14 ms·

"serverless" is just "managed hosting" under a new name, I believe.

scarface74 7y ago
No it’s not just managed hosting. Managed hosting still means there is a server to maintain, patch, and that it is always running.
- tyingq 7y ago
  There's a firecracker VM and a Linux OS under the Lambda. Both of which need to be maintained by Amazon. Edit: "managed cgi-bin" is perhaps more apt.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Exactly - maintained by Amazon not by you.
    - pantalaimon 7y ago
      That's pretty much the definition of managed hosting.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        When you are just using a VM - it’s your responsibility to keep the VMs and the runtimes patched, design a scaling solution, etc.
        vidarh 7y ago
        Managed hosting is used in at least two different ways: * As a synonym for dedicated hosting. E.g. you rent a machine, and run what you want on it. And have to patch stuff etc. * As a separate tier of service above dedicated hosting where the hosting provider is responsible for running the services on the machine. Some managed hosting providers will take responsibility for scaling too, though often it will be a semi-manual process. Managed hosting in this second sense is to serverless what dedicated hosting is to "regular" cloud instances.
        gravitas 7y ago
        You might even toss in running managed services externally in the second definition, for example DNS for your own domain - pretty much every service small to large offers a DNS hosting service with your account, typically at no charge. Otherwise, you'd have to run your own server, etc.
        rumanator 7y ago
        > When you are just using a VM - it’s your responsibility to keep the VMs and the runtimes patched, design a scaling solution, etc. Your comment did nothing to address the point, which is that your definiiton of "serverless" is actually just a buzzword used to refer to the old as the web commercial practice of managed hosting.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So was “running in the cloud” just a buzzword? Serverless is not just “managed hosting” in the cgi-bin since - serverless implies there is no server to manage and it’s for all intents and purposes “infinitely scalable”. For instance, Amazon’s hosted versions of Mysql, Postgres, Sql Server, etc are not what they consider “Serverless” you still have to size it appropriately and if your needs increase, have to move to a larger server. You have to worry about CPU utilization, memory utilization etc. DynamoDB is considered “serverless” because you don’t have to manage any of that. The same is the difference between S3 and provisioning storage that you attach to your VM.
        rumanator 7y ago
        > So was “running in the cloud” just a buzzword? Please don't digress. The questions regarding you assertions on "serverless" don't change or are addressed with your attempt to divert attentions to other buzzwords. > Serverless is not just “managed hosting” in the cgi-bin since - serverless implies there is no server to manage and it’s for all intents and purposes “infinitely scalable”. You're running in circles by trying to pin a buzzword on managed hosting. > For instance, Amazon’s hosted versions of Mysql, Postgres, Sql Server, etc are not what they consider “Serverless” I wouldn't use AWS as an example of coherent classification, as AWS's database offerings have multiple ovelapping concerns, including an overreaching gray area of "serverless-ness". See for example Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora.
        scarface74 7y ago
        There is no “overreaching area”. Amazon Aurora falls under RDS along with all of their other database offerings. No one on HN would accept an argument that technology is “confusing” that the poster didn’t take time to learn unless it involves AWS.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    cgi-bin didn’t have any type of process isolation. Also, it didn’t tie in to other none web based events.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      >cgi-bin didn’t have any type of process isolation "Lambdas" don't by nature either. I can run cgi-bin in a FirecrackerVM-like ecosystem with one script per VM. >Also, it didn’t tie in to other none web based events. Webhooks aren't new. I'm not disputing the popularity and convenience of serverless. I'm just noting it's somewhat like Docker. Packaging existing tech in an easier-to-use bundle.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Lambdas by nature do exactly that. AWS’s runtime launches the “VMs” in response to an event. And with webhooks I’m required to keep enough server capacity running all of the time to handle the events. Can a web hook automatically instantiate enough VMs on demand without reducing throughput?
        tyingq 7y ago
        "Can a web hook automatically instantiate enough VMs on demand without reducing throughput?" Yes, there are various cgi-bin implementations with horizontal auto-scaling.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Across multiple servers or do you still have to provision your server to handle peak load?
        tyingq 7y ago
        Yes, you can do that the same way Amazon does it. Like I said, Amazon packaged existing tech in an easy to use way.
