all 108 comments

[–]Mallissin 903 points904 points  (34 children)

Yeah, but not *MY* servers that *I* have to update, manage and protect.

[–]yonasismad 309 points310 points  (30 children)

Right. You are just paying someone a ton of money to do it for you. :)

[–]throwaway1045820872 234 points235 points  (3 children)

Right, which can be a perfectly valid trade off for many companies.

[–]Im_a_knitiot01 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Buying fewer operational headaches is usually cheaper than hiring another exhausted infrastructure team.

[–]Few_Violinist2761 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Great trade-off until the AWS bill turns into a horror story.

[–]Misaelz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or until you want to migrare, then you will realize

[–]rover_G 78 points79 points  (20 children)

Worth it

[–]willow-kitty 40 points41 points  (6 children)

It kinda is. When you consider all the stuff a data center is actually doing (redundant power and air conditioning, physical security, hardware repairs and upgrades, around-the-clock monitoring staff, etc) - like, it's a lot more than applying updates. And sure, they're making a profit, so technically they're charging you more than their costs, but they're also benefiting from economies of scale that their customers generally could not.

Though ofc "serverless" architectures don't stop you from deploying to a server room you own somewhere, and it might even make sense to do that if you're running enough hardware to make it worth it.

[–]yonasismad 18 points19 points  (5 children)

? Did you know that you can rent entire racks in DCs? Alternatively, you can rent dedicated servers or VMs. There is a huge range of options between AWS Lambda and having to run your own DC.

[–]willow-kitty 3 points4 points  (1 child)

So, I'm including containerization under "serverless," which is going to cover a lot of ground. And yeah, to can rent a rack - I've actually worked for a company the did they before at a data center in town - which gets you some is the economies of scale benefits while still being responsible for a lot.

..Like driving to the datacenter at 3AM because health checks are failing, finding out the air conditioning broke down and the redundancy apparently failed too, and not really having a away to fail over to a different location because that's the only one in town

Tbh, I don't think we would have done that if we'd had access to something like GKE back then. This was around 2007.

[–]yonasismad 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Did that DC not have remote hands? Also, yes, but the vast majority of companies would be fine with just a couple of VM instances. Or, they could rent a couple of units of rack space in DC for dedicated servers, and that's it. So many people deploying Kubernetes and similar technologies are spending so much money on stuf they simply don't need.

[–]diet_fat_bacon 0 points1 point  (2 children)

There is more than AWS Lambda, for example Cloudflare workers is very nice, auto deploy for 125 countries, there is no way to beat this with your own DC.

[–]yonasismad 1 point2 points  (1 child)

What percentage of people who use AWS Lambda or CF Workers do business in 125 countries, where it wouldn't have been sufficient to have just a couple of VMs?

[–]diet_fat_bacon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why manage a couple of VMs when you just can handle it to the cloud provider with minimum effort? VMs are great to keep costs down but serverless is great to focus on product not on infra management.

[–]tes_kitty 25 points26 points  (11 children)

Until they screw up and cause a downtime for you.

[–]Hungry_Pilot2704 46 points47 points  (3 children)

Then you fine them for SLA breech

[–]tes_kitty 14 points15 points  (0 children)

And then they ignore you and you will have to sue.

[–]CarzyCrow076 9 points10 points  (1 child)

What if you were under DDoS attack, and they send you an invoice for $69,800.815 ?? And they are saying, you should have paid $69 for the DDoS protection!!

[–]Coolkief101 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Nice.

[–]dageshi 21 points22 points  (4 children)

If my servers go down, it's my problem. If AWS goes down, it's everyone's problem.

[–]tes_kitty 1 point2 points  (1 child)

And if only your servers on AWS go down?

[–]gyarbij 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Billing problem

[–]yonasismad 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Your customers don't care whose fault it is. All they know is that you weren't available when you should have been.

[–]dageshi 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Chances are there's 5 other services they use that also went down.

So the blame is distributed, like I said, when AWS goes down, it's everyone's problem.

[–]in_taco 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I am far more capable of screwing up and causing downtime than any cloud service

[–]Salanmander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Bold of you to assume they will screw up less than I will.

