personally am angered at the 'everyone should be a sys admin' culture we've come into as a profession, it completely trivializes the role of sys admins who are critical to any product/company. Good sys admins bring a lot to the table, just like experienced DBAs.

Edit; wow either everyone really hates sys admins and dba's or prefer "adminless", any down voters care to explain?

In truth, I don't think the name 'serverless' will stick in the long term, there is just too much animosity for it. The useage here by AWS is the first time I've seen it in a couple of months. Anecdata, but I think most would admit it's not very common.

zdkl2• 9 years ago

the experience of development is such that you don't really have to think about servers, along with all the complexity of provisioning, configuring and managing them.

But didn't we get "The Cloud" to do that? I mean I'm fine with rebranding but this is a really fine line.

voidr3• 9 years ago

But 'serverless' does accurately describe services like AWS Lambda,

Serverless means no server, which is false, because there is a server that runs your code.

because the experience of development is such that you don't really have to think about servers, along with all the complexity of provisioning, configuring and managing them.

That sounds like you are talking about 'web hosting' or 'application hosting', which existed decades ago, don't see any point in inventing a confusing buzzword when we have perfectly fine terminologies already.

TL;DR: It's just a name. Get over it.

It's a useless and confusing marketing buzzword that makes having intelligent conversations harder. I would love to understand your rationale for defending this confusing buzzword.

dvfjsdhgfv4• 9 years ago

"Serverless" is definitely not an "accurate description of AWS Lambda", because the work is done by servers. As the parent mentioned, it would be a much more accurate description of P2P services/protocols.

simplexion• 9 years ago

I think something like "Server-nescient Web Application." Marketing departments should like a fun word like nescient.

oneplane• 9 years ago

I am. But this is just another 'shiny new thing'. It's not that it doesn't have it's place or function, but it's not as 'special' as it's presented as either. Back when you delivered your stack of punchcards, you were practically serverless too. You didn't know how it was going to be loaded, who would do it, where the machine would be, of how to get in to do things yourself. It's just code in, results out.

This practically fits in the same boat as docker...

_m8fo• 9 years ago

It's interesting how most of the responses to this post agree that "serverless" isn't literally what's happening but agree to that name and say to get over it.

It's akin to someone saying it's "free" because you don't have to think about the money, e.g. you pay with a credit card.

Perhaps the name it should be called is adminless or backend as a service. In any case, there's probably not much one can do about the name at this point.

voidr3• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the following meme:

#define TRUE FALSE //Happy debugging

mgkimsal3• 9 years ago

Perhaps the name it should be called is adminless or backend as a service

What's odd is that we already have "infrastructure as a service", which is generally what this is. An entire infrastructure to run your code, without having to set it up (although you still need to configure logging to get useful data in most situations, it seems).

StevePerkins2• 9 years ago

I hear you, but to me this is like people getting upset over hoverboards ("But they don't hover!!!"). True, but it's convenient shorthand and pretty much everyone understands what is really meant.

Futurebot• 9 years ago

"Just-in-time server" would have been much more descriptive and accurate as a term.

nerflad• 9 years ago

Isn't serverless just the present-day incarnation of timesharing?

collyw2• 9 years ago

There is very little "true innovation" in software these days, its usually a rehash of something from years ago, plus some fancy marketing.

gamesbrainiac3• 9 years ago

Is there any evidence other that actually backs the notion that you save money on a serverless architecture? As far as I can tell, it feels like once you use this kind of mechanism, you're tied to AWS for the foreseeable future.

ranman10• 9 years ago

I did this analysis in my (admittedly crappy and rushed) pycon web talk - in some cases you can save a lot of money. In other cases you'll pay more. Skip to the 20 minute mark. Also I work for AWS so general disclaimer that I'm biased.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F8-y_d7l-2c

An interesting thing to note is that efficiencies in this space only increase. Which theoretically lowers prices. You also get some pretty rapid and massive parralellization when you need it. The pywren project has some insightful examples and benchmarks of teraflops of compute and 10s gigabits/s of data arriving as part of a single function call. It's a different paradigm that will transform a lot of workloads but not all.

It's hard not to get swept up in the frenzy around it.

gamesbrainiac3• 9 years ago

Good talk! But how would you go about creating something like graphql on AWS lambda? Are you aware of any tutorials?

isatty• 9 years ago

    > With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers,

...

vizzah• 9 years ago

Amazon has invalid 404 links to the tutorial sections on the main page.

"This workshop is broken up into five modules."

And most of those module links are broken too ;-)

Can only be viewed in a step-by-step mode.

ranman10• 9 years ago

Where are the 404s? I'll notify some folks to fix them. I'm not finding any but I'm also on mobile.

parkersweb• 9 years ago

Modules in the list at the bottom of this page:

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/serverless-web-app/

are broken - but the links to the modules at the top of the page work OK.

jayair• 9 years ago

It's great that AWS has a tutorial for serverless. Their docs can be a bit hard to get through.

If somebody is looking for an even more comprehensive guide to building full-stack apps with Serverless and React.js, I created http://Serverless-Stack.com.

It's open source and up to date with detailed screenshots and code samples.

talkingtab• 9 years ago

Can I absolutely control my cost with AWS? I've read several horror stories about runaway costs for various reasons. Certainly the complexity of AWS, the fragmented nature of the service each of which seems a world unto itself make it hard to understand. Then there was a story about AWS changing a policy that ended up costing users $1000's. ????

noway4212• 9 years ago

AWS has pricing alerts so you can set limits to specific resources and it will notify you when it tips over. Not that it cuts off the service, you'll still be incurring charges, but at least you can know straight away that something happened.

There's free tier as well if you want to just try out without commitment

meow_mix• 9 years ago

I'm a little confused as to what the point of cognito is. Wouldn't users typically be managed by the application and data regarding the users typically be stored in the db? Why do we need another service for this?

rockostrich• 9 years ago

In a microservice architecture, there's usually a users/authorization service. It makes it easier to have multiple services serve a single user pool. If you only have one public service then there's probably no point in having a separate service for users/authorization.

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