Draft for post on monolith vs serverless.

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_posts/2023-05-20-monlith-vs-serverless.md

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+---
+title: "Is serverless dead?"
+excerpt: "TBD"
+layout: single
+comments: true
+read_time: true
+share: true
+related: true
+tags:
+  - serverless
+  - monolith
+  - software architecture
+header:
+  overlay_image: /assets/images/New DevCycle Logo.png
+  overlay_filter: 0.25 # same as adding an opacity of 0.5 to a black background
+  caption: "TBD"
+  teaser: /assets/images/New DevCycle Logo.png
+
+---
+
+# Is serverless dead? #
+
+There's been lots of talk recently about something I've been talking about for years, serverless architecture vs
+monolithic architecture, this conversation was sparked by this
+[blog](https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling-up-the-prime-video-audio-video-monitoring-service-and-reducing-costs-by-90)
+written by Marcin Kolny describing how the Prime Video team re-architected their audio/video monitoring service from
+using serverless components to a monolith.
+
+The arguments presented following the publishing of this blog can mostly be summarised as;
+
+> [Serverless is dead and was a terrible idea in the first place](https://world.hey.com/dhh/even-amazon-can-t-make-sense-of-serverless-or-microservices-59625580)
+
+## What is serverless, what is a monolith? ##
+
+First we have to turn to some definitions, what is serverless?
+
+> Serverless computing is a cloud computing execution model in which the cloud provider allocates machine resources on
+> demand, taking care of the servers on behalf of their customers.
+
+So serverless is an execution model and has nothing directly to say about how we organise functionality. However, most
+serverless architectures tend to encourage separating functionality into small independently deployable execution units
+that communicate with calls across a network (synchronous or asynchronous).
+
+How about a monolith?
+
+> a monolithic application is a single unified software application which is self-contained and independent from other
+> applications...
+
+So a monolith is a pattern of organising functionality into a single deployment/execution unit which doesn't need other
+'applications' to carry out it's function.
+
+These definitions are terms of art. For example, unless your application is completely self contained on your device and
+has no requirement to connect to any other device then is it really a 'self-contained'? What does self-contained mean?
+All high level applications rely on the underlying services of an operating system and most rely on some data store,
+does that mean they're not a monolith? Almost all modern applications consist of a client/server architecture, does this
+mean they're not a monolith?
+
+So for the purposes of this discussion I'll use some somewhat subjective definitions.
+
+> A serverless application is one where the functionality not directly involved in the user interface is divided into
+> multiple deployment units (excluding any generic datastore) that are allocated on demand by a cloud provider.
+
+and
+
+> A monolithic application is one where the functionality not directly involved in the user interface is consolidated in
+> one deployment unit (excluding any generic datastore).
+
+Note, I've used the term 'deployment unit' and not 'execution unit' as I want to draw the distinction between run time
+organisation and build/deployment time organisation. An application can be monolithic even if there are multiple
+instances running provided each instance is a copy of the same deployment unit.
+
+## Why use serverless or monolith? ##
+
+People more steeped in the technologies than me have discussed the benefits of serverless architecture so I will
+summarise my 'take' on the reasons for using it:
+
++ Respond to requests on demand especially when they are intermittent and 'peaky'
++ (Arguably) reduce the time spent on maintaining infrastructure
++ Code can run closer to the user, decreasing network latency