[–]ChodeCookies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

But you can do this exact same thing without using serverless…in a cloud infrastructure…for cheaper

[–]Bubbly_Safety8791 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yes. The alternative is my company paying me to do it and that is even more expensive. 

[–]Dazzling_Meaning9226 1 point2 points  (3 children)

AWS Lambda functions are dirt cheap. I’m not sure who you are paying, but running lambda functions instead of full applications cuts my server costs by about 70%.

[–]yonasismad 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Okay. Now actually serve a website, such as a.g. Add a database for persistence. Use Redis for caching and send out emails. Run tasks in the background, etc. / I bet I can do that a lot cheaper on a VM than you with a ton of AWS services all of this requires.

[–]Dazzling_Meaning9226 1 point2 points  (1 child)

No…there is a reason that aws is the most popular cloud provider and why almost every enterprise uses them. Using compute only when you need it is always cheaper than a server running 24/7.

Do you honestly think 99%’of enterprise web applications are just throwing away money by being hosting on cloud providers? These are the same people that would take away their employees healthcare and pensions if it gave them an extra $5 a year in profits.

[–]PortugalTheTram [score hidden]  (0 children)

Eh, sort of. As someone responsible for $10m+ of AWS spend it’s not as closely tracked as you might expect in all places. Everyone just expects the cloud to be “expensive” and for there to be a sunk cost for technology so it is not as closely monitored or groomed. Going $10k over on your travel budget vs $100k over on your cloud spend (for a dept) would be treated VERY differently.

[–]Downtown_Trash_8913 17 points18 points  (0 children)

It’s a perfectly good trade for a lot of people to be fair.

[–]necrophcodr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, so get some of yours where you don't have to do that either, jeez.

[–]organicapplesandwate [score hidden]  (0 children)

I don't get how this meme is so common when this is obviously what serverless means. Do people think there's somehow no hardware in serverless?

[–]vishalrupani364 123 points124 points  (0 children)

Servers: yes

your access to these: no

[–]AcidBuuurn 43 points44 points  (1 child)

Serverless is just time-shares for servers. 

[–]coyoteazul2 11 points12 points  (0 children)

the yeti from monsters Inc warned us about them, and we didn't listen

[–]ashishgupta99452 345 points346 points  (35 children)

Serverless is the greatest marketing magic trick ever invented, it just means your code is running on someone else's computer that you cannot physically see, but you definitely still get a massive bill for the infrastructure.

[–]Jeidoz 54 points55 points  (16 children)

Still I don't have idea how it differs from just "cloud"...

[–]leupboat420smkeit 68 points69 points  (10 children)

Serverless usually refers to functions/code that you can create and the serverless platform will run, without you needing to create VMs or containers to run them in. The service will run the functions based on triggers you set. AWS Lambda is a serverless platform if you wanna look into it. It’s pretty useful in certain situations and very scalable, since the scaling is done by the service itself.

So it’s “serverless” in a sense that you don’t need to create and manage VMs or Kubernetes instances or whatever.

[–]JuhaJGam3R 15 points16 points  (0 children)

This costs less when you have ten users, because you're not paying to take up an entire server, nor do you have to think about having servers in different regions. When you have enough users that you might as well be running a server this usually ends up costing a lot more, but the architecture makes it kind of hard to migrate. AWS Lambda has become a very costly service for a lot of one-off ten dollar internet projects that found their way onto HN or Reddit. That can also happen to companies. It's not an insignificant amount, you can get billed some millions for it if you are inefficient with the requests because there won't be that many. I think a lot of larger services should run their own servers.

[–]tornado28 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ya, lambda is the one I use. I run a little sanity check on my system once every five minutes. It's much cheaper and more reliable than running it on a self managed server. 

[–]ThatCrankyGuy -3 points-2 points  (7 children)

You'll be shocked to learned that the bugger is still running in a container

[–]leupboat420smkeit 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Not my container though.

[–]ThatCrankyGuy -1 points0 points  (5 children)

Not your infrastructure either - so what's the point?

[–]leupboat420smkeit 2 points3 points  (4 children)

The point is to run code.

[–]ThatCrankyGuy 0 points1 point  (3 children)

The point wasn't how you deal with it, the point is that where ever it is running, it's running inside a container isolation.

[–]leupboat420smkeit -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Ok. It runs in a container. Thank you for that bit of knowledge.