- ighk77 7y ago
  To you. But the world has moved on from Apple 2e and now managed hosting is analogous to serverless. See because only science has a concrete fixed point for measuring which is the speed of light. Human culture is subjective buzzwords where the only relative fixed point is when they learned a term. Serverless is “managed hosting 3.0”. First there was bare metal, run your cage. Then ec2/traditional VMs. Now just an ephemeral thread. Computer people need to stop thinking in terms used by product & marketing people. Reasoning around it from the perspective of how it’s implemented specifically helps with the understanding. It’s a Linux OS wrapped in layers of UX to facilitate composition of services. Unix command line tools at scale. Cloud provider is just an OS at scale. They handle CPU, memory, scheduling, etc., all the same things a desktop OS does from the end user perspective, using a different process model we don’t generally care about as end users Hopefully OpenAPI will help normalize this interface. Who knows though. Rich people like to drag their feet when they think sticking with the status quo gives them an advantage. Bezos may feel like making it easy to copy paste away from his cloud is a shitty idea
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I can’t tell what your point is. I’m agreeing that managed hosting is the next evolution. But Lambda is more than just for APIs. But if you’re worried about the “lock in” boogeyman for APIs, there are small packages for every language that lambda supports that allows you to run your standard Node/Express, C#/WebAPI, Python/Django/Flask API, etc on lambda just by changing the entry point. Right now I’m deploying a Node/Express app to both lambda and Fargate (Serverless Docker) withoit any code changes.
- quantummkv 7y ago
  So it's essentially GoDaddy's side business where you uploaded some code using ftp and they took care of everything else?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Could Godaddy’s side business launch isolated VMs when items appeared in a queue? A file appeared on a server? Events came from a stream? Could it respond to any events besides http?

No it’s not just managed hosting. Managed hosting still means there is a server to maintain, patch, and that it is always running.

tyingq 7y ago
There's a firecracker VM and a Linux OS under the Lambda. Both of which need to be maintained by Amazon. Edit: "managed cgi-bin" is perhaps more apt.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Exactly - maintained by Amazon not by you.
  - pantalaimon 7y ago
    That's pretty much the definition of managed hosting.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      When you are just using a VM - it’s your responsibility to keep the VMs and the runtimes patched, design a scaling solution, etc.
      - vidarh 7y ago
        Managed hosting is used in at least two different ways: * As a synonym for dedicated hosting. E.g. you rent a machine, and run what you want on it. And have to patch stuff etc. * As a separate tier of service above dedicated hosting where the hosting provider is responsible for running the services on the machine. Some managed hosting providers will take responsibility for scaling too, though often it will be a semi-manual process. Managed hosting in this second sense is to serverless what dedicated hosting is to "regular" cloud instances.
        gravitas 7y ago
        You might even toss in running managed services externally in the second definition, for example DNS for your own domain - pretty much every service small to large offers a DNS hosting service with your account, typically at no charge. Otherwise, you'd have to run your own server, etc.
      - rumanator 7y ago
        > When you are just using a VM - it’s your responsibility to keep the VMs and the runtimes patched, design a scaling solution, etc. Your comment did nothing to address the point, which is that your definiiton of "serverless" is actually just a buzzword used to refer to the old as the web commercial practice of managed hosting.
        scarface74 7y ago
        So was “running in the cloud” just a buzzword? Serverless is not just “managed hosting” in the cgi-bin since - serverless implies there is no server to manage and it’s for all intents and purposes “infinitely scalable”. For instance, Amazon’s hosted versions of Mysql, Postgres, Sql Server, etc are not what they consider “Serverless” you still have to size it appropriately and if your needs increase, have to move to a larger server. You have to worry about CPU utilization, memory utilization etc. DynamoDB is considered “serverless” because you don’t have to manage any of that. The same is the difference between S3 and provisioning storage that you attach to your VM.
