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Why is this type of cloud based computing called serverless? To me "putting all the work on remote machines you don't manage" seems pretty cloudy, and I naivel
by SiempreViernes 4y ago
Why is this type of cloud based computing called serverless?
To me "putting all the work on remote machines you don't manage" seems pretty cloudy, and I naively expected "serverless" to mean something like runs locally, not "uses a shit town of someone else's servers".
- jamesblonde 4y agoGreat question. I think of it as follows - if I can just write some operational Python code and "deploy" it, without needing to install/upgrade/maintain systems software (k8s/DB/feature-store/etc), then I have built a serverless system. What's cool now is lots of these services have great free tier and you can run serverless ML systems without paying anything.
- jwr 4y agoGood question. For me it's in the same category as "hoverboards" that don't actually hover.
- rospaya 4y agoA good analogy I heard is that serverless uses servers as much as wireless uses wires. It does, but it's not part of your responsibility.
- jamesblonde 4y agoNice. If anybody has installed and operated an MLFlow server (open source, great product), but then switched to use a serverless platform like weights and biases, you would instinctively get the term serverless. DynamoDB is called a serverless database. Obviously there are servers, it's just somebody else's job to maintain them.