4 ms·

Yes, but not only API... We figured out how to get Azure Functions to serve a complete webapp without any extra crap wrapped around it. No gateways/proxies/etc

Yes, but not only API... We figured out how to get Azure Functions to serve a complete webapp without any extra crap wrapped around it. No gateways/proxies/etc. One function that serves the root URL[0] and has conditionals for GET/POST methods. Beyond this point, anyone with old-school mastery of HTML/CSS/JS can get the rest of the job done with basic-ass SSR and multipart form posts. For data, we just use Azure SQL Server. Authentication is like sticking legos together now. 100% managed identities, no magic strings, etc. Our functions get the user's claims principal right in the arg list. We have zero lines of authentication code in our latest products. This stuff is absolutely the future for a vast majority of boring old business. One thing to think about: If your FaaS offering is capable of serving content-type of application/json, is it not also capable of serving content-type of text/html? Do your providers go out of their way to prevent you from making a simple solve on 99% of B2B bullshit? [0]: Note that serving the root URL on an Azure Function is an undocumented hack-around item. Worst case, we would serve the /app route and our users (B2B) wouldn't really care. My suspicion is that Microsoft detected our use case and saw that it stole a LOT of thunder from a wide array of other Azure offerings (API Gateway, Front Door, et. al.), so making it slightly more complicated (at first glance) is likely intentional.

scarface_74 3y ago
Why would you ever do this instead of just storing your static assets in the Azure equivalent of S3 and let it do the heavy lifting along with the CDN?
- bob1029 3y ago
  We are B2B at the scale of 1-10k users. There is no "heavy lifting" to do in our contexts of use. Serving static assets along with the SSR content is totally acceptable. They aren't even served as separate files. We inline everything into 1 final HTML payload always. Our largest assets are SVG logos that our clients bring to the party. We do work with dynamic PDF documents, but these are uncachable for a number of reasons. Hypothetically, if we had millions of users and static asset IO was actually causing trouble, we'd consider using a CDN or other relevant technology.
Mortiffer 3y ago
I bet you were running c#. Been pulling my hair out with the python support in Azure Functions lately (starts with no local emulation on mac, but positively this got me to start using VS code server and https://github.com/coder/coder https://github.com/coder/coder ) .
- bob1029 3y ago
  Yes. C#/V4 functions. I've been working with the in-process model, but close to validating our app works on the isolated worker model too.
anon25783 3y ago
Sounds like a cool hack, but why not just self-host with on-premises hardware, or rent a cloud server from a hosting provider like e.g. Digitalocean? Then you wouldn't have to worry so much about what Microsoft wants, no?
- bob1029 3y ago
  PII is a monster. We'd prefer our customers take charge of that. The goldilocks is running our stack on a tenant our customers are owners of. This way, everything is 100% consistent across the board and liability is on them. We've got some experience with on-prem IT shops that have taken way more out of us than we probably should have allowed. Every one of their issues with getting our software to run in prod was unhappy in its own special way.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  Good old HN, "just self-host with onprem". Who monitors it 24/7 and checks the alerts? Who drives to the data center to fix broken hardware on Christmas Day? It has to be multiple "whos" or one sick leave will leave you completely vulnerable. For small-medium companies whose main business isn't hosting software this makes it untenable from a financial point of view. For the monthly salary of a single SRE/devops/admin whatever you can run AWS services for a year at that scale.
  - AlchemistCamp 3y ago
    Basecamp is a small-medium company and leaving the cloud was a huge win for them: https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-have-left-the-cloud-251760fb https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-have-left-the-cloud-251760fb
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      Basecamp is an anomaly on pretty much every vector imaginable. They have been remote-first (remote-only?) since forever, they still use Ruby in production, have never taken VC money and they've never even tried to do a hockey stick growth unicorn hack. They're still under 40 people.

scarface_74 3y ago

Why would you ever do this instead of just storing your static assets in the Azure equivalent of S3 and let it do the heavy lifting along with the CDN?

bob1029 3y ago
We are B2B at the scale of 1-10k users. There is no "heavy lifting" to do in our contexts of use. Serving static assets along with the SSR content is totally acceptable. They aren't even served as separate files. We inline everything into 1 final HTML payload always. Our largest assets are SVG logos that our clients bring to the party. We do work with dynamic PDF documents, but these are uncachable for a number of reasons. Hypothetically, if we had millions of users and static asset IO was actually causing trouble, we'd consider using a CDN or other relevant technology.

Mortiffer 3y ago

I bet you were running c#. Been pulling my hair out with the python support in Azure Functions lately (starts with no local emulation on mac, but positively this got me to start using VS code server and https://github.com/coder/coder https://github.com/coder/coder ) .

bob1029 3y ago
Yes. C#/V4 functions. I've been working with the in-process model, but close to validating our app works on the isolated worker model too.

anon25783 3y ago

Sounds like a cool hack, but why not just self-host with on-premises hardware, or rent a cloud server from a hosting provider like e.g. Digitalocean? Then you wouldn't have to worry so much about what Microsoft wants, no?

bob1029 3y ago
PII is a monster. We'd prefer our customers take charge of that. The goldilocks is running our stack on a tenant our customers are owners of. This way, everything is 100% consistent across the board and liability is on them. We've got some experience with on-prem IT shops that have taken way more out of us than we probably should have allowed. Every one of their issues with getting our software to run in prod was unhappy in its own special way.
theshrike79 3y ago
Good old HN, "just self-host with onprem". Who monitors it 24/7 and checks the alerts? Who drives to the data center to fix broken hardware on Christmas Day? It has to be multiple "whos" or one sick leave will leave you completely vulnerable. For small-medium companies whose main business isn't hosting software this makes it untenable from a financial point of view. For the monthly salary of a single SRE/devops/admin whatever you can run AWS services for a year at that scale.
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  Basecamp is a small-medium company and leaving the cloud was a huge win for them: https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-have-left-the-cloud-251760fb https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-have-left-the-cloud-251760fb
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    Basecamp is an anomaly on pretty much every vector imaginable. They have been remote-first (remote-only?) since forever, they still use Ruby in production, have never taken VC money and they've never even tried to do a hockey stick growth unicorn hack. They're still under 40 people.