1. Azure Functions - the
evolution of microservices
platform or marketing
gibberish?
Anton Boyko
Microsoft Azure MVP
me@boykoant.pro

2. Serverless?
Population of homeless servers
is growing

3. They asked me
for NoSQL,
so I dropped the
database.
No database,
NoSQL!

4. Benefits of serverless
Manage less
Micro-pricing
Ease of scale
(up & down)

5. Reserved
Agent
Job
1
Job
2
Job
3
Serverless
Job 1
Job 2
Job 3
Agent 1
Agent 2
• Fixed CPU
• Fixed RAM
• On-demand CPU
• On-demand RAM

6. Serverless offerings
Microsoft Azure
• Azure Functions
• Azure Logic
Apps
• Azure Container
Instances
AWS
• AWS Lambda
• AWS Fargate
Google cloud
• Cloud Functions
• Cloud Run

7. Azure Functions
Event-driven on-demand custom code execution.

8. I have a “code” I have an “event data”

9. I have a “code” I have an “event data”
BOOM!

10. C#
F#
Java
NodeJS
Python
PowerShell
…
HTTP(S)
Timer
Queue
Storage
…
Azure Functions
Stateless Small
Single unit
of work

11. DEMO
Consumption scale

12. Impediments
Why aren’t we there yet?

13. Capacity
What will it cost to run
a serverless app for 10K
users?

14. Capacity planning
• Q: What will it cost to run a serverless app for 10K users?
• A: How will you calculate what it will cost to run a non-serverless app?
• A: What will it cost to wash all the windows in Seattle?

15. Capacity calculation example
Facts
• Each user spent 5 minutes on
average on your website daily.
• Each user reads 10 articles daily.
• Each user generates 15 requests
daily (10 articles + 5 utility
requests).
• Each request takes 1 second on
average.
Conclusions
• Each user consumes 1 sec per
request.
• Each user consumes 15 secs per
day.
• Each user consumes 450 secs
per month.
• 10K users consumes 4.5M secs
per month.

16. DurabilityHow to orchestrate
workflows? Sagas?

17. Durability – fan out / fan in

19. Consumption example – fan out / fan in
1 sec
3 sec
3 sec
3 sec
2 sec
6 sec
Orchestrate
Fan out
Fan in
Response

20. Durability – long running async HTTP API

22. DEMO
Durable functions

23. Durability – human interaction

25. Performance
How to get predictable
and consistent
performance level?

26. Performance
Consumption
• 1 CPU core
• Up to 1.5 Gb RAM
• Cold start
• Scale down to 0 instances
Premium
• Up to 4 CPU cores
• Up to 14 Gb RAM
• Pre-warmed instance
• Scale down to 1 instance
Azure Function Plan switcher
https://aka.ms/premium-plan-sample
Understanding serverless cold start
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/understanding-serverless-cold-start/

27. Performance – scalability

28. Performance – cold start

29. Performance – warm start

30. KEDA

31. KEDA
Azure Functions
Runtime
Docker ContainerKEDA
Kubernetes

32. DEMO
Azure Functions in Docker

33. Conclusion

34. Scalability Performance Enterprise

35. Questioning the question mark
Anton Boyko
Microsoft Azure MVP
me@boykoant.pro

36. Appendix 1 – code examples
https://github.com/TeamSpark-Learning/azure-functions