3 ms·

separating storage from compute is kind of the definition of "serverless postgres", right?

by rohan_ 2y ago

justinclift 2y ago
Not for most of the computing history where "serverless" was an actual word. But maybe some crowd is attempting to redefine it (yet again?). :)
- ssousa666 2y ago
  what did it mean historically? in contemporary usage, it seems to be a synonym for "managed" (or more accurately, a meaningless sobriquet for PAAS that can be easily sold to the huddled masses of "full stack" boot camp grads)
chipdart 2y ago
> separating storage from compute is kind of the definition of "serverless postgres", right? Not really,unless you want "serverless" to be meaningless. Think about it for a second: would it make any sense to call S3 a serverless anything? And NFS? And what about gmail? Is gmail server less as well?
- smt88 2y ago
  S3 is absolutely "serverless" storage in the same way Lambda is "serverless" compute: it's a service that abstracts away the underlying servers. If the host is managing servers in a way that makes it impossible for me to even know how many servers are behind my usage of it, it's serverless.
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > S3 is absolutely "serverless" storage (...) I think this take is ridiculous and it tries to bring absurdity to a label. Storing data on a third-party computer is not "serverless". Gmail is not a serverless messaging service. Flickr is not a serverless photo service. HN is not a serverless message board. Just because you store data on a third-party computer, that does not mean you're dealing with serverless anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
    - smt88 2y ago
      We don't call Gmail, Flickr, and HN "serverless" because we're not trying to distinguish them from managing servers and because they're not infrastructure. Wikipedia defines serverless as follows: > "Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on demand, taking care of the servers on behalf of their customers." What part of that definition doesn't apply to S3? Amazon themselves[1] define S3 as serverless. Your linked article also says that Cloudwatch and other AWS servers are serverless as well. I'm sorry(?) that serverless is a broader term than you realized. It was always a somewhat absurd label. 1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/serverless-multi-tier-architectures-api-gateway-lambda/serverless-data-storage-options.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/serverless-mu...
    - joshstrange 2y ago
      We all get to pick which hills we want to die on but this is a pretty silly one IMHO. You can fight the common usage of a word or you can accept it. Yes, of course there is still a server involved but not one the developer has to directly manage or even think about. If you don’t manage the server directly AND you can scale to 0 (costs and compute, aka not be forced to pay for an instance for a managed service) then it’s “serverless”.

separating storage from compute is kind of the definition of "serverless postgres", right?

by rohan_ 2y ago

separating storage from compute is kind of the definition of "serverless postgres", right?

Not for most of the computing history where "serverless" was an actual word. But maybe some crowd is attempting to redefine it (yet again?). :)

ssousa666 2y ago
what did it mean historically? in contemporary usage, it seems to be a synonym for "managed" (or more accurately, a meaningless sobriquet for PAAS that can be easily sold to the huddled masses of "full stack" boot camp grads)

chipdart 2y ago

> separating storage from compute is kind of the definition of "serverless postgres", right? Not really,unless you want "serverless" to be meaningless. Think about it for a second: would it make any sense to call S3 a serverless anything? And NFS? And what about gmail? Is gmail server less as well?

smt88 2y ago
S3 is absolutely "serverless" storage in the same way Lambda is "serverless" compute: it's a service that abstracts away the underlying servers. If the host is managing servers in a way that makes it impossible for me to even know how many servers are behind my usage of it, it's serverless.
- chipdart 2y ago
  > S3 is absolutely "serverless" storage (...) I think this take is ridiculous and it tries to bring absurdity to a label. Storing data on a third-party computer is not "serverless". Gmail is not a serverless messaging service. Flickr is not a serverless photo service. HN is not a serverless message board. Just because you store data on a third-party computer, that does not mean you're dealing with serverless anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
  - smt88 2y ago
    We don't call Gmail, Flickr, and HN "serverless" because we're not trying to distinguish them from managing servers and because they're not infrastructure. Wikipedia defines serverless as follows: > "Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on demand, taking care of the servers on behalf of their customers." What part of that definition doesn't apply to S3? Amazon themselves[1] define S3 as serverless. Your linked article also says that Cloudwatch and other AWS servers are serverless as well. I'm sorry(?) that serverless is a broader term than you realized. It was always a somewhat absurd label. 1. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/serverless-multi-tier-architectures-api-gateway-lambda/serverless-data-storage-options.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/serverless-mu...
  - joshstrange 2y ago
    We all get to pick which hills we want to die on but this is a pretty silly one IMHO. You can fight the common usage of a word or you can accept it. Yes, of course there is still a server involved but not one the developer has to directly manage or even think about. If you don’t manage the server directly AND you can scale to 0 (costs and compute, aka not be forced to pay for an instance for a managed service) then it’s “serverless”.