Serverless Architecture: Implementing Azure Functions As a Service
Published on 14 April 17
Helios0
Azure Functions is a solution that allows you to run small pieces of code or functions in the cloud. Basically Functions as a Service (FaaS) is about running your back end code without managing your own server applications or server systems. You can just write the code without bothering about a whole application or rather say the infrastructure to execute it. Hence, the term serverless even though there are both server hardware and server processes running somewhere. The difference to normal approach is that you are not looking after the hardware or processes; they are outsourced to a vendor, in this case, Microsoft.
Features of Azure Functions
Our software development specialists had great time exploring the features offered by Azure Functions. Here are some key features:
- It provides you with code authoring flexibility (in-browser, via continuous integration or even directly from IDE like Visual Studio).
- You can pay only for the time spent running your code as per pay-per-use consumption plans.
- You can use your language of choice as it supports multiple languages such as Python, C#, F# and so on.
- You can easily leverage software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings and other Azure services as integration is simplified.
- It allows you to bring in your own dependencies by supporting NuGet and NPM which infers you can use your favourite libraries.
Uses for Azure Functions
There are various uses for Azure Functions including:
- It supports an event based on a timer i.e. you could execute code that runs every 15 minutes and based on custom business logic cleans up a database table.
- It enables you to connect your code to other Azure services or on-premises services by responding to new queue messages.
- It helps you trigger the execution of your code by using an HTTP request.
- It does real-time event processing particularly useful in the Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios.
Conclusion
Serverless Azure Functions offers you the benefit of reduced operational costs which includes infrastructure cost as well as development costs. Does serverless architecture bring any challenges to development? We are keen to know your views. Please let us know by leaving your comments.
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