Decisions about Apache OpenWhisk, AWS Lambda, and Serverless
Tim Nolet
Founder, Engineer & Dishwasher at Checkly · | 13 upvotes · 100.4K views
When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:
- Developer Experience trumps everything.
- AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
- If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.
Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:
- Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
- Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
- Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
- Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
- Heroku
- Lambda
It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?
I chopped that question up into the following categories:
- Developer Experience / DX 🤓
- Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
- Cost 💵
- Lock in 🔐
Read the full post linked below for all details
Pros of Apache OpenWhisk
Pros of AWS Lambda
Pros of Serverless
Pros of Apache OpenWhisk
Pros of Serverless
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Cons of Apache OpenWhisk
Cons of AWS Lambda
Cons of Serverless
Cons of Apache OpenWhisk
No cons available
Cons of AWS Lambda
Cons of Serverless
No cons available
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- No public GitHub repository available -
What is Apache OpenWhisk?
OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.
What is AWS Lambda?
AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.
What is Serverless?
Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.
What companies use Apache OpenWhisk?
What companies use AWS Lambda?
What companies use Serverless?
What companies use Apache OpenWhisk?
What companies use AWS Lambda?
What companies use Serverless?
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What tools integrate with Apache OpenWhisk?
What tools integrate with AWS Lambda?
What tools integrate with Serverless?
What tools integrate with Apache OpenWhisk?
What tools integrate with AWS Lambda?
What tools integrate with Serverless?
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What are some alternatives to Apache OpenWhisk, AWS Lambda, and Serverless?
Kubeless
Kubeless is a Kubernetes native serverless Framework. Kubeless supports both HTTP and event based functions triggers. It has a serverless plugin, a graphical user interface and multiple runtimes, including Python and Node.js.
Azure Functions
Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.
Cloud Functions for Firebase
Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you create functions that are triggered by Firebase products, such as changes to data in the Realtime Database, uploads to Cloud Storage, new user sign ups via Authentication, and conversion events in Analytics.
Google Cloud Functions
Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running
Apex
Apex is a small tool for deploying and managing AWS Lambda functions. With shims for languages not yet supported by Lambda, you can use Golang out of the box.
Interest over time
How much does Apache OpenWhisk cost?
How much does AWS Lambda cost?
How much does Serverless cost?
Pricing unavailable
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