Tools like AWS’s Lambda, Google's Cloud Functions, and many others are allowing us to create “serverless” applications. At Bustle (a top 30 website in the US) we are taking full advantage of this new infrastructure. APIs, databases, searching, indexing, server side rendered javascript, are all being handled without deploying any of our own servers. And the best part? It costs orders of magnitude less than our old VM based deployments. I’ll walk attendees through our entire serverless stack. I'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'll share real numbers from production systems. The goal is that attendees will leave with concrete knowledge of what going serverless really means and be able to decide if it makes sense for their own infrastructure.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
“Serverless” Javascript
Steve Faulkner, Bustle

2. Steve Faulkner
@southpolesteve

6. Director of
Platform
Engineering

7. hype!
serverless 101
why?
why not?
serverless @ bustle
tools

9. The people who are serving
websites on Lambda or something
are not only doing it wrong, they
are wasting money while locking
themselves in to an architecture
that doesn't fit their app
- @scrollaway on HN

10. doesn’t scale
not production ready
too slow
too expensive

12. serverless for
99% of user
requests

13. 10-20 million
calls per day

14. < 200ms

15. < $$$

16. Serverless
101

17. there are
still servers…

18. …but what if
we abstracted
them away?

19. as a
Service

20. Where does the
business logic go?

23. Functions as a
Service

24. run only when
needed

25. pay only when
running

26. don’t bother
me with
details

27. request
myApp()
response

31. re:invent
happening right
now…

32. app.get(‘/‘, sayHello)
function sayHello(req,res){
res.end(‘hello!’)
}

33. app.get(‘/‘, sayHello)
function sayHello(req,res){
res.end(‘hello!’)
}

34. app.get(‘/‘, sayHello)
function sayHello(req,res){
res.end(‘hello!’)
}
Functions
Routing

35. Functions-aaS
+
Routing-aaS

36. Lambda
+
API Gateway

37. Lambda

39. write code
zip
upload
fn()

40. node
java
python

41. node shim
+
rust/go/haskell

42. function(event,context,cb){
cb(null, ‘Hello World’)
}

43. versioning
aliases
RAM + CPU
logging
non-http events

44. API
Gateway

46. click around
a lot

47. cache/throttle
authorization
api keys
logging/metrics
custom domains
ssl
swagger import/export

48. why serverless?

50. ops

51. 2011 startup ops:
heroku down? get lunch!

52. 2016 startup ops:
have a plan

53. serverless ops:
LOL! WAT SERVERS?

54. serverless ops:
LOL! WAT SERVERS?

55. #noops

56. “serverless” ops:
have a plan

57. benchmarks
fallbacks
load testing
monitoring
#lessops

58. scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale
scale scale scale scale scale

59. 1 -> 1000 RPS

60. 1000 -> 0 RPS

61. iteration

62. single function
deployments

63. <1s deploys

64. $$$$

65. events
API

66. ec2
~$2500/mo

67. lambda
api gateway
~$400/mo

68. why not?

69. lock in

70. const express = require(‘express’)
const fn = require(./lambda-fn/)
const app = express()
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
fn.handler(null, null, (err, result) => {
res.json(result)
})
});
app.listen(3000)

71. cold functions

72. const data = loadBigData() // Takes 15s
module.exports.handler = function(e,ctx,cb){
processBigData(data, cb)
}

73. ~3.5 hours
- Eric @ iopipe.com

74. long tasks

75. 5 min max

76. s3(3GB)
Lambda
Kinesis Firehose
Elasticsearch

77. testing

78. test in
the cloud?

80. frontend

82. API Gateway
S3 Lambda(SSR)
html + js

83. backend

85. API Gateway
Lambda
JSON
dynamodb redis

86. tools!!!

87. serverless framework
node-lambda
apex
claudia.js

89. npm install -g shep

90. JavaScript Only
no CF,terraform
swagger
webpack
environments

91. shep new my-api
shep generate endpoint
shep deploy production

92. coming soon…
shep server
shep docs
shep logs —stream

93. questions?
Steve Faulkner
@southpolesteve