Features, serverless, and Kubernetes—whenever you’re making ready to construct your first containerized utility, these instruments and their underlying ideas can blur collectively. On this publish, we’ll demystify these important subjects for constructing scalable cloud-native functions.

What’s Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a container orchestration used to handle the lifecycle of containers and the nodes they run on.

Breakdown:

• Generally, a container is an utility packaged with its dependencies that don’t depend on the underlying OS for added libraries.
• Containers are grouped into pods that run on nodes.
• A node is a unit of compute, typically a VM operating Linux (however technically, any digital or bodily server in your cluster operating your Pods or teams of containers).

Kubernetes will orchestrate the creation of nodes and deploy, destroy, and transfer containers and pods round to nodes primarily based on standards outlined by the developer.

Kubernetes is essential to constructing and automating containerized functions for scale and excessive availability. For those who’re new to Kubernetes, we have now numerous academic content material that can assist you get began.

Kubernetes may be very totally different from serverless features and FaaS however typically used to energy the backend that makes these architectures possible.

What’s Serverless?

Serverless is a growth mannequin that allows builders to concentrate on transport code through containers with out the necessity to handle servers or different cloud infrastructure. The cloud supplier is chargeable for managing every part from the server/OS degree and down to supply a extremely streamlined surroundings for builders to jot down and deploy code.

What’s a Perform?

Constructing out modular parts for an utility, sometimes known as microservices, allows builders to phase “chunks” of code for functionalities which can be often used. These chunks are referred to as features, that are executed when triggered by an occasion. 

Any consumer exercise that triggers an occasion or a collection of occasions may be deployed as a operate. As an example, a consumer signing up in your web site could set off a database change, which can, in flip, set off a welcome e-mail. A series of serverless features can deal with the backend work.

What’s Features as a Service (FaaS)?

The “as a Service” moniker is used for nearly every part in our business as we speak. Usually talking, something as a Service means a cloud supplier handles the entire backend infrastructure to supply streamlined entry to a function. FaaS allows builders to construct and run features with no infrastructure to keep up. FaaS choices sometimes cost by execution time, that means you’re solely billed whereas a slice of code is operating. This may be very cost-effective in comparison with operating a server 24/7.

FaaS platforms make features simple to deploy and handle by constructing them on high of a selected infrastructure expertise like Kubernetes or offering a GUI to create features and join them to functions with out writing any code. (Study extra about low-code and “no-code” functions).

Group-submitted features make it simpler to search out and implement logic to optimize utility efficiency. FaaS is a well-liked product supplied by many cloud suppliers, which permits customers to handle features and utility infrastructure multi function.

Concerned with Features on Akamai?
For those who at present use features from any supplier as a part of your utility growth, we need to hear from you. Akamai cloud computing providers is exploring including features to our cloud platform. Take the survey to tell us what you’re searching for, or signal as much as be contacted when a features service is  obtainable in beta.