4 ms·

serverless environments do not carry the devops overhead involved with kubernetes or other container orchestration.

tmp_anon_22 4y ago
For non-trivial workloads serverless does still require a lot of orchestration and domain knowledge of cloud-specific features and constraints. Kubernetes is for sure its own beast, but its a ton of work regardless (for gains that at the end of the day aren't what you thought they would be...). Serverless is amazing when you use it the way its intended. Its not there to replace your entire ec2 workload.
- ezekiel11 4y ago
  your assessment would've been correct 3 or 4 years ago but there's just no need to scaffold ec2, mysql db inside a vpc. You can upload your environment via docker and start serving serverless. You can then use serverless db that is 90% cheaper and far less hassle than scaling up or down ec2 instances/rds, configuring vpc, setting up nat gateways etc my view is that if you are not on serverless, you are wasting resources that could otherwise been dedicated to building out domain knowledge our team focuses on optimizing each function and less on devops/scaling. the plumbing work is gone and all we do is now translate business requirements. security concerns are also largely removed. its a great time to be on serverless, it had to overcome lot of doubt but it is here to stay. no need to pay $5 / month either for your weekend projects. even if your project hits front page, it will still work, the billing is not even that bad for what you are getting.
  - mooreds 4y ago
    > serverless db that is 90% cheaper > building out domain knowledge What about all the knowledge that is contained in applications, services and libraries that run on RDBMs? I'm serious, one of the reasons I shy away from serverless is I want to put together components at a higher level than functions. But maybe I'm missing something?
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    What serverless hosting are you using? What tech stack do you run on it?
  - ben_jones 4y ago
    > configuring vpc What advances in Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda prevent the need for configuring VPCs?
lolinder 4y ago
How do you configure your serverless environment? I set up my company with ECS a while ago, and in order to get the config into version control I had to put together a somewhat messy collection of bash scripts that use the AWS CLI to push up JSON config files. I couldn't find any standardized way to configure the whole environment: at least at the time, it wasn't possible to do everything in CloudFormation. I haven't gotten into Kubernetes at all, but from what I've heard the bespoke-bash-scripts problem is largely solved in that world, so I've been toying with exploring it for our next project (still hosted on Fargate).
- dabeeeenster 4y ago
  ECS fargate is a great platform but the API interface to it is pretty bad. It's such a shame.
- indemnity 4y ago
  Terraform or Pulumi? Using CloudFormation or APIs directly is an exercise in frustration IMO.
Sparkyte 4y ago
This is why I hate articles that justify the lack of scalability with their execuses to justify complacency.
pier25 4y ago
True, although there is a dev overhead and there are other issues (cold starts, unpredictable bills, zero control of the runtime, vendor lock-in, etc). Serverless is not a silver bullet.
- hinkley 4y ago
  As a person running a service, I only care about fairness of resource allocation if my service isn’t getting at least its fair share. As an ops person, you know that if I am not getting my fair share it’s because someone else is misbehaving. As a functioning adult, you understand that if you are getting more that you should, it’s coming at someone else’s expense. Because fairness isn’t being enforced. A lot of complexity we add to these systems is about fairness. Fair is always about narrowing the gap between best and worst case run times and trying to keep the result close to expectations, and being able to defend it when they don’t match.
- ezekiel11 4y ago
  coldstarts - not an issue anymore unpredictable billing - this is why you setup billing alerts and not an issue unless you hit HN front page vendor lock in - you can take your functions and upload it to google, azure, cloudflare
kcartlidge 4y ago
I do like me some serverless. That said, for my own projects I don't go that route because when it is my own money I need the certainty of cost that something like a $10 droplet gives. I know serverless will be much cheaper (probably almost free) for most likely loads, but if I'm hit with the extremely unlikely loads I'd rather a small droplet that struggles and dies than a performant serverless system that spins up my bill as well as my resources.

For non-trivial workloads serverless does still require a lot of orchestration and domain knowledge of cloud-specific features and constraints. Kubernetes is for sure its own beast, but its a ton of work regardless (for gains that at the end of the day aren't what you thought they would be...). Serverless is amazing when you use it the way its intended. Its not there to replace your entire ec2 workload.

ezekiel11 4y ago
your assessment would've been correct 3 or 4 years ago but there's just no need to scaffold ec2, mysql db inside a vpc. You can upload your environment via docker and start serving serverless. You can then use serverless db that is 90% cheaper and far less hassle than scaling up or down ec2 instances/rds, configuring vpc, setting up nat gateways etc my view is that if you are not on serverless, you are wasting resources that could otherwise been dedicated to building out domain knowledge our team focuses on optimizing each function and less on devops/scaling. the plumbing work is gone and all we do is now translate business requirements. security concerns are also largely removed. its a great time to be on serverless, it had to overcome lot of doubt but it is here to stay. no need to pay $5 / month either for your weekend projects. even if your project hits front page, it will still work, the billing is not even that bad for what you are getting.
- mooreds 4y ago
  > serverless db that is 90% cheaper > building out domain knowledge What about all the knowledge that is contained in applications, services and libraries that run on RDBMs? I'm serious, one of the reasons I shy away from serverless is I want to put together components at a higher level than functions. But maybe I'm missing something?
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  What serverless hosting are you using? What tech stack do you run on it?
- ben_jones 4y ago
  > configuring vpc What advances in Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda prevent the need for configuring VPCs?

lolinder 4y ago

How do you configure your serverless environment? I set up my company with ECS a while ago, and in order to get the config into version control I had to put together a somewhat messy collection of bash scripts that use the AWS CLI to push up JSON config files. I couldn't find any standardized way to configure the whole environment: at least at the time, it wasn't possible to do everything in CloudFormation. I haven't gotten into Kubernetes at all, but from what I've heard the bespoke-bash-scripts problem is largely solved in that world, so I've been toying with exploring it for our next project (still hosted on Fargate).

dabeeeenster 4y ago
ECS fargate is a great platform but the API interface to it is pretty bad. It's such a shame.
indemnity 4y ago
Terraform or Pulumi? Using CloudFormation or APIs directly is an exercise in frustration IMO.

Sparkyte 4y ago

This is why I hate articles that justify the lack of scalability with their execuses to justify complacency.

pier25 4y ago

True, although there is a dev overhead and there are other issues (cold starts, unpredictable bills, zero control of the runtime, vendor lock-in, etc). Serverless is not a silver bullet.

hinkley 4y ago
As a person running a service, I only care about fairness of resource allocation if my service isn’t getting at least its fair share. As an ops person, you know that if I am not getting my fair share it’s because someone else is misbehaving. As a functioning adult, you understand that if you are getting more that you should, it’s coming at someone else’s expense. Because fairness isn’t being enforced. A lot of complexity we add to these systems is about fairness. Fair is always about narrowing the gap between best and worst case run times and trying to keep the result close to expectations, and being able to defend it when they don’t match.
ezekiel11 4y ago
coldstarts - not an issue anymore unpredictable billing - this is why you setup billing alerts and not an issue unless you hit HN front page vendor lock in - you can take your functions and upload it to google, azure, cloudflare

kcartlidge 4y ago

I do like me some serverless. That said, for my own projects I don't go that route because when it is my own money I need the certainty of cost that something like a $10 droplet gives. I know serverless will be much cheaper (probably almost free) for most likely loads, but if I'm hit with the extremely unlikely loads I'd rather a small droplet that struggles and dies than a performant serverless system that spins up my bill as well as my resources.