Serverless has become more and more mainstream. Cloud services like AWS Lambda are being deployed into critical production use cases. But is Lambda all there is to serverless? What else does serverless have to offer? And is serverless computing mean the ultimate demise of server based software?
The following is a list of curated articles, videos, and other content by Lee related to serverless and serverless computing in modern digital applications.
Modern Software Podcast: The Great Serverless Debate
The concept of “serverless” is on the minds of many developers and operations teams these days. The technology is definitely hot, but is serverless really ready for prime time in production environments? To find out, we invited a pair of New Relic experts, senior director of strategic architecture Lee Atchison and developer advocate Clay Smith, back to the show to debate the issue.
MDA Episode #7 – The Great Serverless Debate, Redux
July 9th, 2018 was the launch of a podcast episode from the “Modern Software Podcast”, a podcast sponsored by New Relic, and hosted by New Relic’s Fredric Paul and Tori Wieldt. This particular episode was titled “The Great Serverless Debate”. It was a debate between myself, and a good friend of mine, Clay Smith. Clay and I were guests on the show. That episode was a huge success, and I still get asked questions about it today. It seemed to me that it was time for an update of that debate…a redux if you will. Since New Relic’s Modern Software Podcast isn’t active right now, I thought I would take on the challenge myself and host a redo of the great debate — based on what we know about serverless in 2020. So, on February 21, 2020, Clay and I got together for an update to our views on the world of serverless. This is The Great Serverless Debate, Redux.
AWS Lambda v Amazon ECS — Two Paths To One Goal, Which Is Best?
Launched in parallel two and a half years ago by Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda and Amazon EC2 Container Service (ECS) are two distinct services that each offer a new, leaner way of accessing compute resources. Amazon ECS lets developers tap into container technology on a pay-as-you-go basis. AWS Lambda offers what is often known as ‘serverless’ computing, or function-as-a-service — the ability to access specific functions, again on pay-as-you-go terms.
Forget AWS Lambda, Kubernetes AND Fargate – what we need is beyond all three
In 2018 I wrote Forget AWS Lambda, so long Kubernetes, this is the future of serverless here on diginomica. My point in that article being that the future of computation was not going to be neither Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) offerings, such as AWS Lambda, nor the management of fleets of servers to operate containers, as is necessary for Kubernetes. The long-term destiny for computation was, in my opinion, operating containers on a serverless infrastructure. What I wanted was AWS Lambda for Containers. What I wanted was true Containers-as-a-Service (CaaS).
Forget AWS Lambda, so long Kubernetes - this is the future of serverless
The original 2018 article. AWS Fargate is the real future of serverless because it's containers that matter, says New Relic's Lee Atchison
The London Sunday Times: Raconteur: Serverless computer
Lee Atchison, senior director at analytics platform New Relic, warns: “Each service provides a different and unique method for offering serverless computing. This means that an IT professional who wants to take advantage of serverless computing will find they are locked into a single cloud service provider to a greater degree than if they use more standardised traditional server-based computing.”
Expect serverless to become more mainstream
Serverless is a hotly discussed topic right now, and it seems to mean different things to different people. We caught up with Lee Atchison, Senior Director, Cloud Architecture at New Relic to discuss what serverless means to him, how it’s changing the way applications are developed and what implications serverless could have for infrastructure in the future
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Serverless Computing But Were Afraid To Ask
Ever wanted to know about serverless computing but were afraid to ask? New Relic's Lee Atchison tells all and explains its impact on the digital enterprise
The Future of Kubernetes is Serverless
I wrote not that long ago that the future of serverless is not Lambda, but is technologies such as AWS Fargate. I truly believe this is. Lambda is very useful for some kinds of computing needs, but it is not suitable as a general serverless solution to replace standard programming methodologies for building services and systems. I was therefore very happy to see this article, written by Brendan Burns, come out and talk about the future of Kubernetes. He makes many of the same arguments and he is right on in his analysis. I highly recommend anyone interested in this subject to read his article.
Lee in Diginomica — Two of the Top Six Articles of the Year
Diginomica published their top six articles for 2018. This was based on reader’s enjoyment and them coming back and enjoying the articles throughout the year. Number one on the list is my article, “Forget AWS Lambda, so long Kubernetes — this is the future of Serverless” article. This article discusses Fargate and my views on the future of Serverless.