Serverless Vs Containers: What to Choose When & Why

• What is Serverless Computing?
• Why Use Serverless Functions?
• Benefits of Serverless Computing
• What are Containers?
• Why Use Containers?
• Benefits of Containerization
• Similarities & Differences between Serverless and Containers
• Use Cases of Serverless Computing
• Use Cases for Containerization
• Serverless Or Containers – When to Choose What?

An execution architecture wherein the app code runs on demand without the need to provision, manage & maintain the infrastructure. This simply means that users can execute code at any time and pay only for the number of resources used for running the app code. And when you compare the cost of traditional servers with this serverless execution model, you’ll realize it means a lot of cost-cutting!

The traditional approach of deploying applications over big servers comes with the added responsibility of provisioning and managing the resources.
This can invite a few server related issues (like – additional charges for keeping up, scaling or downsizing the capability and appropriate security updates) that could impact the overall time to market and delivery cost – both of which are crucial to software development projects. Now, this is where serverless computing comes into play. This architecture helps to reduce time, complexity and finally the cost of running a reliable and scalable server for a modern application. Further, with a chosen cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud) and dynamic resource allocation – a piece of code can be executed.

• Pay only for the time & resources required to run the code
• Automatically scale up and down based on the app traffic
• Accelerate development cycle and time-to-market
• No maintenance hassles and reduced administration
• No cost for idle time

A lightweight virtualization architecture that contains both the application and related components that ensures its smooth operation, including libraries and settings. They allow deploying of individual applications inside portable, isolated environments. This application could consist of a database, an application server, or a web server where each is running in a different container. It’s like an instant premix for a pancake – all you need to do is the host and run!

What if you could pack your application along with all the dependencies into one box and run it in any environment? Containerization makes it possible – regardless of the dependencies installed in the host system. It also helps ensure that software runs optimally when it is moved from one computing environment to another. This enables the DevOps team to work on individual parts of a large, complex application for speedy development, deployment, and testing.

• Vendor agnostic containers with zero dependencies on any cloud platform
• The DevOps team has total control over app packages
• Better portability for deploying applications to different hardware platforms and operating systems
• Scalability & control for managing resources and setting security policies
• Less overhead with fewer system resources
• Greater efficiency with faster patching

This read would help you explore the essentials of containerization and how it can make the deployment of applications faster and more effective.

While the two of the technologies are different from each other, they have some aspects in common.

Both allow development teams to;

• Deploy app code consistently at all times
• Save the cost and avoid the complexity of VMs
• Automate & dynamically scale workloads
• Abstract apps from the latent host environment

Now let’s do a feature-by-feature comparison of each deployment option. The table below lists the difference between containers and serverless.

Serverless Computing is a perfect fit when you want to:

• Automate handling of fluctuating traffic patterns
• Reduce the cost of resources & server maintenance
• Deploy apps and websites without having to set up an infrastructure
• Dynamically resize images and modify video transcoding

Containers are your best bet when you want to:

• Use the OS of your choice and ensure total control over the runtime version(s) and programming language
• Custom design solutions with version-specific requirements
• Develop container-native apps
• Refactor a complex monolithic app
• Migrate legacy apps to a modern environment