The Ultimate Experience of Serverless Rapidly Deploying Functions

1. Serverless

1.1 Serverless Background

With the continuous development of cloud computing, many new technologies have emerged that have changed the traditional IT architecture and operation and maintenance methods. The technologies represented by virtual machines, containers, and microservices have continuously improved the technical capabilities of cloud services at all levels. They have turned many common capabilities in applications and environments into a service. However, no matter where these technologies are applied, helping enterprises "reduce costs and increase efficiency" is the eternal theme of technological innovation.

The emergence of the Serverless architecture has brought about leapfrog changes. The host management, operating system management, deployment, operation and maintenance of basic software, resource allocation and capacity expansion and contraction capabilities under Serverless are all provided by cloud manufacturers, and the computing power is made into a public service like water, electricity and coal. This means that building applications based on Serverless services, developers only need to focus on product code instead of managing and operating the cloud service operating environment, Computing resources have shifted from purchasing "servers" in the past to purchasing corresponding "services".

Serverless = Faas (Function as a service) + Baas (Backend as a service)

Serverless processing model:

1.2 Serverless development mode

Serverless really realizes that the deployment of applications does not involve the construction of infrastructure, and automatically builds, deploys and starts services. Take big data application development as an example:

In the traditional development process, we need to first complete the installation and deployment of a series of components of the back-end big data platform according to the actual application of big data, from collection, storage, cleaning, association, to analysis and mining of the list of components involved in the whole link, and then wait until the big data application is completed, and then conduct application function debugging, application+platform performance tuning, and finally test and go online, It also requires big data platform operation and maintenance engineers to maintain the whole big data platform. The whole process involves multiple roles, and the operation, maintenance and tuning of its big data platform has a certain technical threshold. The tuning effect depends entirely on the ability of its own employees. A good tuning staff, like a good database DBA, needs long-term project practice accumulation, and is a key scarce talent.

Based on Serverless, everything has become very simple. Cloud vendors provide big data component capabilities in the form of services. The complex platform building process in the past has been completely liberated. You only need to write big data applications and deploy them to Serverless services. In the future, you don't need to care about the operation, maintenance and tuning of any server and big data platform components. While providing external services, cloud manufacturers have a complete team behind them to provide professional support 7 * 24. Therefore, only big data application development engineers can complete all the work. Of course, if you have certain big data platform capabilities, it is also very beneficial to the performance tuning of the big data application side, and you can often get twice the result with half the effort.

1.3 Core values of Serverless

1. Reduce operational complexity

Serverless architecture decouples software applications and servers, and servers are no longer the focus of user development and operation of applications. Before the application goes online, users need not plan the number and specifications of servers in advance. During the operation and maintenance process, users no longer need to continuously monitor and maintain the status of specific servers, but only need to care about the overall status of the application. The overall complexity of application operation has decreased, and users can focus more on the experience and improvement of software applications and other places that can bring higher business value.

2. Reduce operating costs

The server is no longer the managed resource that users pay attention to, the complexity of operation is reduced, and the time and manpower required for application operation are greatly reduced. In the best case, a few application administrators can manage an application system that handles massive requests.

3. Shorten time to market

Under the Serverless architecture, the application functions are decomposed into several fine-grained stateless functions, the boundary between functions becomes clearer, and the coupling between function modules is greatly reduced. This makes the development of software applications more efficient and the iteration cycle of application development shorter.

2. Practical project experience

2.1 Log in to Alibaba Cloud Console

After entering the Alibaba Cloud official website, click the login button in the upper right corner, enter the user name and password, and then log in to the Dashboard

2.2 Enter function calculation service

2.3 Create Service

Enter the service name and click OK

2.4 Create Function

Enter the function name, select runtime, and click Create. Here, Node14 is used as an example

2.5 Test hello world

See the return of hello world. Click Test to see the return result.

2.6 Create API gateway

Find Alibaba Cloud API gateway service

Create Group

Enter group name

Create API

Enter the API name and click Next

Select https and enter the route

Click Next to select the function calculation just created

Enter the release description and click Publish

Enter the group and find the temporary address of the API gateway

The return value of function calculation can be obtained through Postman call

3. Summary

Generally speaking, the more developed and mature the society is, the clearer the social division of labor is, and so is technology. After so many years of development, cloud computing has gradually evolved to the point that users only need to focus on the core business and the resources needed for business operation, and the infrastructure and platform are uniformly taken care of by cloud manufacturers. Alibaba Cloud Serverless allows us to focus on business development and product realization instead of worrying about the operation and maintenance of the service end and unfamiliar areas. The fewer things we need to care about also means that we can do more. It can be said that with the rise of the Serverless architecture, the real era of cloud computing has just arrived. I believe that with the rapid development of technology, Serverless has unlimited possibilities in the future!