        rumanator 7y ago
        > So was “running in the cloud” just a buzzword? Please don't digress. The questions regarding you assertions on "serverless" don't change or are addressed with your attempt to divert attentions to other buzzwords. > Serverless is not just “managed hosting” in the cgi-bin since - serverless implies there is no server to manage and it’s for all intents and purposes “infinitely scalable”. You're running in circles by trying to pin a buzzword on managed hosting. > For instance, Amazon’s hosted versions of Mysql, Postgres, Sql Server, etc are not what they consider “Serverless” I wouldn't use AWS as an example of coherent classification, as AWS's database offerings have multiple ovelapping concerns, including an overreaching gray area of "serverless-ness". See for example Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora.
        scarface74 7y ago
        There is no “overreaching area”. Amazon Aurora falls under RDS along with all of their other database offerings. No one on HN would accept an argument that technology is “confusing” that the poster didn’t take time to learn unless it involves AWS.
- scarface74 7y ago
  cgi-bin didn’t have any type of process isolation. Also, it didn’t tie in to other none web based events.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    >cgi-bin didn’t have any type of process isolation "Lambdas" don't by nature either. I can run cgi-bin in a FirecrackerVM-like ecosystem with one script per VM. >Also, it didn’t tie in to other none web based events. Webhooks aren't new. I'm not disputing the popularity and convenience of serverless. I'm just noting it's somewhat like Docker. Packaging existing tech in an easier-to-use bundle.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Lambdas by nature do exactly that. AWS’s runtime launches the “VMs” in response to an event. And with webhooks I’m required to keep enough server capacity running all of the time to handle the events. Can a web hook automatically instantiate enough VMs on demand without reducing throughput?
      - tyingq 7y ago
        "Can a web hook automatically instantiate enough VMs on demand without reducing throughput?" Yes, there are various cgi-bin implementations with horizontal auto-scaling.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Across multiple servers or do you still have to provision your server to handle peak load?
        tyingq 7y ago
        Yes, you can do that the same way Amazon does it. Like I said, Amazon packaged existing tech in an easy to use way.
ighk77 7y ago
To you. But the world has moved on from Apple 2e and now managed hosting is analogous to serverless. See because only science has a concrete fixed point for measuring which is the speed of light. Human culture is subjective buzzwords where the only relative fixed point is when they learned a term. Serverless is “managed hosting 3.0”. First there was bare metal, run your cage. Then ec2/traditional VMs. Now just an ephemeral thread. Computer people need to stop thinking in terms used by product & marketing people. Reasoning around it from the perspective of how it’s implemented specifically helps with the understanding. It’s a Linux OS wrapped in layers of UX to facilitate composition of services. Unix command line tools at scale. Cloud provider is just an OS at scale. They handle CPU, memory, scheduling, etc., all the same things a desktop OS does from the end user perspective, using a different process model we don’t generally care about as end users Hopefully OpenAPI will help normalize this interface. Who knows though. Rich people like to drag their feet when they think sticking with the status quo gives them an advantage. Bezos may feel like making it easy to copy paste away from his cloud is a shitty idea
- scarface74 7y ago
  I can’t tell what your point is. I’m agreeing that managed hosting is the next evolution. But Lambda is more than just for APIs. But if you’re worried about the “lock in” boogeyman for APIs, there are small packages for every language that lambda supports that allows you to run your standard Node/Express, C#/WebAPI, Python/Django/Flask API, etc on lambda just by changing the entry point. Right now I’m deploying a Node/Express app to both lambda and Fargate (Serverless Docker) withoit any code changes.
quantummkv 7y ago
So it's essentially GoDaddy's side business where you uploaded some code using ftp and they took care of everything else?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Could Godaddy’s side business launch isolated VMs when items appeared in a queue? A file appeared on a server? Events came from a stream? Could it respond to any events besides http?