Serverless Cloud Computing Write-Up
Jen Sommerfeldt
Professor Schuff
MIS 3406 Section 1
April 20th, 2022
Serverless Cloud Computing
Serverless Cloud Computing is a form of cloud-native development methodology that lets developers create and execute applications, without the trouble and extra work of server management. The servers still exist in “serverless” but they are separate from the application development process. The typical job of establishing, maintaining, and scaling the server infrastructure is instead handled by a cloud provider. For deployment, developers can simply package their code in containers. The evolution of serverless cloud computing has been drastic in the last decade and has led to the creation of a more cost-efficient pay-as-you-go model that allows for even more optimization, flexibility, and reliability. With an emphasis on providing a layer of abstraction that hides the complexity of managing servers, no charge for idle services, and automatic scaling to accommodate demand levels, serverless cloud computing is becoming the norm for businesses.
The concept of serverless cloud computing directly translates into what we learned throughout the semester working with Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides a multitude of serverless services that we were able to get hands-on experience within our projects, homework, and in-class assignments. Through our studies in Cloud Architecture, we became familiar with the wide variety of these services for all three layers of our stack: compute, integration, and data stores. Specifically, we worked with and learned about Amazon S3, Aurora, DynamoDB, RDS, API gateway, and Lambda, to create a fully functional, auto-scaling system that uses both private and public subnets within our prototype of the Pennsylvania toll calculator application. We touched on block storage within S3, as well as snapshots, scalability tools, data availability, security, and performance. In Amazon RDS, we opted for the cheapest option when creating our application – SQL server database rather than Aurora. By utilizing RDS rather than a database without cloud or on EC2, we have the capacity to save ourselves from extra work involving scaling, availability, backups, database and operating system installation and configuration, server maintenance, and so much more. On top of that, we worked with application programming interfaces (API) to conduct communication between our client and server applications on our own computers. Building off of that, AWS has an API gateway, which is a fully managed service that makes creating, publishing, maintaining, monitoring, and securing APIs at any size simple for developers.
Furthermore, we learned both how to design and develop cloud-based network infrastructures for securing large-scale application deployment, as well as create and deploy a basic RESTful API with built-in fault tolerance. All of these activities are extremely useful and important in learning the fundamentals of modern cloud computing and can be put to use in our future careers. AWS is a remarkable tool that is paving the way for even more innovation, agility, and cost-efficient business. Not only did we learn what goes on behind the scenes of AWS services, but we also became familiar with using them in a real-world setting.
Works Cited
Johann Schleier-Smith, Vikram Sreekanti. “What Serverless Computing Is and Should Become: The Next Phase of Cloud Computing.” ACM, 1 May 2021, https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/5/252179-what-serverless-computing-is-and-should-become/fulltext.
“What Is Serverless?” Red Hat – We Make Open Source Technologies for the Enterprise, https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/what-is-serverless.