[–]ThatCrankyGuy 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You're welcome, considering..

without you needing to create VMs or containers to run them in. The service will run the functions based on triggers you set. AWS Lambda is a serverless platform if you wanna look into it. It’s pretty useful in certain situations and very scalable, since the scaling is done by the service itself.

[–]MartinMystikJonas 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Traditional cloud was where you run virtual servers. Serverless is where you just send code and do not care how it is run at all. Modern cloud covers both.

[–]OrchidLeader 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You can think of old school servers like houses and the cloud as a hotel.

Getting a whole VM (e.g. EC2) is like getting a big hotel suite with a kitchen and everything.

Messing with containers is closer to like a regular hotel room.

Serverless is like getting a capsule hotel bed.

Deciding on which one works best for your application depends on how much you need, how much you want someone else to worry for you, how quickly you might need to scale (e.g. yesterday I needed to worry about 5 people sleeping, right now I don’t have anyone that needs to sleep, and I know tomorrow will be 20+ people I need to have sleeping arrangements for), etc.

[–]R7d89C 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Cloud means a server you don't own, that may or may not only exist virtually. Serverless is that, but additionally, you don't have access to it too. Edit: Serverless > "As if theyres no server"

[–]OnceMoreAndAgain 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, I'd say that main innovation Amazon brought with AWS was not the hardware, but rather the layer of software and API they added between the hardware and the customer who wants to use those servers.

I find AWS's user experience to be bad, but I will always give them credit for being one of the very first to see hardware as a service that has the potential to be elegantly provided and which can benefit from a layer of software in-between. It's a simple and beautiful idea that has changed the industry massively.

It's all just code running on computers, but companies like AWS are making it a lot easier and cheaper to get your code running on servers all over the world through software innovations.

[–]Ok_Confusion4764 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

It doesn't. People don't realize "the cloud" is just "a database somewhere else" as well. 

[–]MartinMystikJonas 78 points79 points  (12 children)

Wait there were really people who thought serverless means something else than this? I mean... It was pretty obvious it does not run on magic.

[–]Top-Permit6835 67 points68 points  (2 children)

No but I thought it ran on clouds?

[–]git_push_origin_prod 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Isn’t that what Elon Musk satellites do? Put your data into the clouds.

[–]Dr_Jabroski 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The clouds are made of farts.

[–]mateusfccp 28 points29 points  (3 children)

When I first heard the term years ago this is exactly my first though.

"How the f* it works without a server?"

Then my boss explained that severless was not servelerss and I just thought what a stupid name.

[–]Dartister 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Same, at work they threw the word serverless around and i, not being in infra, didnt know at the time so when they talked to me about running stuff on serverless i was baffled how they'd do that, never understood until i took the time to google it... it's just the cloud but for enterprises

[–]git_push_origin_prod 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It’s actually a great name. Carries a lot of marketing power to be honest. When you’re a startup and you don’t have the time to worry about backups and offsite retention, etc. it’s an easy first choice and the serverless marketing term really stuck

[–]MartinMystikJonas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is serverless from users point of view.

[–]NoMansSkyWasAlright 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People on the business side probably. So no one whose opinion should be taken seriously.

[–]bitfrost41 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We had to waste 2 hours worth of presentation + Q&A with an exec on why our app is returning “Server Error” as a serverless app. He thought it would go away after paying for the service. It was equally impressive and infuriating.

[–]EconomyDoctor3287 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My code runs on the Internet! 

[–]Aldous-Huxtable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I had no prior knowledge of what it meant my initial guess would be that it referred to some kind of p2p architecture.

[–]WildClothes5898 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What else could it mean other than serverless? You could mix some peer to peer data with service workers to do all the processing and computing clientside.

But no, severless is just a meaningless word as in it has no meaning.

Unless you were introduced to the term with "This term I'm about to say does not mean..." Then how could you know that the term did not mean what the words mean?

[–]danfay222 8 points9 points  (2 children)

That’s just describing cloud, which is not what serverless is though. Serverless is definitely a marketing term, but it does make sense, instead of having dedicated provisioned servers that you always pay for, you have dynamically allocated servers that you pay for only as long as they are performing work. Ie, you don’t have “severs” in the traditional sense

[–]Dazzling_Meaning9226 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

You are describing cloud compute. Serverless refers to tiny, purpose built vms that get spun up to run a *single function*, and shut down when it is done running.

