Top 10 Serverless Computing Platforms and Databases

Overview of Serverless Computing

In the past, when developers wanted to host any of their websites, there was the need for a physical data center where their server would run, which is very bulky and expensive for a small organization to manage; then cloud computing comes, which helps the organization who are not capable of purchasing datacenters for servers, different vendor provider their server to others on rent to host there website and applications. Not only provide servers but also provide different services which fall below three categories which are:

1. SAAS (Software as a service)
2. PAAS (Platform as a service)
3. IAAS (Infrastructure as a service)

What is Serverless Computing?

In serverless computing, Developer needs not to worry about the backend infrastructure and servers when the Developer is planning to make available their website to the public, i.e., the Developer only needs to focus on writing the code and the quality of the code; the rest of the things like provisioning the infrastructure for their application and also handling scaling of the infrastructure on the bases of network traffic. The cloud provider is also responsible for maintaining and managing updates like operating system level security or capacity.

Coming to the billing serverless, the billing starts when the application is running, or we can code is executing, i.e., Developer will not pay when there is inactivity.

Companies are moving towards serverless computing to execute their functioning hassle-free and without worrying about data loss. Taken From Article, Serverless Computing

Why do we need Serverless Computing?

We need serverless computing because it offers numerous benefits to developers, which help them save costs. Also, if developers use serverless architecture, they need not worry about server cost, maintenance, and setup. The main advantage of serverless computing is that if the Developer is willing to expand their application, they need not worry about the capacity of servers.  

Why is Serverless Computing so popular?

The cloud service provider manages the Serverless computing architecture, i.e., the vendor provides all the services required by the developer application.

Different providers of Serverless computing platforms and databases

1. Amazon Web Service
2. Microsoft Azure
3. Google Cloud Platform
4. IBM
5. Alibaba

Advantages of Serverless Computing

1. In serverless computing, all the work, like management and security, is managed by cloud providers.
2. Deployment of applications is rapid, and updates are possible.
3. The cost of server space is only charged based on the amount of space used by developers.

What are the best Serverless Computing Platform and Databases?

 The best Serverless Computing Platform and Databases are highlighted below:

Azure Function

An Azure function is the Azure serverless solution where users write their pieces of code and execute them. The block of code you have written in the function app is called Function. A function is quite similar to microservices, similar to microservice; every single Azure function has some single work. Azure functions support several languages from which user can write their code, for example, c#, java, python, typescript, Go, etc.  

There are lots of scenarios where the Azure function can be used, for example:

1. If you want to build web API
2. A function that can be used for processing real-time data.
3. A Function that can be triggered by the developer website for sending notifications

Pricing: Consumption Plan, Premium Plan, Azure App Service

Enabling users to build their applications faster by removing the need for them to handle the infrastructure. Taken From Article, Azure Serverless Computing Architecture and Advantages

AWS Lambda

Serverless computing with AWS Lambda allows you to run code as event triggers and automatically manage underlying compute resources. Your code is executed on a high-availability compute infrastructure, and all compute resource management is handled by Lambda. As part of this process, servers, and operating systems are maintained, capacity is provisioned and automatically scaled, code and security patches are deployed, and code monitoring and logging are carried out. You only need to provide the code.

Pricing: 1M requests for Free, Pay by the usage

AWS Fargate

With AWS Fargate's serverless, pay-as-you-go compute engine, you can build applications without managing servers. There is a compatibility between AWS Fargate and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). You can run containers using AWS Fargate and Amazon ECS without worrying about managing part of servers or clusters of Amazon EC2 instances.  

Fargate simplifies running containers by automating virtual machine cluster provision, configuration, and scaling. Cluster packing, server selection, and scalability are all eliminated with this solution.

AWS Fargate pricing is calculated based on the following:

1. CPU
2. Memory
3. Operating Systems
4. CPU Architecture
5. Storage1 resources

Google Cloud Serverless

Serverless computing with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) allows the server to scale to infinity, i.e., there is no load management; whenever there are parallel requests, each application runs its code in response to these requests. You can also create your own Open Container Initiative-compliant containers or build and deploy serverless applications as containers.

Pricing: Start for free, Pay as you go

Cloud adoption is not only about agility and cost optimization. It’s about continuously building, innovating, and staying ahead. Taken From Article, Google Cloud Platform Serverless Computing

IBM Cloud Function

IBM Cloud also provides serverless computing called IBM cloud function, where you can use your favorite programming language to write lightweight code that runs app logic in a scalable way with IBM Cloud Functions.API requests from applications or third-party events can trigger code based on HTTP-based API requests. The IBM cloud function uses an action, a code snippet that performs a specific task without requiring a state.

Pricing: $0.000017 per second of execution per GB of memory allocated

Alibaba Function Compute

Alibaba Cloud provides a serverless computing service called Alibaba Function to compute. Alibaba function computes an event-driven computing service that is self-managed. You can focus on writing and uploading code without managing infrastructure such as servers. Computing resources are provided by Function Compute, enabling more flexible and reliable code execution. It also has the advantage of only paying for the resources consumed when the code is active, with no additional fee.

Pricing: Trial quota, Resource plans, Pay-as-you-go

Cloudflare Worker

In addition to the functions-as-a-service model, Cloudflare Workers uses Edge Computing to combine functions-as-a-service with edge computing. Since Cloudflare Workers is more of a web tool provider than a general cloud provider, they approached this problem from a different perspective. As a result of their implementation details and some self-imposed limitations, Cloudflare Workers provide developers with high performance at a lower cost. Cloudflare Workers provides low latency responses to your clients if your applications fit the Workers paradigm.

Vercel Function

Developers can simplify the serverless experience with Vercel Functions. A Vercel Functions platform is similar to Netlify Functions because it makes building and delivering web applications easier. In the development, deployment, and delivery of modern web applications, Vercel Functions is focused entirely on improving the development, deployment, and delivery experience.

Designed to simplify the use of serverless within web applications, Vercel Functions can be extremely useful if your project falls into that category. Adding features and increasing performance can be accomplished with the platform.

Netlify Function

In addition to being a web application build and deployment platform, Netlify Functions offers a serverless offering. In 2018, Netlify released Functions, a value-added service that integrates serverless functionality into the ecosystem easier on top of AWS Lambda. Netlify Functions differs from some of the other serverless services provided by other cloud providers; Netlify Functions is a serverless platform that integrates serverless within a coherent ecosystem that focuses on application delivery.

Oracle Functions  

Oracle Functions offers container-based serverless architecture solutions for practical deployment. Users can build and deploy their solutions faster and easier with this solution because all functions are packaged as docker containers. 
Moreover, the vendor offers a free and open-source Fn project foundation, which means users can develop functions that will work in both the Oracle Functions service and other deployments based on Fn.  

Pricing: Pro services start from US$0.00001417 for over 400,000 every month.

Manages all the services that a user can use to build and run its program on AWS's system. Taken From Article, AWS Serverless Computing

Conclusion

The topic 'Top 10 Serverless Computing Platforms & Databases' has ended. We have explained serverless computing and why an organization should adopt it in this context. 

• Read more about Google Cloud Platform Serverless Computing
• Explore here about What is Serverless Security?