Despite what the naysayers say about the end of DevOps, the reality is quite different. DevOps is still going strong. The global DevOps market will grow at a CAGR of 24.2% by 2030. Enterprises have especially started using it more after the pandemic to accelerate product delivery and reduce deployment time. At least 74% of enterprises adopted DevOps in some form.
Although DevOps is here to stay for a longer time than anticipated, there are a few issues that the DevOps team must know before implementing them.
Luckily enough, there’s also serverless computing to address these problems. Let’s find out more.
How Do DevOps And Serverless Computing Work Together?
Before we delve into the problems, let’s understand how exactly DevOps and Serverless computing work together. Simply put, serverless computing helps the DevOps team to release new products and patches quickly as it automates the infrastructure tasks and outsources the management to cloud providers. The team doesn’t have to spend time on backend activities, which gives them more time to focus on product development, continuous innovation, and delivery.
Four Big Problems In DevOps And How Serverless Computing Can Address Them
- Configuration Challenges
Configuration is a crucial part of DevOps as it allows the DevOps team to manage tedious tasks and system-wide changes taking place across servers and networks. However, the DevOps team spends a lot of time configuring packages and testing, monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring and deployment. The fast-paced deployment cycle also gives the team less time to configure the resources. They don’t get enough time to orchestrate the processes or define the state of each managed system. All these factors could lead to configuration inconsistencies and errors and could lead to serious problems like compliance and security breaches.
How to overcome the challenge?
Serverless computing does not require any configurations. The servers are abstracted from application development and operated by companies that manage the codes and machine allocations.
Serverless computing also offers services like Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) that help the team deploy codes without worrying about infrastructure configurations. FaaS, for instance, automatically configures and maintains the execution of functions and cloud service connections without server provisioning. Similarly, BaaS allows developers to focus on front-end functionalities and outsource the backend functionality to the cloud service provider. This helps the team save time on configuration management.
- Environment Provisioning
Environment provisioning enables the DevOps team to release products fast and improve the team’s productivity. In other words, it helps the team with the continuous delivery process. However, environment provisioning requires knowledge of setting up infrastructures. Every team member must know how to manage and maintain the infrastructure and set up multiple testing environments. They must know how to manage permissions, access rights, and third-party integrations. Any oversight could lead to mistakes and anomalies in testing. The team spends a lot of time creating and managing the different environments, which leaves them with very little time to focus on developing products.
How to overcome the challenge?
Serverless computing can help the DevOps team shift its focus from environment provisioning and focus on product development and deployment. The cloud provider takes care of multiple environment provisioning and even scaling it when required. It also takes care of resource configuration, which makes infrastructure management simple.
- Deployment Challenges
Although continuous delivery is the cornerstone principle of DevOps, the reality is different. The DevOps team faces several challenges during deployment, such as deployment failures, lengthy production time, pipeline management, security risks, and many other problems that hinder the software delivery process. The DevOps team gets no time to build, test, and deploy changes due to the short release cycles. The team has to constantly work with various tools for development, testing, and deployment and ensure that it works in an integrated manner. All this hampers the team’s productivity. The team has to also worry about switching between old and new versions due to fear of unplanned downtimes and service interruptions. It goes against the DevOps principle of continuous delivery.
How to overcome the challenge?
The DevOps team can solve this problem by moving the modular components from the pipeline to serverless. It will save the team’s effort on pipeline management and enable them to focus on development and deployment. It also facilitates DevOps automation by deploying the pipeline without hosted solutions. The team can perform flexible deployments as infrastructure becomes immutable with serverless services. This was never possible with traditional infrastructure. The flexible deployment enables the team to run both versions simultaneously and switch between them without interruptions or downtimes. It gives the team better control over deployment.
- Cost Challenges
DevOps is expensive, especially for legacy applications that were not designed for end-to-end automation. DevOps transitions could cost thousands of dollars. The team has to decide if they want to invest in DevOps. Besides that, the resources like tools, servers, and operational costs of development and testing cost more. DevOps also involves hidden costs, such as hiring and training resources to manage the backend infrastructure and paying for idle infrastructure resources.
How to overcome the challenge?
Serverless computing can drastically reduce the costs of DevOps. The cloud providers allocate the machine resources on demand and take care of the servers on behalf of the developers. The cloud provider also takes care of upgrades and scalability. So, companies don’t have to hire additional team members to take care of the backend. Also, as serverless computing works on the pay-as-you-go model, the team doesn’t have to pay for idle resources. They pay only when a code is executed or tested in the serverless system.
Conclusion
The myth about the bleak future of DevOps in the serverless age is far from the truth.
DevOps and serverless computing are a perfect match for each other. In fact, serverless computing with DevOps can offer a competitive edge to companies. Serverless computing provides respite to the DevOps team as the cloud provider takes care of the infrastructure, deployment, scalability, and other factors that hinder the product development process. It saves the DevOps team time, effort, and costs. Managing the backend becomes more effortless and efficient.
So, if you are implementing serverless computing with DevOps, go ahead. It could help the business scale and generate more revenue without spending too much on development.
At Wissen, we offer a range of technology-driven services, including AI and Machine Learning, Big Data & Analytics, and Business Intelligence, along with Agile & DevOps practices. We strive to provide our business customers with the best and most cost-effective solutions that could maximize their investment returns.
The above article is authored by Anurag Sinha, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Wissen Technology (Wissen.com).