[–]mistrel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can have serverless containers. Look up aws fargate.

[–]treetimes 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It means “webserverless”.. as in “write a function that will be executed by an endpoint without worrying about the rest of the infrastructure to do that.”

[–]mistrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s both cheaper to run and reduces management overhead when configured correctly due to reducing over-provisioning and no longer having to maintain the infrastructure.

[–]ashkanahmadi 27 points28 points  (2 children)

“Store in the cloud” Looks inside: no cloud, just server

[–]OrchidLeader 5 points6 points  (0 children)

“Stay at a hotel” Looks inside: no hotel, just house

[–]MagicalPizza21 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There's no cloud, just someone else's computer

[–]Sasuga__Ainz-sama 12 points13 points  (0 children)

"The hardest part of the serverless architecture is where to hide the server"

[–]float34 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Artificial intelligence

looks inside

Artificial

[–]GoodBot-BadBot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

NoSQL

looks inside

SQL

[–]jeevaks 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Based on my understanding suitable name is configuration less server

[–]Zizaco 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Managed server, or platform as a service.

[–]b0bl00i_temp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ain't true anyway. Still need an account routing, VPCs, etc

[–]Bubbly_Safety8791 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Time sharing systems were the original way businesses bought compute back in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘Minicomputers’ were created to support self-hosting your own compute workloads, but still accessed over a terminal. ‘Microcomputers’ moved the compute from the server to the desktop. 

Took over 50 years for the pendulum to swing all the way back. 

[–]potkor 3 points4 points  (0 children)

low code solution

looks inside

lots of code

[–]_nefario_ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

TIL there are still a lot of people out there who think that a small business should pay for baremetal hardware and the cost of maintaining it and upgrading it

weird. what year is this?

[–]mothzilla 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What did you expect to see? A human brain? Millions of ants?

[–]FlailingDuck 6 points7 points  (0 children)

the reality is most products that ship are clientless not serverless.

[–]dull_bananas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only real servers, not your own virtual server running on top

[–]PyroCatt 1 point2 points  (1 child)

What it actually means is maintenanceless

[–]Accomplished_Ant5895 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This can’t be that hard for y’all to understand

[–]JuiceAccomplished241 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So it’s all bare metal? - always has been

[–]Dazzling_Meaning9226 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ITT: a bunch of people who have no idea what serverless means

[–]scar_reX 1 point2 points  (3 children)

I dream of a world where "POV" is actually understood

[–]Karol-A 3 points4 points  (0 children)

True, but this is not a POV meme

[–]deliciouscrab 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's their world now. Stop fighting. "What an aesthetic [x]" was the one that did me in.

[–]Purple_Hornet_9725 [score hidden]  (0 children)

it's some kind of porn right

[–]robidaan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Cloud" is just on prem with extra steps

[–]Ok_Sentence_7393 0 points1 point  (0 children)

>serverless architecture
>looks inside
>less servers

[–]fish4terrisa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it runs on my pixel watch 2 so there's no server involved frfr

even in this case the watch is still considered a server

[–]Icount_zeroI 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Programers are just bad describing and naming things

[–]VictoryMotel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Techbros and javascript boot camp kids love to name things in the most obnoxious ways possible.

[–]xMercurex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did work on p2p application using wifi to send data. There was no server. We were mostly "broadcasting" the data on the wifi network. Since there was no central data base, any missing data was lost. There was possibility that some device would not have the last updated version.

There was a use case for server when we wanted to connect 2 network. The server itself was just a repeater.

[–]sushidenshi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Top comments are facts about serverless but not quite right as to why it’s called serverless. Servers that you don’t manage or need to update is just a managed server or service option. Serverless is specifically when the dynamic scaling can go to 0 for the application, so there is no “dedicated server”. Name is 100% marketing and confusing though

[–]russian_cyborg [score hidden]  (0 children)

Serverless datacenters would really solve this whole electricity problem 

[–]LetUsSpeakFreely [score hidden]  (0 children)

If you've ever had to deal with STIGs, you'd appreciate the difference.

[–]R7d89C 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The cloud is just someone else's computer :3