97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know

Chapter 18. Serverless Bad Practices

Manasés Jesús Galindo Bello

Software Architect at Cumulocity IoT by Software AG

Amazon’s launch of AWS Lambda, launched in 2014 made it the first cloud provider with an abstract serverless computing offering. Serverless is the newest approach to cloud computing, enabling developers to run event-driven functions in the cloud without having to administer the underlying infrastructure or set up the runtime environment. The cloud provider manages deployment, scaling, and billing of the deployed functions.

Serverless has become a buzzword that attracts developers and cloud engineers. The most relevant implementation of serverless computing is the function as a service (FaaS). When using a FaaS, developers only have to deploy the code of the functions and choose which events will trigger them. Although it sounds like a straightforward process, certain aspects have to be considered when developing production-ready applications, thus avoiding the implementation of a complex system.

Deploying a Lot of Functions

FaaS follows the pay-as-you-go approach; deployed functions are billed only when they are run. As there are no costs for inactive serverless functions, deploying as many functions as you want might be tempting. Nevertheless, this may not be the best approach, as it increases the size of the system and its complexity—not to mention that maintenance ...