Limitless Development with Function Compute

By Shantanu Kaushik

Development is a process that requires focus and the availability of resources. No developers want to work for resource provisioning and operations management. A developer requires the ability to develop applications and services without having to care about the above-mentioned resource management.

Alibaba Cloud created Function Compute. It is a fully-managed compute service that doesn’t require the user to work for any resources or O&M needs. Without the need for infrastructure management, developers can flexibly and reliably run your code.

Function Compute automatically adjusts the resources depending on the traffic demand incursion. For further performance acceleration, it uses a reserved instance. Alongside maintaining latency glitches, this reserved instance also helps with the online migration of applications to Function Compute.

Programming Language Support

Development Tools

With Function Compute, you have to upload your codes, and the service backend will run it considering the level of elasticity needed. It will record metrics, such as performance, alarms, and query logs, for you to monitor. Since Function Compute is event-driven, whenever an event triggers the service, Function Compute automatically calls to process the event.

Integration Scenario

Triggers can be invoked with the Function Compute SDK, API, API Gateway, Object Storage Service (OSS), log service, or Table Store. The inclusion of these services gives developers all of the necessary tools and services to build elastic, reliable, and feature-rich applications.

Let’s take a look at the Function Compute workflow to understand how it works:

How Does It Work?

Developers submit the code based on the supported programming languages

Function Compute is triggered by the submission through API, Function Compute Console, or SDK

A function is triggered based on your call. It could be an Object Storage Service, API Gateway, or another trigger.

Function Compute scales depending on your traffic peak data and delivers seamless deployment.

• Here, multiple instances of the compute service are triggered to match the traffic peak usage.

Pay-as-you-go is billed accordingly

What Does Serverless Architecture Mean?

Serverless computing resources are a way of providing elastic resources to the developer without any intervention from the developer. Though physical servers are still used for the infrastructure, the developer has no part to play in provisioning any resource. The developer just needs to call the Function Compute service while uploading code with the trigger methods mentioned above.

Alibaba Cloud Function Compute is designed to improve efficiency and to reduce costs. This serverless model of application design lets you focus on the development environment and leave the deployment environment functionality on Function Compute.

The Benefits of Function Compute

• Purchase of resources before deployment is not required
• Only necessary resources are provisioned to keep your application deployment up and running
• Peak traffic situations are seamlessly handled with added instances and a reserved instance
• Provides performance monitoring, query log, and alarms to enable quick troubleshooting when needed.
• Highly-scalable and elastic service structure
• Pay-as-you-go (based on usage)
• The trigger-based setup processes any new data as it is submitted without the need to process everything again.

Overcoming the Challenges

With Function Compute, you do not need an answer to the prerequisites of the application or service. The fully-managed setup doesn’t require manual intervention for resource provisioning, scales automatically to match the application or service requirement, manages loads automatically, scales the service dynamically, upgrades the server configuration automatically to match resource allocation, and automatically configures the operating system and network configurations.

The Tools of Function Compute

Visual Studio Code Extension

Aliyun VSCode Extension is a development tool based on the Visual Studio Code (VSCode.) It is a graphical user interface-based tool that can be used for development, debugging, and resource-managing with Function Compute.

Make sure that you have Docker and Visual Studio Code installed before you start to install the VSCode extension.

With Aliyun Serverless VSCode Extension, you can:

• Start projects
• Create functions
• Run, debug, and deploy functions to Function Compute
• Obtain function and data from Function Compute
• Get Syntax prompts, schema validation, and automatic completion prompts for templates

Fun (FunCraft)

Fun is a development tool for serverless applications. It works with Function Compute to seamlessly and efficiently provision cloud resources, such as API Gateway and others. It can be used to develop and deploy to Function Compute.

Wrapping Up

Function Compute offers a wide range of benefits without any of the hassles of typical computing or cloud resources. It is the next generation of fully-managed and event-triggered deployment engines that help the developer and businesses achieve better business continuity. Alibaba Cloud and its services have created a supreme overlay that bridges any gaps in services by integration at the core level. This ensures reliability and scalability to its true form. Understanding what you need and operating with ease is what Function Compute does.

The Evolution and Real-World Applications of Function Compute

In this article, we will be discussing the scenarios where Function Compute and serverless technology comes into play. We will explain the real-world applications of Function Compute and how to achieve a more integrated and productive system by using a serverless approach.

Upcoming Articles

1. The Evolution and Real-World Applications of Function Compute
2. Application Configuration Management — Management with Middleware

Original Source:

Limitless Development with Function Compute