Developing a serverless application enables you to create and launch apps without having to care about servers. However, it also allows you to concentrate on your application code rather than on provisioning, configuring, and maintaining infrastructure with several advantages.

Did you know?  As per report, by 2025 the global serverless architecture market value is anticipated to reach $21,988.07 Mn.

What is a serverless web application?

A serverless web application is an architecture that allows a developer to write the code only and then let third-party systems handle the infrastructure management. In this case, the developer has nothing to do with infrastructure management after writing the code. The key focus on the developer’s side is to write different functions to execute business logic and then connect the functions, allowing them to work together.

In simple terms, serverless architecture involves developing and running web apps without having to provision or manage the servers. In this case, you don’t rent or host your own servers from cloud providers but let third parties manage the other functions, including security requirements, storage facilities, and backend logic, among other functions, better known as FaaS- function as a service or serverless function.

This allows you to pay only for the resources you utilize, allowing up or down scaling automatically in relation to the current demand.

Components of a serverless architecture

The elements that complete a serverless computing process include the following:

• FaaS – Function as a service

This is the basis of a serverless app. It processes the logic that enhances resource allocation in a given instance.

You can opt for a purpose-built FaaS such as AWS Lambda for Amazon Web Services, IBM cloud functions for hybrid or private environments, Google Cloud Function for GCP (Google Cloud Platform), and Microsoft Azure Functions for Azure. It all depends on the cloud environment you are using.

These functions can read the database on the backends immediately after a user executes an event them extract and provide a corresponding response.

• The client interface

The client interface offers a platform that connects a serverless architecture to another app through flexible integrations, stateless interactions, and supporting short-form requests. This means you cannot just force a serverless architecture to fit in any application you want; the client interface must support the program or app to complete your requests.

• A cloud-based web server

The web server executes the stateless interaction once a user prompts it and before a FaaS service ends the stateless interaction.

The web server differs from the backend database. The data sent to users remains in the storage. A good example is online personnel specializing in video content provision. In this case, the web server processes the requests and FaaS response before termination. Once terminated, the video will remain in the backend storage facility and the user can access it upon request.

• A security service

The serverless architecture will remain viable with proper security protocols because of the following:

• Its hard to enhance transparency and monitoring in serverless computation, hence the need to access advanced security strategies from the many events that are executed daily.
• A serverless app controls many requests on the go. Every request requires proper authentication before providing the required response.
• The serverless computation follows a distributed nature, meaning there are many vendors and many services involved. This generally requires solid security measures.
• The stateless nature of serverless computation means there is no history of past interactions, hence making it hard for an app to fall back on the previous activities to determine future activities.

Ideally, serverless apps rely on a token service that produces data for users to prompt an event or function. You can opt to include serverless-ready identity and access management services in the serverless app to complete the processes seamlessly. AWS Cognito, for instance, can complete user identity using AWS Lambda via social networks.

• Backend database

This is where the data that will need to be shared with the user is kept. It could range from SQL to static content repositories or from broadcasting to media storage modes.

With BaaS, the backend as a service solution to minimize admin efforts and to minimize costs. The good aspect is that most cloud vendors offer solutions that align with the relative FaaS service delivery.

• API gateway

This connects the client interface and the FaaS. Once the user prompts an action, the API gateway is activated, thus triggering the respective event through the FaaS service.

The gateway boasts ultimate flexibility since it can facilitate the connection of the client interface to diverse FaaS services, thus enhancing its viability.

Characteristic of serverless web applications

Serverless applications have characteristics that make them unique indifferent aspects. These characteristics include the following:

• Automatic Scaling – the cloud service provider allocates the needed resources automatically based on the workload at a particular time. This facilitates automatic scaling.
• No Server Management – with serverless architecture, you don’t need to handle the servers either for scaling or managing. All the activities are handled with the cloud provider on your behalf.
• High Availability and Fault Tolerance – Your serverless web app will have fault tolerance and high availability for seamless functioning across time different zones.
• Event-driven – serverless computation functions are triggered by a request or an event once executed. The system does not just run throughout unless triggered.
• Pay-per-Use Billing – With serverless architecture, you only pay for the time and resources you’ve used cloud services. This makes it possible to save more compared to other architectures.

