Introduction to Azure Functions

Unconference Web 2017 – 28.01.2017
Introduction to
Azure Functions
Marco Parenzan
Microsoft MVP for Azure
@marco_parenzan

@marco_parenzan
◇Microsoft MVP 2016 for Azure
◇Azure Trainer in Cloud Academy, Inc.
◇Community Lead per 1nn0va

How we always explained cloud services

Misundestanding on PaaS
◇You control only the application and data
◇No control over other tiers
￭No on underlying hardware
￭CPU and RAM….hardware? 
◇Always example about our applications, web as an example
￭…and we compare IaaS (IIS) with PaaS (App Services)
￭…so we configure the CPU, the RAM, but nothing else…

Cortana
Management Suite
Media ServicesStorage
Traffic
Manager
Visual Studio
Services
OMS
Management SuitMachine LearningCDNDocument DB
Search
SchedulerActive Directory Key Vault App Insights Cognitive Services Embedded Power BI
Hockey AppStream AnalyticsNotification HubIoT Hub Service Bus
Logic App
Where you decide the CPU on these?

Real World PaaS…
◇Don’t decide on CPU and RAM…why?
￭Control vs Configure
◇You cannot plan your workload capacity
￭Only with testing
◇Infact Real World PaaS is about….
￭IOPS (Azure Storage)
￭Streaming Units (Media Services)
￭Resource Units (DocumentDb)
￭Throughput Units (Event Hubs)
￭Streaming Unit (Stream Analytics)
￭Data Transaction Units (SQL Database)

Find who is missing…
Cortana
Management Suite
Traffic
Manager
Visual Studio
Services
OMS
Search
Logic App

Yes it is!
Azure App Service
“PaaS that developers love and businesses can trust”

Ship.
Acct. Mang.
Hist.
Database
Client
Ship.
DB
Client
Hist.
DB
Mang.
DB
Acct.
DB
POST
GET
UPDATE
Monolithic Microservices
Application’s evolution

Ship.
Acct. Mang.
Hist.
Database
Client
Monolithic
Ship.
DB
Client
Hist.
DB
Mang.
DB
Acct.
DB
POST
GET
UPDATE
Microservices

Serverless manifesto
◇Function are the unit of deployment and scaling.
◇No machines, VMs, or containers visible in the programming model.
◇Permanent storage lives elsewhere.
◇Scales per request; Users cannot over- or under-provision capacity.
◇Never pay for idle (no cold servers/containers or their costs).
◇Implicitly fault-tolerant because functions can run anywhere.
◇BYOC - Bring Your Own Code.
◇Metrics and logging are a universal right.
P.S. Home not found!

Serverless origins
◇https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html#origin
◇Why The Future Of Software And Apps Is Serverless
￭2012 KEN FROMM
￭ http://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-and-apps-is-serverless/
￭https://medium.com/@ken_fromm/thinking-serverless-how-new-approaches-address-modern-data-
processing-needs-part-1-af6a158a3af1#.iqlx5xky9
◇Lambda
￭AWS, 2014
￭[Google Cloud Function, 2016]

Ship.
DB
Client
Hist.
DB
Mang.
DB
Acct.
DB
POST
GET
UPDATE
Microservices

Client
Mang.
DB
Microservices
POST
Users
Users/Id
Users/Id
Users/Id
CreatUser
GetUser
UpdateUser
DeleteUser
GET
UPDATE
DELETE
Serverless

Serverless Principles

Code Events + data
Azure Functions
Azure Functions
◇Process events with Serverless code.
◇Make composing Cloud Apps insanely easy
◇Develop Functions in C#, Node.js, Python, PHP, Batch and more
◇Easily schedule event-driven tasks across services
◇Expose Functions as HTTP API endpoints
◇Scale Functions based on customer demand
◇Easily integrate with Logic Apps

Now complete Serverless
Cortana
Management Suite
Traffic
Manager
Visual Studio
Services
OMS
Search
Functions Logic App

Serverless Humor

Azure
Functions
APIM
Notification Hubs
Web Apps
Mobile Apps
API Apps
Logic Apps
Custom AppseCommerce Digital Global Presence LOB
Apps
Services
App Service
Developer Experience
• Languages and Frameworks
• Superior DevOps
• Self service supportability
Fully Managed Platform
• Auto scale
• OS and Framework patching
• Load balancing
Enterprise Grade
• Enterprise grade SLA
• Security and
Compliance
• On-Premise Connectivity
Platform
API / Services / ISV

Platform and scaling
◇App Service offers dedicated and consumption tiers.
◇Dedicated is the existing App Service plan tiers
￭Basic, Standard, Premium
￭Pay based on # of reserved VMs
￭You’re responsible for scale
◇Consumption (Dynamic)
￭Pay on number of executions
￭Platform responsible for scale

Dynamic tier pricing
◇Pay per execution model - two meters, three units
• Number of executions
• Duration of execution x reserved memory

Dual abstraction
◇Serverless compute abstracts away the compute
◇Azure Functions Bindings abstract away the services
you interact with

Supported bindings
Type Service Trigger Input Output
Schedule Azure Functions ✔
HTTP (REST or
WebHook)
Azure Functions ✔ ✔
Blob Storage Azure Storage ✔ ✔ ✔
Queues Azure Storage ✔ ✔
Tables Azure Storage ✔ ✔
Tables
Azure Mobile Apps Easy
Tables
✔ ✔
No-SQL DB Azure DocumentDB ✔ ✔
Streams Azure Event Hubs ✔ ✔
Push Notifications Azure Notification Hubs ✔

Azure Functions architecture
◇Azure Functions is built around the WebJobs SDK runtime. The WebJobs SDK makes it easy to react
to events and work with data in a consistent abstracted fashion.

Supported Languages
◇1st class support
￭Node/JavaScript
￭C#
◇Experimental support
￭F#
￭Python
￭PHP
￭Batch
￭Bash
￭PowerShell

Trigger
(data) Input Input
code
Output
Output
Input
Functions Programming Model
◇Function as a single unit of work
◇Functions are executed per trigger
◇Functions have inputs and outputs

Demo

Conclusions

Focus on
Business
Logic
Reduced
Time To
Market
Reduced
DevOps
Benefits of Serverless?

Functions Programming Model - Best Practices
◇Functions should “do one thing”
◇Functions should be stateless
◇Functions should be idempotent
◇Functions should finish as quickly as possible
1

General practices for serverless
◇Thick clients; thin & stateless backends
￭SPAs like Angular/React are your friend
￭Be sure to enable CORS 
◇Sync is nice, but Async is nicer
￭Async, queue based systems are more resilient
￭Read and internalize the reactive manifesto - http://www.reactivemanifesto.org/
￭While synchronous work will happen, minimize the work done in a sync function and kick off to a
queue based async process (HTTP status code 202, not 201 )
◇Live and die by the cloud
￭Like never before, develop on the cloud, test on the cloud, ship on the cloud
￭Not just FaaS, but use other serverless tech that best solves the problem (like Logic Apps)

Azure Functions is open sourced
◇The runtime, “portal”, and templates are all on GitHub
￭https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk
￭https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk-extensions
￭https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk-script
￭https://github.com/Azure/azure-webjobs-sdk-templates
￭https://github.com/ProjectKudu/WebJobsPortal
◇Open roadmap
￭Use the cutting edge features
￭Transparency into priorities and velocity
￭Influence the direction of the project
◇Runtime is intended to be portable
￭MIT License

Any questions?
You can find me at: marco [dot] parenzan [at] 1nn0va [dot] it
Thanks!

Introduction to Azure Functions

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