Serverless adoption rates have been climbing ever since the technology was brought into the spotlight with the release of AWS Lambda in 2014. That is because serverless makes an offer that cloud developers simply can not resist, providing the following benefits:
- Server management is abstracted to vendor
- Pay-as-you-go model where you only pay for what you use
- Automatically scalable and highly available
These benefits are achieved by the characteristics that define the technology. Serverless applications are stateless distributed systems that scale to the needs of the system, providing event-based and async models of development. This has worked in favor of the technology, resulting in a desirable solution for the cloud.
However, does this offer always live up to what it is perceived as?
With further inspection, there is no doubt that serverless adoption also opens up developers to the possibility of falling into anti-patterns specific to the model. This is especially concerning seeing the high adoption rates of serverless. As more of the industry moves to reap the benefits, we must be wary of what works and what does not work. Serverless is definitely beneficial, however, the wrong use of it could leave a sour taste, pushing the industry away from the technology.
Therefore the purpose of this piece is to highlight the anti-patterns that plague serverless architectures and how they may be avoided. Hence enabling the success of serverless applications and also promoting its adoption.
Source: Breaking Down Serverless Anti-Patterns – DZone Cloud