What is serverless computing, and how does it differ from traditional cloud computing?

Serverless computing is a cloud service model where you can run applications and execute code without worrying about managing or maintaining servers. Although servers are still used in the background, the cloud provider fully handles them, so you can focus only on writing and running your code.

How It Differs from Traditional Cloud Computing:

1. Server Management:

   • Traditional Cloud Computing: You manage the servers (in IaaS) or partially manage them (in PaaS). This includes provisioning, scaling, and maintaining the server infrastructure.

   • Serverless Computing: The cloud provider takes care of the server setup, scaling, and maintenance. You just provide the code to run.

2. Scaling:

   • Traditional: You may need to manually configure auto-scaling or over-provision resources to handle peak loads.

   • Serverless: It automatically scales up or down based on the workload. If no requests are being processed, no resources are used, which reduces costs.

3. Cost:

   • Traditional: You often pay for server resources whether they are actively being used or not.

   • Serverless: You only pay for the actual execution time of your code (e.g., milliseconds used) and the number of requests.

4. Use Cases:

   • Traditional: Suitable for applications requiring constant uptime, like databases or systems with predictable workloads.

   • Serverless: Ideal for unpredictable or spiky workloads, event-driven applications, or microservices.

“Example of Serverless Services”:

• AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions allow you to execute functions in response to events without managing servers.