The document summarizes an upcoming meetup on serverless computing hosted by an AWS user group. The meetup will include introductions, a presentation on serverless computing by Daniel ZivKovic, and time for discussion and networking. TriNimbus, Daniel's employer, sponsors AWS meetups across Canada. The presentation agenda covers definitions of serverless, functions-as-a-service, popular use cases, and tools for building serverless applications.

1. Let's go Serverless!
for AWS User Group

2. Meetup - Wednesday July 11, 2018
Meetup Agenda
1. Intro & Announcements
2. Stand Up Introductions
3. Presentation: Let’s go Serverless!
4. Speaker: Daniel ZivKovic
5. Feedback, Discussions & Networking
2

3. Usergroup Organizers & Sponsors
● Daniel ZivKovic, Solutions Architect, TriNimbus
● Serverless.com, Leading Serverless Application
Framework
● TriNimbus, Recommended AWS Canada Partner
○ AWS Meetups in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal,
Ottawa, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Waterloo &
Quebec City
○ Offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal
& Macedonia
3

4. 5 Second
Introduction
4

5. 1. What do you mean Serverless?
2. FaaS vs. Serverless vs. BaaS
3. How did we get here? Serverless past, present & future
4. Popular Use Cases
5. Serverless forecast: How big will serverless be?
6. Get going with The Serverless Framework – walkthrough
7. Products landscape – your Serverless options
8. Learning Serverless
9. Adopting it in your organization
Let’s go Serverless – Presentation Agenda
5

6. Even when people believe in the same idea (or “fight for the
same thing”), we may see / interpret things differently based
on our position (experiences or biases) to the prism (of life).
Disclaimer – Serverless is charged term
So, my position is
AWS coloured –
Orange ;)
Where is yours?
6

7. Servers exists, but developers do not have to
worry about them
● Technology is serverless “the same way WiFi is wireless”
○ Gojko Adzic – http://bit.ly/2yQgwwb
● "Serverless is just a name. We could have called it Jeff"
○ said Paul Johnston, and started www.JeffConf.com
● "A Serverless solution is one that costs you nothing to run if
nobody is using it (excluding data storage)"
○ Paul Johnston – http://bit.ly/2yRlhFO
What do you mean Serverless?
7

8. … for building
Serverless apps
FaaS – a new programming model…
8

9. … unit of
deployment and
scaling is
Function
(as opposed to
Application,
Container, Virtual
Server).
FaaS is unique, because…
9

10. Not all FaaS is
Serverless:
● Kubeless is not
serverless.
Serverless contains a subset of FaaS, plus
… other Backend
Services that cost
you nothing when
not used (BaaS).
10

11. Why I’m so excited about
Serverless?
• Information Technology Past
• Present Opportunities
• Promising Future
11

12. ● Growing up, I liked to make models of ships, planes,
trains… which translated into the love for creating software.
● Wanted to make useful programs, to help people around
● But, ended up spending more time administrating the
computers behind, and making our products Highly
Available, Scalability and Secure.
● Especially after Internet came!
● Software became complicated to make… and keep running.
IT Past – Personal journey
12

13. you gather the
requirements,
architect the
solution, your
design it, you
build it… with
pride!
Building software products felt like when
you want to build a locomotive…
13

14. … it starts feeling
as if you’re *stuck*
feeding the steam
locomotive with
coal!
(it’s just it was much
colder in the data
centers :)
But then, when you put it to production…
14

15. ● That was “my tainted” Developer’s View
● Now, the Operations View
○ In the beginning, IT had “You Build It, You Run It” –
DevOps like culture, then
○ we invented the “Toss It Over the Fence” principle, and
had Ops people deal with our (cr)app, maintain our
computers, databases, networks…
○ which made developers happier/sloppier, but
○ was additional cost for the business/clients.
Building vs. Maintaining Software
15

16. “Toss It Over the
Fence”
SDLC principle ;)
Building vs. Maintaining Software
16

17. ● Business View
As a business owner – you could either under-provision, or
over-provision capacity:
○ You’d end up losing business – because your computers
are overloaded, apps unreachable…
○ or losing money – if you over-provisioned capacity.
So, Capacity Planning discipline/expense was born...
Building vs. Maintaining Software
17

