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Serverless has two things that I really like about it: 1. Scale to zero, which allows me to do things like automatically deploy a full environment for each bra

Serverless has two things that I really like about it: 1. Scale to zero, which allows me to do things like automatically deploy a full environment for each branch in a project, with a full infra, frontend, backend, database, etc. 2. Good integration with IaC tools, so that I can define my infra and my runners in a single language/tool, be it terraform/cdk or something else. Most "monolithic" setups split configuring the infra and what runs in it into two tools/steps (please let me know of ones that don't!). But if I actually run a application for a long time with somewhat consistent load there are always cheaper, more performant and flexible solutions than a serverless setup.

SaltyBackendGuy 3y ago
We've found it really nice for worker queues for specific workloads that fire infrequently'ish.
mlhpdx 3y ago
That’s a depends situation. If you’re using direct service integration instead of Lambda, it can be cheaper. And, if you use VMs only as the front-end to push batches of requests to serverless compute you get the best of both worlds and the cheapest by a long shot. Not everything can fit in that model, but the things that do are magically inexpensive. I’m actually working on a product to make that architecture more approachable (and cheaper yet). I’d be happy to hear from folks running network services on VMs and wishing there was a better way.
- SahAssar 3y ago
  Do you mean that you can get actual scale-to-zero using that approach? I think the cost of the VM would not scale down like that, right?
  - mlhpdx 3y ago
    That’s true, the front-facing VMs always need to be there (hence the product I’m working on — so at least you don’t need to run them). The real work is done in serverless, in batches. Basically I think the world needs something like API Gateway for UDP and custom TCP, but that targets serverless backends rather than VMs.

SaltyBackendGuy 3y ago

We've found it really nice for worker queues for specific workloads that fire infrequently'ish.

mlhpdx 3y ago

That’s a depends situation. If you’re using direct service integration instead of Lambda, it can be cheaper. And, if you use VMs only as the front-end to push batches of requests to serverless compute you get the best of both worlds and the cheapest by a long shot. Not everything can fit in that model, but the things that do are magically inexpensive. I’m actually working on a product to make that architecture more approachable (and cheaper yet). I’d be happy to hear from folks running network services on VMs and wishing there was a better way.

SahAssar 3y ago
Do you mean that you can get actual scale-to-zero using that approach? I think the cost of the VM would not scale down like that, right?
- mlhpdx 3y ago
  That’s true, the front-facing VMs always need to be there (hence the product I’m working on — so at least you don’t need to run them). The real work is done in serverless, in batches. Basically I think the world needs something like API Gateway for UDP and custom TCP, but that targets serverless backends rather than VMs.