Benefits of building a serverless web application

Serverless computation comes with diverse advantages. Below are some of the top benefits as to why developing a serverless web app is the real deal:

• Rapid development

The developer’s only task is to write the code. Other activities involving any server management tasks, such as capacity planning or patching, are not the developer’s responsibility. This makes the development process streamlined and faster on the developer’s side.

• No server management

You don’t need to maintain or provision any servers in a serverless architecture. You don’t need to install, run, maintain, or administer any software in this case, thus making work easy even for beginner developers.

• Highly scalable

Serverless apps allow automatic scaling of resources, either down or up, depending on the available demand. In this case, it becomes easy to handle extreme traffic without performing manual processes.

• High availability

Serverless apps are highly available according to their design. This enables the cloud providers to host diverse functions on different data centers while ensuring the app provides high uptime and that no faults can occur in the process.

• Cost-effective

Serverless architectural models, including Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and AWS Lambda, incur costs in relation to their usage. This helps business plan their budget and save on resources. This is especially important for businesses that have diverse workloads.

• Highly flexible

Serverless computing doesn’t limit developers to specific technologies. Ideally, developers can use any tools, frameworks, and programming languages. This gives the development team the time to settle on the best tech stack to produce the best serverless web apps.

What is the best way to design a Serverless application?

By combining different AWS services, you may create a serverless web application. Each service is completely managed and requires no provisioning or management of servers on your part. It would be a good choice if you combined them to create a fully scalable, universally available serverless web application.

How to build a Serverless web application in AWS

1. Choose a web hosting provider : 

To establish an S3 bucket, AWS prompts you to submit the following information:

Bucket name: The bucket name must be unique and has not been used before on Amazon S3 buckets. Thus always attempt to customize the bucket name.

Region selection: Select the area in which you wish to build the bucket from the drop-down menu.

Good read: S3 Bucket Best Practices

2. Select a serverless backend service :

Lambda functions are available in various programming languages, including Java, Go, PowerShell, Node.js, C#, Python, and Ruby.

When it comes to Lambda, Amazon provides numerous alternatives for creating Lambda functions.

3. Choose a RESTful API: 

Amazon API Gateway is a managed Amazon service that enables you to design, publish, and manage secure APIs.

4. Select a Database : 

Amazon DynamoDB is a high-performance, scalable NoSQL managed cloud database that supports various document and key-value storage types.

Your infrastructure may be hosted on the cloud at this level, but you must still assure the security of your data and services.

5. Select a service for managing privileged access :

IAM helps you to control access to AWS services and resources securely. IAM enables you to establish and manage AWS users and groups and grant and deny them access to AWS resources through permissions.

6. Choose a user administration service :

Amazon Cognito is a management service that enables one to integrate user sign-up and data synchronization into your application, which means it handles user management and authentication for your backend API.

Challenges of serverless web applications and solutions

While serverless web apps have a lot of benefits to offer, they also have a set of challenges and limitations, which include the following:

• Security Concerns

Serverless architecture relies on third-party dependencies to complete some tasks. This could open a loophole to some security vulnerabilities. It is important for the team to always access and update the dependencies more often to tighten the serverless app security concerns.

What’s more, there is no infrastructure management in serverless architecture. However, security will always remain vital in this case. The teams must, therefore, ensure their serverless functions embrace best practices, including encryption techniques, authorization, and authentication to secure the app.

Pro tip: the development teams can use security tools such as Google Cloud Security Command Center, Azure Security Center, and AWS Shield to enhance a better security for serverless apps.

