Serverless for Everyone Else

72 ratings

In Serverless for Everyone Else, you'll learn practical use-cases for Serverless Functions, how to build and deploy your own functions that you can run anywhere at a low, predictable cost.

The faasd project makes it quick and easy way to start building and deploying functions, within the first few hours of trying out the project. You'll write practical functions in JavaScript using the Node.js template which makes it quick and easy to take a few lines of code, and to transform that into a HTTP endpoint.

Once you have the basics under your belt, you'll learn how to do more advanced tasks like scheduled tasks, running functions in the background, CI/CD, and adding a database to your host.

You can run everything on your laptop using a VM, in the cloud using a 5 USD / mo DigitalOcean Droplet, or even a Raspberry Pi.

Almost all the examples are compatible with OpenFaaS on Kubernetes or K3s from building functions in Node.js, to setting up multi-arch CI/CD with GitHub Actions.

Practical use-cases

Functions can help you extend an existing product or system, by writing code that is triggered by events. You can then automate all kinds of internal systems, marketing, sales, social media and more.

You'll learn how to deploy code in any language, lift and shift Dockerfiles, run requests in queues, write background jobs and to integrate with databases. faasd packages the same code as OpenFaaS, so you get built-in metrics for your HTTP endpoints, a user-friendly CLI, pre-packaged functions and templates from the store and a UI

"OpenFaaS is my favourite serverless framework as it integrates seamlessly into your workflow and faasd is the simplest way of starting to use it. This book really opens your eyes up to the things you can achieve with it for almost no overhead." - Simon Emms

Topics include:

Getting started and building functions:

How to use the book
Should you deploy to a VPS or Raspberry Pi?
When should you use faasd over OpenFaaS on Kubernetes?
What is included in the faasd stack?
Deploying your server with bash, cloud-init or terraform
Exploring your faasd instance through the REST API, CLI and UI
Using a private container registry
Finding functions in the store
Building your first function with Node.js
Using environment variables for configuration
Using secrets from functions, and enabling authentication tokens
Using Postgresql and databases from functions

Monitoring and operations:

Understanding how function templates work and how to customise them
Monitoring your functions with Grafana and Prometheus
Scheduling invocations and background jobs
Tuning timeouts, parallelism, running tasks in the background
Adding TLS to faasd and custom domains for functions
Getting remote access to self-hosted faasd with inlets

Advanced:

Adding a database for storage with InfluxDB, Postgresql and Redis
Exploring faasd resource consumption
Troubleshooting faasd, functions and getting logs
Upgrading and updating faasd
Multi-arch CI/CD with GitHub Actions
Taking things further, community resources and case-studies
Options for scaling up with faasd, or OpenFaaS on Kubernetes.

You can see the full table of contents by clicking the image preview carousel.

"Do you need to try Serverless functions but you simply do not want to lose time with the "hosting technicalities"? Then faasd is definitively for you and how best to understand it if not by its creator directly" - Nuno do Carmo

Watch and learn with the 50min video workshop

In the workshop I walk through deploying faasd, using the OpenFaaS UI, CLI, Function and Template store, and then go on to show you how to build the first few examples using Node.js. At the end I'll give you a few more ideas for use-cases and show you how to monitor rate of execution, duration and errors in your functions with Grafana.

What people are saying about the video workshop

"Congrats Alex, Very good hands-on video as the perfect complement to your book! I really like the use cases approach and the related deployment option strategy" - Philippe Ensarguet, Group CTO, Orange Business Services

"Very slick, Alex! The green screen helps keep a personal touch. I hadn't heard of multipass. Thank you. From a continuing learning perspective, this helps me professionally to (1) know what's out there and (2) see it in action." - Kyle Brennan

The workshop is available in the Learner and Team Player tiers.

We're a community:

This is the perfect way to learn about containers and functions over a few weekends.

But that's not the end of it. There's a community behind OpenFaaS, and you can join us every week for Office Hours with comments, questions and suggestions.

Even if you've never written code before, you will be able to copy and paste the examples and see how each part works. The main examples are written in Node.js, but the concepts carry over and you can also write in many other languages like Python, C#, Golang and bash.

Where's my upgrade?

If you purchased a qualifying tier during an offer, and haven't received your upgrade email, then check your spam and junk folder.

Got a question or comment? Send me an email: [email protected]

Please leave a rating for the book after purchase. If you're not completely satisfied with the eBook, then email me within 7 days to request a no hassle refund.

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