18. … and I had my
fair share of
contributions to
it – while at Sun
Microsystems
and in Dot-com
days.
Solving Capacity Planning & Performance
Tuning problems became a science!
18

19. ● We need software more than ever, but
● it became too complicated to make.
Serverless wave came unexpectedly when Amazon launched
AWS Lambda at re:Invent 2014 https://youtu.be/9eHoyUVo-yg
● Serverless isn't a new thing
● It came on the shoulders of giants (containers)
● It's just the next chapter in the same old journey towards
simplicity – the evolution of Cloud Computing
The Presence – The software is essential
to solving humanity's problems
19

20. Serverless: Evolution of Compute
20

21. … trying to get
rid of some of
this complicated
stuff…
… looking for
higher-level
abstractions…
We were always striving for simplicity…
21

22. … with some new qualities that we really like, for
managed functions & serverless services in general.
● Dr. Tim Wagner – General Manager of AWS
Lambda, Amazon API Gateway, and AWS
Serverless App Repository captured this in
“The Serverless Manifesto”
So, we identified Serverless as the new
level of abstraction…
22

23. The Serverless Manifesto
1. Functions are the unit of deployment and scaling.
2. No machines, VMs, or containers visible in the programming
model.
3. Permanent storage lives elsewhere.
4. Scales per request. Users cannot over- or under-provision
capacity.
5. Never pay for idle (no cold servers/containers or their costs).
6. Implicitly fault tolerant because functions can run anywhere.
7. BYOC – Bring your own code.
8. Metrics and logging are a universal right.
Serverless Compute Qualities
23

24. ● Developers – makes their work more enjoyable cause they
can focus on coding & solving the business problem at
hand, rather than looking after the infrastructure.
● Business Owners – less building blocks to worry about &
battles to fight, lower TCO.
● End Users – software becomes cheaper, because it is less
expensive to build, deliver & maintain.
● In general – Serverless Architectures will enable scalable
and cost-effective apps to be built faster.
OK, But what are the Serverless benefits?
24

25. As industry, we
tried everything to
increase the speed
of software
development…
Latest of which is
“sprinting” faster, in
shorter 1-week “laps”…
Building Apps Faster (in general)
25

26. And that why
Serverless
excites me:
It will allow us to
fail faster, and
eventually get to
those good ideas
we’ll have!
Yet, software development is slow not
because we are not “sprinting” fast
enough, but because...
26
https://vimeo.com/206617354/a4f8a1f8e8

27. when no one in the
company dares to
say the truth, that
the project leads
nowhere ;)
Serverless brings hope,
we’ll be able “put some
clothes” (good ideas) on
our “naked bosses”!
Work in IT started to resemble “The
Emperor's New Clothes” tale:
27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

28. Serverless
Use Cases
28

29. Functions
are the glue
AWS Lambda = a serverless, event-driven
compute service
Events
are the
state
changes
29

30. Invocation Types – Event source mapping
30

31. Nicely
continue
microservices
evolution of
“breaking up
the monolith”
Serverless Microservices… Nanoservices
31

32. 1. Customers
2. Amazon API Gateway
3. AWS Lambda
4. Amazon DynamoDB
AWS Reference architecture for RESTful
Microservices
32

33. ● Web Applications
● Mobile Backends
● IoT
● Data Processing
○ Batch / ETL / ELT
○ Real-time data stream collection & manipulation
○ Big Data / Data Lakes
● IT Automation – DevOps
○ DIY: Load/Security Testing, Log Monitoring, Auditing, CI/CD
● Chatbots & Amazon Alexa
Other popular Use Cases
33

34. Do not use Serverless for:
● Mission critical apps (when
human life depends on your
app) – due to cold starts,
not published or low SLA-s.
● Long atomic processes –
they may timeout!
Hard to find experienced
engineers.
“If all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail” – there are mis-use cases
34
Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science

35. Serverless Future – Long-term Forecast
35

36. What’s missing?
● Tooling
○ Better debugging and monitoring of serverless compute
● We need to tear down the walls between cloud-vendors
○ Monitor https://CloudEvents.io initiative by @CNCF
● Orchestration – some initial workflow engines already exist
○ AWS Step Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Oracle Fn
Flow, Fission Workflows
Serverless Future – Short-term Forecast
36