• Vendor Lock-In

Serverless architecture depends on the cloud provider and their services. This can make it hard to migrate apps to different systems or platforms due to vendor lock-ins.

The solution to vendor lock-ins is using an open-source serverless framework or multi-cloud approach for improved flexibility.

Again, the serverless framework is open and compatible with different cloud providers, thus a greater way to avoid vendor lock-in issues.

• Debugging and Monitoring

Serverless architecture follows a distributed nature, thus making the debugging process complex, hence the need for advanced tools and technologies to complete the debugging processes.

Embrace continuous app monitoring and logging for serverless apps. The team can do this by implementing advanced monitoring tools to get insights into the app’s performance and resolve any arising issues immediately.

Tools such as Azure Application Insights, Google Cloud Trace, and AWS X-Ray offer the best monitoring and debugging functionalities for serverless apps.

• Cold Start Latency

Cold start latency occurs when an idle function is triggered for the first time, thus delaying initial response times which impacts user experience negatively.

In this case, it is important to keep the functions warm or, rather optimize dependencies and code to eliminate the cold start latency impact.

Epsagon and Dashbird are effective tools that can help monitor and manage issues with cold start latencies.

What you should know before building your first serverless web application.

1. Ensure that you are prepared for serverless computing.

Consider your experience before embarking on your first serverless trip. While serverless tools make it simple to say, “Hello world,” they are not intended for novices, and the deployment and monitoring tools make more sense if you have experience with large-scale production web applications.

The longer you have worked with self-hosted services, the more pleasurable the transition to serverless will be.

2. From the start, plan for observability.

Plan for observability before you begin developing your first online application. Moreover, determine what you will record and how you will record it. What metrics are you going to track? Where are you going to transmit these metrics? What kind of analytics tools are you going to use?

It is much too typical for users in the early phases of serverless adoption to feel confident about their actions yet be completely unaware of what is happening within their system.

This kind of information is possible with the correct observability platform—ideally one that automates significant instrumentation inside Lambda, such as New Relic. In a single experience, New Relic can help you, monitor, visualize, debug, and alert on your serverless services.

3. Each Lambda function requires a significant amount of setting.

Allow enough time for Lambda and API Gateway setup. For each function, you will need to complete the following tasks:

• The code is being uploaded.
• Setting up the function
• Establishing an API endpoint (for example, identifying the HTTP methods it must obey)
• Creating the function’s IAM security role
• Configuration of the HTTP request (for example, how the variables involved in the request are received and converted into Lambda function arguments)
• Setting up the HTTP response (for example, how the return variables are delivered to the caller and converted into HTTP format)
• Establishing a staging endpoint
• Implementing the API

4. Create a process for development

The development methodology for a serverless web application is significantly different from that of a traditional web application. You do not have a local development environment; everything is hosted in the cloud. Additionally, even though each Lambda function exists within the broader context of a unified application, setting and deploying each Lambda function is isolated.

While functions must have access to shared code, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. To overcome these barriers, you must establish an effective development process that everyone on your team understands, adheres to, and, most importantly, understands. It may require some trial and error, but serverless is well worth the initial effort after establishing a foundation.

Examples of serverless web apps

With the serverless apps growing and gaining momentum, many businesses are already adopting serverless computation for better scalability flexibility and to save costs, among many other benefits associated with serverless computations. Some of the top brands that are already using serverless architecture include the following:

• Netflix – uses AWS Lambda for better security, personalization, content delivery, and recommendations for streamlined streaming that handles millions of requests every other second.
• Slack – uses Google Cloud Functions for easy integrations, custom commands, and bots for seamless service delivery.
• Codepen – uses Netlify Functions for easy code management, thus offering higher flexibility and scalability levels.

Wrapping up

Serverless success is not only attainable but also tremendously helpful if you have the necessary expertise and tools. AWS Lambda monitoring provides actionable insights into managed service data, providing a holistic picture of your serverless application.

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