The dawn of the Cloud Computer
Serverless computing, ushered in full force with the introduction of AWS Lambda, is the foundation of a cloud-native transformation that is ongoing in the industry. It is the way cloud applications are being built and will be built for the most part in the future.
An example of serverless computing that I’ll focus on here are Serverless Functions: units of code that execute in response to events. As a developer, you create ...
2018-10-23 | TechnologySecurity and Serverless Functions
Serverless computing with functions fundamentally reduces the amount of code you develop and deploy for cloud applications, eschewing the “server” parts, and allowing you to focus on just your functions. For a cloud native application, where functions are APIs, an integrated API gateway handles the routing of events and REST requests to your functions.
2018-07-24 | TechnologyThe Serverless Contract
It is common for a web based service to provide a service level agreement (SLA) which specifies the level of up-time the provider strives for. The SLA constitutes the terms and contract between the provider and the user. In the case when the provider cannot meet the stated up-time guarantee, the user is typically entitled to some form of a credit.
2018-07-13 | TechnologyA Serverless Composition of Functions
In this article, I show you how to use Apache OpenWhisk to create a serverless application that is composed from serverless functions. The functions are created and deployed as OpenWhisk actions. Similarly, the composition itself is an OpenWhisk action. This is particularly noteworthy in that compositions, therefore, may be further composed, leading one to develop reusable and modular serverless function-libraries.
2018-03-26 | TechnologyPerformance debugging for serverless functions using the Cloud Shell
The execution of functions that run in a serverless cloud is opaque for the most part. In general terms, when a serverless function is invoked, the platform accepts the request and provisions resources before it executes the function. We can refer to the duration between accepting the request and the start of the function execution as the “system time”. The system time along with the “user time” (i.e., the time consumed exe...
2018-02-05 | TechnologyServerless functions in your favorite language with OpenWhisk
Apache OpenWhisk is a readily extensible serverless computing platform that supports functions authored in many programing languages including Node.js, Python, Swift, Java, and PHP. The set of supported languages extends beyond these five however, and includes Go as well as other compiled languages. In fact, a feature of OpenWhisk that has been around for some time, but not well documented, is its support for native binarie...
2018-01-23 | TechnologyThe duality between serverless functions and APIs
Serverless functions are a fast, convenient, and cost-effective way of developing cloud-native applications. Within minutes, it’s possible to deploy functions to respond to events such as webhooks or REST API requests.
2017-10-24 | Technology