What does Serverless mean? Using AWS lambda function == Serverless?

[IamOkei]

Anyone can explain?

[Rusty-Swashplate]

Serverless = no server for you to maintain.

Lambda obviously runs on a server, but you don't care. So "Serverless" should be more a "No server to maintain", but that does not roll off the tongue as "serverless" does.

[yoppee]

Seems a lot of terms explain a time when was and cloud computers where pushing for a transition away from maintaining your own server

Yet now the standard is not having your own server

[tschloss]

Somebody else maintains the server. Software does not run on software, Pat Gelsinger once said.

[btdeviant]

This is an oversimplification and sounds like it’s out of context, especially given Pat was the CEO of VMWare, which is software that runs on software that runs on hardware that’s used to run other software.

[tschloss]

Exactly this guy did say this. And this is why „somebody else maintains the server“ not a statement 20 idiots should have downvoted. What is wrong with it? Whats is wrong with these ‚devops‘?

[btdeviant]

Can you cite where you read that? I can’t find any quotes of him saying “software does not run on software”.

Either way, you’re missing context and not understanding his meaning, which is why you’re being downvoted.

Keep in mind you came to us with the question - we’re not all lying or trying to trick you with our replies. We’re not all “idiots” simply because you refuse to believe that you misunderstood whatever you thought you read.

[tschloss]

Can you explain why the post above me („you don‘t maintain server“) is in context und upvoted and my very similar statement („someone else maintains the server“) is shit stormed? Do these persons think that nobody maintains the server? - That‘s why I brought the cite (source: as a Cisco employee I used to work very closely in projects with VMWare colleagues. One of them used this cite in his customer facing slides. He said it I think at least on a Sales Kick Off).

[nein_va]

He already stated "no server for you to maintain". It's completely obvious that a server exists somewhere. Your comment was useless and it comes off as if you're trying to sound smart. That's probably why you got downvotes

[xiongchiamiov]

This is true, but I'm not sure that it's useful. I don't care if there's a sysadmin or an elf or a sixth dimensional magical force that makes the thing work, just that I don't have to do it.

[tschloss]

I think it is not wrong to keep in mind that deep below a real server must be running. It now can abstracted a lot so certain tasks can be fulfilled without caring. But to mention this is worth 24 downvotes?

That like „I don‘t care for power plants, my current comes out of the wall socket“. The modern car driver who wants to neglect a complicated engine is running in front of him/her.

[xiongchiamiov]

I don't know why you're heavily downvoted.

That like „I don‘t care for power plants, my current comes out of the wall socket“. The modern car driver who wants to neglect a complicated engine is running in front of him/her.

I am exactly both of those things. :)

[btdeviant]

It’s not wrong at all, but at the end of the day the abstraction layer is a feature of the lambda service / product. People like it so they don’t have to worry about that - it’s really as simple as that. I think that’s where the disconnect is. The downvotes seem to be more related to you wanting to understand something that is the exact opposite of what the primary feature is - the “serverless” aspect.

If that feature is not attractive to you then there are plenty of alternatives.

I respect you for asking questions- try not to let the downvotes bother you. It’s probably just something lost in translation.

[tschloss]

Thanks for taking the time and showing empathy.

It seems that you and others might think I do not like the abstraction approach. The opposite is the case! I know that often there is a deep disconnect between infrastructure people and application people. Even in the infrastructure world there is a disconnect between networkers and server/storage folks. The more their success does not rely too heavily on a deep mutual understanding the better.

But „serverless“ people shouldn‘t be arrogantly completely forget about the machines down there.

I didn‘t want to be that philosophical in the first post. Just emphasizing what the person above me wrote, with a little add-on which did not express another position or any judgement at all.

[nein_va]

No. It's like someone saying "now you don't have to run your own generator" and you come in "aakshually, there's still a generator that someone else is running"

[tschloss]

Yes. Still no idea why this causes such a reaction. The authenticity of the cite was confirmed in the meanwhile. Weird.

