How Going Serverless Can Help Node.Js Developers
Serverless computing is one of the most discussed topics nowadays in the development space and most web applications run on high maintenance servers. It is because of this reason that software engineering teams have dedicated infra engineers or DevOps to help manage and maintain these servers. It is due to the challenges associated with it that the need to drive alternative solutions become essential. Serverless applications often shine in this regard. Lots of client side developers who are well accustomed with JavaScript are now using NodeJS and building their own backends.
Developers using various programming languages want to enjoy the benefits from the features of serverless computing and no one wants to stay behind the trends. If you are working on any JavaScript based project, then you simply can’t wait to implement the next serverless application in Node.JS.
Understanding Serverless Applications and its Advantages:
With Serverless framework, the codes are stateless functions run or triggered by the occurrence of events for e.g. the network events. For such an application, function contexts, that are bonded to specific events must run before the events are completed. For serverless applications, a piece of code is executed which is based on the kind of events that are triggered. When this happens, the resources are allocated in order to serve these events.
Since the resource allocation is relative to the amount of concurrent or incoming events or requests, it is solely determined and handled by the cloud providers offering these services.
- Concurrent requests are spurned in new container instances.
- Serverless applications are scaled based on the demand and the number of resources needed to handle the requests serving
- Every technical detail is handled by the cloud service providers so that the engineers can easily focus on core application maintenance and other feature implementation.
- Quick deployment cycle via a single command
- It offers an abstraction for the cloud infrastructure
Also Read: What is Node.JS and Its Advantages and Disadvantages: A Complete Guide
The Impact of Serverless on the Node.JS Ecosystem:
Since Node.js is the core language of serverless, it has become highly popular thereby bringing more people into the ecosystem.
Serverless Makes the Background Process a Breeze:
While creating Node.js applications, building the server is easy, but working on the background processing of messages is not an easy task. It can be really intimidating to maintain and manage. There are various tools available that understand the framework for doing the background processing. This is easy to scale on the HTTP request messages in many platforms, but the queues can be tricky. With serverless, you can easily have the function up and scaling dynamically. Since you need to pay for the execution only, you never have to overpay for your system.
Node.js Developers can focus on Business Logic and not on the Infrastructure:
Developers don’t have to manage the infrastructure nor the codes related to it. The developers have to consider only the business logic and the rest is maintained by the platform. This is really empowering because you can now add developers to your team who may not know the ways to manage the infrastructure but are able to do similar things that the team having specific set of skills would do. Now developers lacking the experience of running large scale cloud infrastructure need not develop that experience, but can easily implement the business logic on the go.
It Makes Horizontal Scaling Easier:
With serverless, scaling is easier than ever with functions. You need not see the instance count, or even worry about managing the VMs or patching things. You can simply scale higher and as soon as there is no more traffic, then the VMs also just disappear. Node.js developers need not worry about when they are there and when they are not present. This has been really helpful in various cases.