Chapter 1. Going serverless
Figure 1.1. This is a basic request-response (client-server) message exchange pattern that most developers are familiar with. There’s only one web server and one database in this figure. Most systems are much more complex.
Figure 1.2. A typical three-tier application is usually made up of presentation, application, and data tiers. A tier may have multiple layers with specific responsibilities.
Figure 1.3. In a serverless architecture there’s no single traditional back end. The front end of the application communicates directly with services, the database, or compute functions via an API gateway. Some services, however, must be hidden behind compute service functions, where additional security measures and validation can take place.
Figure 1.4. A push-based pipeline style of design works well with serverless architectures. In this example a user uploads a video, which is transcoded to a different format.
Figure 1.5. Serverless architecture is not an all-or-nothing proposition. If you currently have a monolithic application running on servers, you can begin to gradually extract components and run them in isolated services or compute functions. You can decouple a monolithic application into an assortment of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), PaaS, containers, Lambda functions, and third-party services if it helps.
Chapter 2. Architectures and patterns