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Ask HN: What do you use serverless for?

8 points by interrupt_ 6y ago

ArtWomb 6y ago
Modern serverless platofrms include distributed data tiers like Cloudflare KV so theoretically at least the only problem domain they can't handle is secure communications and secrets requiring higher levels of auditing
GoldenMonkey 6y ago
If we are talking about the ‘serverless’ framework. I use it to stand up all resources for Amazon Web Services. The web gateway api, dynamodb tables, lamda code. It is invaluable. Saves so much time. No need to standup resources by hand.
astuyvenberg 6y ago
Basically anything and everything that I can surmise will complete within 15 minutes.
- therm0 6y ago
  why isn't it something you can just do from your machine? requires a lot of processing power?
urlaunched 6y ago
Agree. AWS would be probably the best with it's DynamoDB & S3 storage. Firebase is also good, but my team is still after AWS.
jamieweb 6y ago
I use Cloudflare Workers for: * Serving a standard security.txt file for all websites within my account * Automatically rewriting the case of URLs for a CMS that doesn't support case-insensitivity * Adding security headers to sites that don't support adding them locally (e.g. third-party hosting) * Proxying requests elsewhere directly from the 'edge', rather than having to run my own proxy * Serving static config files, e.g. mta-sts.txt, proxy.pac
- twunde 6y ago
  Just a head's up, while you can proxy websockets via cloudflare workers, you cannot have them act as the endpoint (https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169466-Using-Cloudflare-with-WebSockets#12345684 https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169466-U...).
  - kentonv 6y ago
    FWIW, you can terminate WebSockets if you're in the Workers Unbound beta.
el_dev_hell 6y ago
I use the serverless framework for simple REST APIs. This is especially beneficial if you're hooking into other cloud provider tools (such as S3, SQS, ect. with AWS). The main reason is speed of deployment and overhead. I can push the code to a repo and boom -- a working backend with basically no infra config. I've found this works very well for internal glue tools that aren't majorly affected by cold starts. One nice example was building a quick and dirty internal tool for L3 support staff to alter certain client records. It wasn't appropriate to hand out DB access and it wasn't a high enough priority to create a new feature in our "real" support system, so I build a few basic endpoints (with strict rules) and passed it off to the team. They're using Postman to make the changes as needed (using a JWT for auth from our main application).
was_boring 6y ago
For stuff I don’t really care about meeting any sort of SLA.

8 points by interrupt_ 6y ago

Modern serverless platofrms include distributed data tiers like Cloudflare KV so theoretically at least the only problem domain they can't handle is secure communications and secrets requiring higher levels of auditing

GoldenMonkey 6y ago

If we are talking about the ‘serverless’ framework. I use it to stand up all resources for Amazon Web Services. The web gateway api, dynamodb tables, lamda code. It is invaluable. Saves so much time. No need to standup resources by hand.

astuyvenberg 6y ago

Basically anything and everything that I can surmise will complete within 15 minutes.

therm0 6y ago
why isn't it something you can just do from your machine? requires a lot of processing power?

urlaunched 6y ago

Agree. AWS would be probably the best with it's DynamoDB & S3 storage. Firebase is also good, but my team is still after AWS.

jamieweb 6y ago

I use Cloudflare Workers for: * Serving a standard security.txt file for all websites within my account * Automatically rewriting the case of URLs for a CMS that doesn't support case-insensitivity * Adding security headers to sites that don't support adding them locally (e.g. third-party hosting) * Proxying requests elsewhere directly from the 'edge', rather than having to run my own proxy * Serving static config files, e.g. mta-sts.txt, proxy.pac

twunde 6y ago
Just a head's up, while you can proxy websockets via cloudflare workers, you cannot have them act as the endpoint (https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169466-Using-Cloudflare-with-WebSockets#12345684 https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200169466-U...).
- kentonv 6y ago
  FWIW, you can terminate WebSockets if you're in the Workers Unbound beta.

el_dev_hell 6y ago

I use the serverless framework for simple REST APIs. This is especially beneficial if you're hooking into other cloud provider tools (such as S3, SQS, ect. with AWS). The main reason is speed of deployment and overhead. I can push the code to a repo and boom -- a working backend with basically no infra config. I've found this works very well for internal glue tools that aren't majorly affected by cold starts. One nice example was building a quick and dirty internal tool for L3 support staff to alter certain client records. It wasn't appropriate to hand out DB access and it wasn't a high enough priority to create a new feature in our "real" support system, so I build a few basic endpoints (with strict rules) and passed it off to the team. They're using Postman to make the changes as needed (using a JWT for auth from our main application).

was_boring 6y ago

For stuff I don’t really care about meeting any sort of SLA.