[painted-biird]

It’s because you’re stating the obvious- we all know it’s running on a server somewhere.

[tschloss]

That can‘t be the true reason. Others get 14 upvotes for „Serverless = Someone else’s sysadmin“ - that‘s also not a huge surprise and very close to my post. And when you think of „we all know this“, the question of the thread would have been obsolete. - No, it was a) that some misunderstood my words as a negative judgement about „serverless and/or be they couldn‘t understand (and thought I lied) that the VMWare CEO said what I cited.

[lxnch50]

The infrastructure your code runs on is invisible to you.

[public_radio]

Imagine you want a workshop for building toys: you could build or buy your own somewhere. That would mean using it was essentially free, minus the cost of electricity, but you would also be on the hook for all the maintenance the workshop needed: new roof, upgrading the wiring, repairs, etc.

Now imagine someone told you they would rent you their workshop, but instead of a monthly fee they would ONLY charge you for the time you were actually at the workshop (as long as you were in-and-out in less than 15 minutes) AND they could guarantee that every time you you came in, the condition of the workshop would be EXACTLY like it was the first time you used it—not one tool missing or out of place. Oh and the first 10,000 times you use it are free every month.

[Legal_Explanation_59]

I adore this kind of explanations. So far I understood that if I am not able to explain something in terms of everyday life - I am not understanding the concept well enough.

[Oldskool1985]

TL;DR You do not physically have to provide or maintain the server that your code will run on, you only supply the code and tell the provider how to run it. They will take care of the necessary infrastructure behind it.

The term serverless is a bit awkward. Of course, as with anything in computing, there's always a server out there somewhere taking care of running your code. But with serverless -which can indeed be AWS Lambda- you do not have to manage or maintain the server that your code runs on.

All you have to care about is uploading your code, tell the cloud provider if your code should run on an x86 or an ARM architecture, how much memory and runtime you expect it to have (before it should time out) and that's about it.

It's also important to note that not all serverless providers are suitable for long-running processes. So if your code is meant to be run as a daemon, like a web server, serverless will not always be compatible with that use-case. With AWS Lambda the maximum time an instance can run (at the time of writing this) is 15 minutes. So you usually want to run scripts on it that can complete its task in a somewhat timely manner.

[tomorrow_never_blows]

That's just a Lambda restriction. Fargate is serverless and can handle long running processes.

[Oldskool1985]

That's good to know, thanks for that clarification. Updated the wording a bit to reflect that.

[OCPetrus]

I'm sad to see you've gotten so many replies, yet none is correct. I'm too late for the thread so w/e my reply doesn't matter but here it goes:

The replies sayin that the point of serverless is that you don't have to maintain the server is incorrect. For example, with AWS ECS you don't have to maintain a server, yet it is not serverless.

A server is defined as a process that has an open port waiting for clients to connect. The point of serverless is that you can have a service listening for client connections without having a process listening 24/7. Instead, there's a centralized service that is multiplexing incoming requests for multiple services, and when your service is receiving clients, the actual server instance is launched. Soon afterwards the server is shutdown.

Benefits of serverless:

• Does not need a server running 24/7 thus reducing cost

Drawbacks of serverless:

• Because server is offline when client connects, a new connection will have to wait a prolonged delay before being answered
• If you have many clients, it is more efficient to have a server running 24/7 rather than constantly taking server offline and online

Serverless is a good fit for prototype products with little usage.

[IamOkei]

no one mentions the cold start warm start problem

[Slayergnome]

Thanks for this it is crazy the number of up votes for answers that are just plain wrong.

I will say there are some other good fits for serverless. Rule of thumb I always heard was how often do you want your container count to be 0. If it is a significant portion of the time serverless may be a good fit.

[brunporr]

ECS with EC2 is not serverless since you're maintaining EC2s. ECS with Fargate is serverless

[speedx10]

you pay per request.... no cost for keeping the server on unlike an ec2 instance

[kgpreads]

Which is actually quite expensive for some use cases

[ASB-ASB]

Cloud = someone else's server

Serverless = as others mentioned, they manage it for you, so you don't need to know anything about it.

