Serverless¶

Serverless is the substrate of most modern cloud apps: pay-per-execution functions, container-based serverless, event triggers, scale-to-zero. This index brings together the concept, the architecture pattern, the hands-on build, the cross-cloud comparison, and the certs that hit serverless hardest.

flowchart LR
  EVT[HTTP / queue / event /<br/>schedule trigger] --> RT[Runtime spins up<br/>cold or warm]
  RT --> FN[Your function]
  FN --> RES[Response or<br/>side effect]
  RT -. tear down after idle .-> Z[Zero cost when idle]

Learn¶

• Serverless explained - the model, FaaS vs container-based, cold starts
• What is cloud computing? - elastic billing is the foundation
• IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS - where serverless sits in the stack
• Containers vs VMs - what runs underneath
• CI/CD explained - deploys for serverless are usually CI-driven

Compare¶

• Serverless services - Lambda vs Functions vs Cloud Run vs Cloudflare Workers
• Compute - where serverless fits next to VMs and containers
• Messaging and queues - the event sources serverless functions consume

Reference¶

• Architecture pattern: serverless API - clients → API gateway → functions → managed DB / queue
• Architecture pattern: event-driven architecture - producer → broker → consumers, almost always serverless on the consumer side
• Cost optimization: AWS, Azure, GCP - serverless is often a cost-optimization lever

Build¶

• Build a serverless application - API + queue + function + storage, event-driven
• Build a CI/CD pipeline - serverless deploys via GitHub Actions

Certify¶

Certs that test serverless deeply:

Foundational - AWS Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) - covers Lambda + serverless concepts - Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)

Associate - AWS Developer (DVA-C02) - Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions are core - AWS Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) - serverless architecture choices - Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204) - Functions, Logic Apps - GCP Associate Cloud Engineer - Cloud Run, Cloud Functions

Professional - AWS DevOps Engineer Pro (DOP-C02) - serverless CI/CD pipelines - AWS Solutions Architect Pro (SAP-C02) - serverless at scale - GCP Professional Cloud Architect - Cloud Run + Functions architecture

Related topics¶

• LLMs and GenAI - serverless functions are the standard glue for AI agents
• Observability - serverless observability has its own gotchas (cold-start tracing)
• Kubernetes - the alternative when serverless doesn't fit