What is Serverless Computing? 3 reasons to start now
copied
Serverless computing is pretty much what it sounds like. You can create an app, a website, an API, or anything that requires a server to run it and remove all the hassle of dealing with a server to build and run it.
So wait? Does that mean there’s no server at all?
Not at all! Servers are still involved with creating and deploying your applications. It’s just that you as a developer don’t have to worry about dealing with keeping them running. You simply write some code logic, deploy your code on a serverless service provider, and that provider handles everything for you. There are many services out there that are providing serverless solutions, such as AWS Lambda, Azure Function, Google Cloud Functions, and IBM Cloud Functions. At Nimbella, our main goal is to simplify the cloud to the extent that a developer who may not have worked with the cloud can also jump right into it and start creating.
If you’re not sure if you should take your idea and deploy it as a serverless app, then here are three reasons why you should consider giving serverless computing a try.
- Get to market faster
- Automatic scaling of resources
- Support for all applications - stateful or stateless
1) Get to market faster
In the normal way to create an application, you have to buy a server, set it up, connect it to your website, and find someone (sometimes even a group of people) to make sure that the server is always running. By removing all the steps it normally takes to get a server bought and set up, you as the developer can focus on writing code instead of server setup which can help you get your idea on the market faster!
2) Automatic scaling of resources
What do we mean by “scale”? Let’s say you’re creating a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter. To host your website and store all your user info, you install a physical server that can handle 1000 users worth of memory. Everything is fine at first, but overnight you experience 9,000 user signups which your site can’t handle because you don’t have the space for them. To handle those new users, you buy 9000 users worth of server space. But what happens if a few months later those 9000 users decide to leave your site? You’re now paying for 10,000 user’s worth of server space and now only have 1000 users.
With serverless scaling, your provider scales the exact server space you need for the current state of your site.
Got 1000 users? = 1000 users worth of space
Got 10,000 users? = 10,000 worth of space.
So if people add content or remove content from your site, the service grows and shrinks to accommodate the changes.
3) Support for all applications - stateful or stateless
There’s a lot of different types of apps out there, but the two types I want to focus on are stateful and stateless. How would I know if an app is Stateful or Stateless?
A Stateful app saves data from every session the user has.
A Stateless app will not save the data from a previous session.
For example, if you and a friend are using a chat app. You and your friend send messages to each other all day. Both of you close the application, come back to it a few hours later, and the messages you sent are still there. That’s a stateful application because the state of the app was stored and was able to be retrieved later.
But if you used a chat app, closed the app, and brought it back up, and all the messages were gone. That would be a stateless application because the state of the app wasn’t stored and saved. It would also make for a pretty terrible chat app…
With past limitations and integration abilities, being able to store an app’s state on a serverless application has been a developer’s responsibility. But with Nimbella’s built-in key-value-store capabilities building stateful apps is now easier, which lets you, as a developer, forego the infrastructure burden and focus on what you love most - coding business logic. If you want more information about building a chat app, you can check out our blog post on how we created our own using our platform. We also created blogs teaching people how to build an OCR app and a Stock Trading app, both of which are also stateful! You can learn how to get started with Nimbella by reviewing our online introduction.
Conclusion
Serverless is inevitable! More and more businesses both start-up and enterprise are seeing the positive results of moving to a serverless architecture. If you’re interested in getting started then you can sign up for free and build your own application. You can join us live and learn more about the benefits of going serverless and what you can use to start building ideas on your own.
Check out our website for more information on our upcoming products and news. Contact us at info@nimbella.com or on our community Slack if you have any further questions.
- Nimbella joins DigitalOcean
- No infrastructure, just code. Learn the simplicity of serverless
- How to Migrate from Containers to Nimbella Serverless Architecture
- Kubernetes in simple words: explained by Eric Swildens
- How to optimize Kubernetes costs with Nimbella
- Step by step guide on how to port from AWS to Nimbella
- How to build and improve your serverless APIs
- Simplifying Kubernetes For Developers
- FaaS Wars Season 2 - Step By Step Instructions
- What is Nimbella and what does it offer?
- Results and Feedback of FaaS Wars - May the FaaS Be with You!
- 28 Serverless Gurus and experts One Must Follow in 2021
- The Faas Wars Alert!
- CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions
- How to deploy Node.js functions on Nimbella
- Kick-Start Your Serverless Journey
- AWS re:Invent Serverless Highlights
- Opportunities in the Wake of the AWS Juggernaut
- FaaS Wars: Serverless & Virtual Robot Competition
- #DeveloperIPL Online Hackathon Results & Feedback on Nimbella's Integration for Postman
- How to connect to the 3rd party database such as MySQL at Nimbella (example in Java)
- What can you do with the Nimbella Workbench?
- Deploy your Shopify Storefront to Nimbella
- Not All Serverless Platforms Are Created Equal
- Nimbella + Netlify: Uplevel Your Development Speed
- How we learned to Jamstack, Our Caputron story | Nimbella.com®
- Commander for Microsoft Teams - Your Custom Bot that runs on your Command!
- How to Build a Stateful Cloud App on Nimbella vs. AWS
- Starter Kit and Resources to Build a Serverless Cloud Application
- How to Build Serverless Slack Apps and Commands
- How to Set up your Serverless Environment and Get Started in Less than 2 Minutes!
- How to Quickly Deploy Stateful Serverless Apps with Nimbella?
- What is Serverless Computing? 3 reasons to start now
- How to Build a Serverless Slack App in Minutes.
- How to Manage your Netlify Website from Slack?
- How to Build a Serverless Slack Command in minutes
- How to Build a Stateful Serverless Cloud Web Application?
- How to Create an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Application?
- Development at the Speed of Innovation – Nimbella, the Serverless Cloud
- Software Security Features on Enterprise Serverless Slack Apps Enabled by Nimbella Commander
- Coronathon India’s first demo day has 18 projects to help fight COVID-19
- See the time in different cities on Slack with Nimbella Commander
- Greet your friends in their native language in Slack with Nimbella Commander
- How to Fetch your Digital Ocean Billing Info on Slack?
- How to Stay Updated with Coronavirus Statistics on Slack?
- How to Fetch your AWS Billing Info on Slack?
- Get your Datadog billing info in Slack with Nimbella Commander
- Serverless Slack Apps and Slash Commands
- How to use Slack Effectively with Nimbella Commander?
- How to Create a multi-user Chatroom Hosted on Serverless Cloud?
- Using Docker actions, running Golang, and other fun things with OpenWhisk
- The duality between serverless functions and APIs
- Serverless HTTP handlers with OpenWhisk
- Serverless functions in your favorite language with OpenWhisk
- Run Swiftly: precompiled Swift actions
- Performance debugging for serverless functions using the Cloud Shell
- Locally debugging OpenWhisk actions
- Composing functions into applications
- A Serverless Composition of Functions
- The Serverless Contract
- The dawn of the Cloud Computer
- Security and Serverless Functions