Think back to the last vacation you planned. It involved a lot of groundwork before you even arrived. You had to decide which days to go, where you wanted to visit, what hotel you would stay at, how you got there, what you did while there, and even what you ate!
Now, imagine you left all that planning and execution to a travel agent. By the time your vacation rolls around, you can focus on making memories instead of feeling stressed about every little detail of the trip.
The difference between your vacation plan with an agent and your own is comparable to developing projects with serverless architecture.
By managing your physical server and compute resource infrastructure yourself, you spend more time provisioning, planning, maintaining, and updating than developing and optimizing applications that meet your clients’ needs.
What is serverless architecture?
Serverless architecture is a cloud computing execution model in which a cloud provider or managed service, like Netlify, handles the allocation and provisioning of on-demand servers. It operates on the idea that you can run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
This approach lets developers focus on writing business logic rather than worrying about server operating systems, virtual machines, or on-premises hardware.
We cover the details in more depth in this comprehensive article, but today, we discuss some benefits of adopting the technology powering this $21.1 billion industry. Also, don’t forget to sign up for a Netlify account and follow along with our guide on developing serverless functions.
Core benefits of serverless architecture
Serverless architecture is a driving force behind the cloud-based movement that many organizations turn to for their 21st-century digital transformation. Moving away from in-house server management makes developing code easier and more efficient.
Let’s take a look at why using serverless architecture is so beneficial to your business:
- Reduced operational overhead: Infrastructure demands constant capacity planning, patching, maintenance, updating, scaling, and provisioning. With serverless infrastructure, a cloud provider handles these backend management tasks, allowing developers to focus on other tasks.
- Improved resource efficiency: Serverless functions are event-driven, meaning they only run when tripped by specific event triggers. The event-driven nature reduces idle time and demands for resource consumption, improving overall efficiency.
- Faster development: Serverless architecture relies on individual cloud functions, which are quicker to develop and maintain than entire applications. The reduced time demands allow for shorter development cycles and more rapid debugging, maintenance, and updates.
- Reduced resource costs: Serverless providers use a pay-per-execution model or package resources into tiers based on the amount you use. These tiered pricing models are much more cost-effective than traditional infrastructure, especially when building and deploying web applications with varied or uncertain workloads.
- Unified DevOps experience: Developers and operations teams can manage functions and batch jobs from within the same tool rather than using different platforms for different tasks. Saving time and effort swapping between tools means more productive and focused development work.
Streamlining as much of your application development process as possible starts with removing the infrastructure management portion of the equation. Once you offload those time-consuming and expensive tasks, your teams have the room to develop higher-quality applications, programs, and containers.
Key use cases for serverless architecture
We know what you might be thinking: “But serverless architecture doesn’t make sense in some cases; why would I want to shift to this computing model?” You’d be correct in saying serverless architecture isn’t ideal for long-running workloads, machine learning, or video rendering pipelines.
Despite these extreme examples, serverless architecture is gaining popularity and practicality, making it ideal for several use cases.
API development
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are an integral part of composable architecture, which allows businesses to choose microservices for their tech stacks. Serverless functions are perfect for building and managing APIs as they can handle requests independently, leading to streamlined scalability and efficient resource allocation. You can use an API gateway in conjunction to create robust and auto-scaling APIs.
Real-time applications
Serverless architecture is event-driven, making it well-suited for real-time applications like messaging systems, live notification delivery, HTTP requests, and collaboration tools. Because these applications trigger functions each time someone interacts with them, serverless architecture leads to quicker response times and reduced resource demands.
Event-driven processing
We’ve already mentioned the event-driven nature a few times, but it’s worth bringing up again. Events can trigger serverless functions from a broad range of sources, including databases, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and message queues. Because these sources are becoming more common, serverless architecture is there to support their growth.
Data processing
Serverless computing and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) are reducing the barrier to entry for data processing by moving configuration and operational responsibilities of infrastructure to a provider. While serverless architecture isn’t ideal for large processing tasks, it supports several workarounds to make real-time data processing more affordable.
It’s possible to use serverless functions for data processing tasks, like Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) operations and analytics. As the technology continues to evolve, even more use cases will join those mentioned above, making early adoption a no-brainer.
Building serverless functions with Netlify
We brand serverless functions on our platform as Netlify Functions. Using Netlify’s serverless functions allows you to create seamless workflows that enable you to write and test code locally. You can then deploy your applications and avoid server setup, startup, and maintenance.
We offer a comprehensive tutorial on building serverless functions using Netlify, and we suggest bookmarking it for future reference. However, here are a handful of steps to get you started from here:
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Set up your Netlify project: Create a new site on Netlify or connect a project from an existing repository. It’s vital that you configure your project with the
netlify.tomlin the root directory. -
Create a functions directory: In your project root, you must create a directory called
functions. This directory is where you’ll store your serverless function files. Many developers choose to use Node.js as their runtime environment for serverless functions due to its efficiency and comprehensive support. -
Write your function: Create a new file in your directory from the step above. If this is your first function, you can name it the obligatory “Hello World” or whatever other name makes sense. Regardless of the name, you’ll write your function code in this step.
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Configure the TOML file: Ensure that your
netlify.tomlfile includes the functions directory. For example:[Build]functions=”./functions” -
Deploy and test your function: Once you’ve wrapped up the coding and configuration, you can push your changes to the connected Git repository or deploy manually. Be sure to test your function by making a request to the endpoint.
Of course, you can write your serverless functions in JavaScript or TypeScript and deploy them using the Netlify CLI or by connecting to a repository like GitHub. There are a few benefits to using Netlify over other serverless platforms, such as:
- Global edge deployment for low-latency function execution.
- Automatic versioning and disaster recovery rollbacks.
- Integration with other Netlify features to create a unified programming experience.
Netlify also invests heavily in cutting-edge developments in the industry, meaning you can take advantage of up-to-date tools without being an insider. Sign up today and start building serverless functions in minutes.
Best practices for serverless development
To maximize the high availability benefits of deploying a serverless environment, it’s crucial that you and your team follow some pre-defined best practices.
These practices include:
- Performance and cost optimizations: Keep functions small and single-task focused. Utilize caching mechanisms and optimize function cold start times by minimizing dependencies. Consider deploying orchestration tools to manage complex workflows across multiple functions.
- Safety considerations: Implement proper function access authentications and authorizations to remain compliant. Store sensitive data in environmental variables and perform regular updates and patches to prevent security leaks. Verify the provider’s security track record and look for strict vendor lock-in clauses in any contract you sign.
- Monitor and troubleshoot: Track everything with comprehensive logging. Use monitoring tools and set up alerts for abnormal behaviors and elevated error rates to tackle issues before they cause downtime. Monitor metrics such as function execution time, memory usage, and error rates to optimize your serverless applications.
Your serverless provider should make implementing these best practices easy. At Netlify, we pride ourselves on supporting high-quality development by providing developers with the tools they need to ensure code is neat, clean, and ready for production.
Experience the efficiency of serverless on Netlify
Serverless architecture offers several benefits over traditional server management, from reduced overhead and improved efficiency to reduced development cycles. These benefits alone give it value as a tool for developers to spend more time producing high-quality applications instead of managing infrastructure.
Netlify Function provides the perfect entry point for developers looking to leverage these benefits of developing serverless apps. With cutting-edge advancements and a unified platform, Netlify is the go-to comprehensive solution for the modern web developer. Connect with us today and see Netlify in action for yourself!
