Whoa… slow down DBAs… don’t want you to have a heart attack! This blog post is about serverless architecture. DBAs don’t roll your eyes and stop reading this because serverless architecture is another tool you need in your IT solutions toolbox. Ok DBAs so you don’t care, but at least just jump to the end of this blog post and see how serverless technology might help you right now.

DBAs will always need servers for those databases but we are talking about code and more specifically functions. Interesting points are made in this article: Guide to Serverless Technologies by Alex Williams

In the article, Williams states ‘going serverless means moving to a cloud-based, micro services based architecture, built and maintained by a DevOps team.’. Williams article points to some interesting statistics:

• 50% of respondents already use serverless
• 28% of respondents plan to

Don’t be in the bottom 22% my fellow DBAs!

Some of the points Williams discusses in the article include:

• Serverless is pay-as-you-go, calculated according to actual consumption rather than pre-purchased services based on guesswork.
• This is infrastructure as it was meant to be: completely invisible.
• All logic in an event-driven architecture is embodied in functions. Events trigger these functions and then the functions, in turn, trigger something downstream,
  which themselves may be functions.
• The major difference between traditional cloud computing and serverless computing is that the developer… doesn’t pay for unused, or even underutilized, resources.

More statistics from the article:

• Top Technologies on serverless road maps with % of respondents using serverless or expecting to use
• AWS Lambda 71%
• Amazon Cloudwatch 61%
• Azure Functions 43%
• Serverless Shortfalls – % of respondents using serverless
• Portability 29%
• Control 25%
• Performance 24%
• Technical Use Cases for serverless architecture
• HTTP REST APIs and web applications 73%
• Batch jobs – scheduled tasks 68%
• Business logic 60%

Finally, the top 5 reasons serverless architecture impacted your SDLC:

• Flexibility of scaling
• Speed of development
• Cost of resources
• Speed of deployment
• Flexibility of architecture

DBA’s if you stopped reading and jumped right here, you might be thinking … it’s nothing for me to worry about. Perhaps you should take a closer look at SQL ConstantCare from Brent Ozar Unlimited. As Ozar states ‘SQL Constant Care® is a serverless service that analyzes your SQL Server’s diagnostic data, then gives you personalized advice on what you should do to make your database app faster and more reliable.’

Hmmmm seems like serverless architecture might be useful to DBAs. It’s a no brainer addition to your IT solutions toolbox. Right?