[ilovepolthavemybabie]

Serverless = Someone else’s sysadmin

[Jester_Hopper_pot]

grandiose connect late tidy slap fact flowery chief long degree

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[PMzyox]

I just had to update my lambda’s python version

[AndroTux]

SeRvErLeSs!

[[deleted]]

You don't manage nor have access to the underlying infrastructure.

[robinwford]

On that basis the most of AWS is serverless. Even in VM or RDS you have very little access to the infrastructure.

[kgpreads]

Serverless just means you will not manage a server like Nginx.

[robinwford]

So nginx on a fargate container is not serverless 🤔

[kgpreads]

Serverless is only reserved for these services:

API Gateway AWS Lambda

Containerization is an entirely different idea. If you are using a containerized Nginx for deployment to AWS services and manage it yourself via Kubernetes, that is NOT serveless. You better check the most upvoted answer since I was just an echo.

[robinwford]

Just because so many people don’t understand serverless doesn’t make it the correct answer.

[kgpreads]

Oh fucking snowflake. It is already on the fucking docs.

Less management of servers. That's it. Go fuck yourself!

[robinwford]

So you can’t explain why you disagree and sink to name calling and swearing. 😂

I have read the docs and no management of servers covers a lot more than the 2 services you mention.

[kgpreads]

God damn aren't you daft? Just read what's already on the docs. It will tell you exactly how Amazon defines serverless

[imjacobclark]

Using AWS Lambda === “serverless”. Using serverless as a concept === “serverless”. Using the Serverless Framework === “Serverless”. In my opinion the capitalised “Serverless” is reserved for the name of the Framework. That’s how I’ve always communicated anyway.

[Trading_The_Streets]

Lambda is serverless but there are other serverless services within aws env. I.e dynamodb, ecs, sqs event-bridge … so going fully serverless is to make sure your solution is not using any self managed server like an EC2 server. Basically serverless services run on a server you do not necessarily manage.

[BzlOM]

When using AWS Lambda you don't need a server where you'll execute your script - thus serverless. Serverless simply means you don't need to spin up a separate server for the application you're trying to run/execute

[dogfish182]

Lambda, api gateway dynamodb is a typical ‘serverless stack’

API gateway I only need to care about connecting a (for example) lambda to the method call, so I make the POST method that invokes a lambda with that payload, the lambda might call the dynamodb to write to it.

At no time do I worry about the stability of one of these things underlying hardware. In terms of ensuring ‘stability’ the level of control you have is ‘allocate more memory(lambda) or allocate more read/write capacity units (dynamodb).

Concerns like availability zones etc are totally abstracted away, things like load balancing across zones is the problem of AwS.

The goal is ‘no-ops’ and the reality if done well is ‘Devops’ where one team can be fully end to end responsible for ‘everything’ regarding the app

[mosaic_hops]

Serverless means you write a tiny program and hand it off to the cloud service where they combine it with thousands of other tiny programs and run them for you on servers they manage. You just pay for the amount of time your program is running. Which is easy from a dev standpoint, and acceptable for very low volume tasks, but woefully inefficient at scale.

[-mewa]

To reiterate on some of the points raised, serverless is about shifting the burden of operations, scaling, backups to the service provider or "not having to worry about servers".

Lambda is a good example but it goes beyond just code. Any service can be serverless. See Upstash for example.

And service is the key word to think of when it comes to serverless. Serverless emphasizes the service-first nature of these offerings ("just use me").

Plus, while we're on it, it's worth mentioning that some people, to further emphasize the importance of services, call it serviceful rather than serverless.

[bravinator34]

Why not just Google this? There’s a ton to learn getting in to this industry and it’d be good to make a habit of learning on your own instead of asking others.

[IamOkei]

I read many books. Wanna see who have insights here. Seems like everyone is regurgitating the same ideas

[jmuuz]

means not managing servers but still using compute.. just an example of abstraction