Serverless vs Microservices: What are they?

What is Serverless?
Serverless is where a third-party cloud provider takes care of the server. To clarify, an organization does not have to worry about investing in or maintaining physical hardware. Rather, they depend on a third party for maintenance of physical infrastructure; this includes servers, networks, storage, etc.

The serverless approach allows your organization or business to build applications without having to manage the underlying infrastructure.

Serverless includes two different aspects:

✤ Function as a Service (Faas)

Generally in Function as a service, developers run code modules i.e. functions of an application without worrying about the backend infrastructure or system requirements.

✤ Back-end as a Service (Baas)

In general, Baas is offered as a service where the entire backend of the system that is- database, storage, etc. of a system is managed independently. This usually involves outsourcing backend services to a third party for maintenance and management purposes. Hence this helps the enterprise in focusing on the development of core functionalities in the application.

Also Read, The complete guide for SAAS

What are Microservices?
Microservices also known as Microservice architecture is basically an architecture style that structures an application as a collection of services. These services consist of several autonomous components that interconnect with each other through APIs. In fact, these components in turn are known as microservices. They execute a single function or process.

Further, each microservice is deployed within a container that works as a stand-alone application.

In addition, every microservice contains basic elements that support its independent run-time such as – its own database, libraries, and Templates.

Generally, a DevOps team breaks down every feature and function of a software application into separate services in such a manner that the app’s entire functionality is maintained while converting it into a decentralized model.

Further, the DevOps team defines the dependencies between these components and then assigns a component to a team of developers for development and maintenance.

Each of the microservices is individually developed and tested before getting deployed in an isolated container.

In short, this approach helps in developing a framework where even if one microservice breaks or is under maintenance, it is easily fixed and redeployment will also not affect other services or the overall framework.

Serverless vs Microservices: Key Differences
The main difference between Serverless and Microservices is that- Microservices are methods to design an application whereas serverless is a different way to execute an application. Interestingly you can host microservices on serverless.

Here are some main differences between Serverless vs Microservices

In general, Microservices functions are long-term, continuous, and execute more than one function
Contrarily, Serverless functions are never continuous, thus require a trigger event, and cannot include more than one function
Serverless vs Microservices: Use-case
✦ When to use Serverless
Generally, Serverless is useful in web and mobile app development. This is mainly because they are low-cost and work efficiently with lightweight apps. On the other hand, Enterprises have to make sure they are vigilant while using Serverless as it has limitations in Use-cases.

Serverless Use-cases
Software with different traffic- If your app is experiencing high spikes of traffic and at times completely idle it is a feasible solution as it allocates resources automatically on the basis of the present situation. In addition, you don’t have to pay for idle time or panic because of traffic spikes.
IoT- Serverless is event-driven and so is IoT.
Automate continuous integration and continuous delivery by writing down automatic testing or deployment as events and triggers for them
Serverless comes in handy if anything contains short-term functions
For low-budget and urgent projects
Top companies using Serverless: Figma, Nordstorm, Codepen

✦ When to use Microservices
You can use Microservices for applications and systems that will continuously evolve over time, is complex, or demands high scalability. In fact, Microservices are ideal when you have to process large data. They do this by breaking down complex functions into multiple services. This ultimately helps in easy development and maintenance.

Microservices Use-cases
Use Microservices when:

Applications require scaling up or down rapidly
Managing lightweight apps
Big Data Apps- here, you will have a specific task at every stage, for instance, data collection, processing, storage, delivery, etc. In short, Microservices handle specific tasks at a given stage.
Rewriting any legacy applications
Have more than one software and need to reutilize some of its components.
Top companies using microservices: Uber, Amazon, Spotify

Source: Webbybutter