The ever-increasing popularity of cloud computing has garnered a new technological revolution with many cutting-edge technologies. Function as a Service (FaaS) and serverless are two such technologies that approached the forefront due to the popularity of cloud computing. Both these technologies aim to:
- Provide cost-effective cloud platforms
- Eliminate the need for infrastructure management
Sometimes the terms FaaS and serverless are used interchangeably. However, they are two different technologies with some significant differences.
In this article, we will have a look at these technologies and understand their similarities, differences, and how to choose the right technology based on your needs.
What is Serverless?
As the name suggests, serverless is a computing model where infrastructure orchestration is managed by service providers.
The emergence of cloud computing has enabled users to quickly create any service instance, scale up or down, and discard as required, saving CapEx and OpEx while eliminating the need to manage physical hardware.
However, even with these cloud servers, the management and configuration tasks of the cloud infrastructure were left to the users. This is where serverless comes into play.
Serverless aims to eliminate the management and configuration tasks enabling users to solely focus on the application. This is not limited solely to server instances but extends to other areas, too, such as:
- Serverless databases
- DevOps pipelines
- Kubernetes
- Etc.
Let’s consider an example where we need to provision a SQL database within the Azure cloud provider.
In a traditional scenario, we will have to first provision all the underlying resources from networks and security groups to compute instances. Then, we’ll need to install and configure the SQL database and continuously manage the infrastructure.
However, with a serverless solution like Azure SQL Database serverless, we can create a SQL server with a few clicks that will automatically scale according to the system load without the need for users to manage any infrastructure.
What is Function as a Service (FaaS)?
Function as a Service is a relatively newer concept that aims to offer developers the freedom to create software functions in a cloud environment easily. In this method, the developers will still create the application logic, yet the code is executed in stateless compute instances that are managed by the cloud provider. FaaS provides an event-driven computing architecture where functions are triggered by a specific event such as message queues, HTTP requests, etc. Some of the FaaS options available through leading cloud providers include:
Function as a Service model adheres to a pay-as-you-go model where you have to only pay for the function when it’s used.
FaaS allows developers to solely focus on developing the application functionality without having to consider backend infrastructure or server configurations. Instead, you’ll simply:
- Pick the programming language of your choice.
- Package the function with its software dependencies.
- Finally, deploy the function.
