Serverless computing is the modern methodology most companies are using to create flexible and highly scalable applications as opposed to the old way of building out a server with defined resources; this older methodology creates issues when demand spikes or architectural changes are needed. With serverless computing, the architecture is built by defining each task as a micro-service and using APIs to trigger those tasks to perform when needed - this allows your application to handle as little or as many requests it needs because it is not relying on defined infrastructure to perform these tasks.

Take Advantage of Serverless Computing

Leveraging both AWS Lambda and Fargate into the architecture of your application will allow you to have a completely serverless application that is powerful, infinitely scalable, easily modifiable, and cost-effective. For instance, if you need an app that could extract a thumbnail from a video file (video file processing is generally a resource-heavy task), you could build a workflow that leveraged both products for a seamless experience. From the front-end, a user could upload a video that would be stored in an S3 bucket. AWS’ S3 object storage could then be configured to trigger a Lambda function to run a Fargate task. Fargate could then quickly provision a container with an application with the functionality to process this video and extract a thumbnail and upload it back to the S3 bucket. Once the process is done, the container can be destroyed to help free up resources and minimally affect your costs. Only utilizing resources that are currently in use is the key-value component for switching to a serverless architecture.

Together with the Vandis Team

When it comes to how Vandis would approach implementing this into a client’s environment, we would first complete an assessment of their existing architecture as well as understand what their goals are for the future. Some clients may not have their existing applications compatible with a serverless methodology. In such cases, Vandis would start with a “lift and shift” migration of their environment into the respective services (e.g., EC2 and RDS) that would replicate what they already have. One of the significant benefits of a serverless architecture is that many tasks can be configured as micro-services (applications structured as a collection of loosely coupled services), which can be added to or subtracted from the app without substantial changes to the structure. With this in mind and their application fully migrated into AWS, we can begin to look at all the functions of their application and determine what can be broken up into micro-services. Once identified, we can create a strategy to start implementing these functions while safely phasing out legacy code.

For more information on stepping into the world of Serverless computing with AWS, contact the team at Vandis for a free consultation.