37. Visualization of Microservices flow at Netflix…
Serverless – Orchestration Forecast
37
… using Vizceral
open-source tool

38. That could become more intelligent, AI-based orchestration :)
Serverless – Orchestration Forecast
Doesn’t it remind you of the miracle of breathing?
38

39. Getting Started with
The Serverless Framework
• AWS Lambda, using
• Node.JS example
39

40. The easiest way to serverless:
● Open-source CLI, written in NodeJS
● Provider-agnostic abstraction layer
● Function language-agnostic
● Plugin system to extend and hook into life-cycle events
● Easy workflow:
○ write Functions code,
○ package and…
○ deploy via CLI…
○ to your cloud provider of choice.
What is The Serverless Framework?
40

41. The Serverless Framework supports:
Supported Infrastructure
Providers
41

42. AWS Lambda Supported Languages
● Node.js
● Python
● Java – slowest cold starts
● C#
● GO – shortest cold starts
Amazon as Serverless Infrastructure
42

43. Pre-requisites
● Cloud CLI tools installed & configured
C:Servelress>aws configure
AWS Access Key ID [****************TO2x]:
AWS Secret Access Key [****************dj12]:
Default region name [us-east-1]:
Default output format [None]:
● NodeJS 6.10 or later Installed
● Node Package Manager (NPM)
AWS Cloud Walkthrough
43

44. $ npm install -g serverless
$ serverless version
$ sls create --template aws-nodejs -p toronto
$ cd toronto
$ code serverless.yml
$ code handler.js
Commands Executed
44

45. serverless.yml
45

46. handler.js
46

47. $ sls deploy
$ sls deploy list
$ sls deploy list functions
$ sls info
$ sls invoke -f hello
{
"statusCode": 200,
"body": "{"message":"Go Serverless v1.0! Your function executed successfully!","input":{}}"
}
Package, deploy, invoke
47

48. it’s the URL ending with /dev/daniel
Open the endpoint URL in a browser
48

49. $ sls logs -f hello
$ sls metrics
$ sls remove
Next, read up & play with:
● https://serverless.com/learn/quick-start/
● https://serverless.com/framework/docs/providers/
More commands & resources
49

50. From the AWS angle
1. Get any cloud certification to learn about the cloud in general & the
services Lambdas can invoke / be invoked from: www.udemy.com/aws-
certified-developer-associate/ (google Udemy coupons first!)
2. Watch Serverless talks from the last AWS re:Invent 2017
https://serverless.com/blog/serverless-guide-aws-reinvent-2017/
3. Take “Production-Ready Serverless – Operational Best Practices”
course by Yan Cui @theburningmonk
https://www.manning.com/livevideo/production-ready-serverless
4. Connect with me – as I’m deep in the topic (just little AWS-biased)
@DanielBookmarks or https://www.linkedin.com/in/magmainc/ or
https://www.meetup.com/Serverless-Toronto/
Learning Serverless
50

51. Migrate Jobs – not Apps
● Look for Batch jobs,
● Disconnected sub-systems exchanging files, that need to
share state changes – e.g. update subscription preferences
in CRM, upon Mass-mailing campaign executions.
● Jobs that can benefit from parallelization and streaming –
file loaders, email processing, clickstream, trading data…
Ideas for adopting Serverless at work
51

52. Even when you’re not in the cloud try to apply
Twelve-Factor App Methodology to build /
refactor your apps:
● In general – https://12factor.net
● Serverless specific – by Chris Munns @chrismunns
○ slides https://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/twelve-
factor-serverless-applications
○ video https://youtu.be/19SCqWGqtto
Ideas for adopting Cloud-native at work
52

53. Planning Serverless
next steps…
Discussion
53

54. @goServerless
Montreal AWS Users Group
@3nimbus 54

55. Contact me when ready to apply:
daniel@TriNimbus.com
Guess What?
@3Nimbus is hiring
Cloud Solutions Architects, DevOps Engineers, Sales Executives
Go to www.TriNimbus.com and click “Careers”
55