Serverless computing delegates server management, workload scaling, and infrastructure to cloud providers, represented by services like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions. These platforms enable developers to create event-driven code snippets, billing only for execution time and resource consumption upon invocation, eliminating the cost of idle capacity. This significantly reduces operational overhead; developers concentrate on code and event triggers, while the platform autonomously manages resource provisioning, scaling, and infrastructure maintenance, including updates and patching. Consequently, development workflows are streamlined, and routine maintenance is minimized. This model promotes modular, event-driven design, facilitating the decomposition of monolithic applications into independent, stateless functions, each handling a specific task.
Serverless computing can enhance security by offloading OS patching, encouraging ephemeral workloads, and supporting granular IAM controls.
However, it does not guarantee security by default. The developer must still write secure code, follow best practices, properly manage permissions, and continuously monitor their environment.
For example, Vercel uses serverless functions at the core of its deployment model. When you deploy a Next.js application (or any supported framework) to Vercel, the platform automatically transforms your API routes or certain server-rendered pages into serverless functions. These functions, similar in concept to AWS Lambda (Vercel is build on top of AWS), run on-demand in response to incoming requests.
A) Microservices focus on breaking down an application into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently
C) The use of APIs is common to both serverless and microservice architectures for communication and integration
D) Infrastructure as code is a practice applicable to various architectures and is not a distinguishing factor between serverless and microservices > https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/what-is-infrastructure-as-code