There are wide assortments of business enterprises that look forward to improving their internal technical processes to facilitate business growth and boost IT infrastructure development. Opting for robust and quicker deployments on the latest platforms is regarded as the key to getting reduced lead times, which allow for evolution. Containers and serverless functions are the major and widely used technologies that help host such deployments.
If you are wondering whether you should choose between containers and serverless technology, this article is for you. As you go through this article, you can find the differences between serverless and containers, which will help you make an informed decision. Check it out!
What are serverless applications?
These applications execute in a totally stateless environment. As you choose this technology, you can opt for the Function as a Service, which is responsible for code packaging and deployment in the form of a standalone executable. As you run serverless technology, it indicates that you do not need to manage and provision regular servers. It boasts a structure that runs the app, after which it will shut down when it is not required.
The Serverless Application Development technology is responsible for the deployment and management of applications, as you do not need to worry about scaling and servers. It is easy to manage them through the use of containers. Moreover, from the serverless cost comparison, it can be said that the serverless cost savings are more than containers, as you pay for the specific time when the code is executing only. Moreover, serverless deployments are less efficient and flexible.
What are container-based applications?
Containers are termed self-contained units or virtual machines of lighter weight. They provide a suitable choice to package different dependencies, which is essential to executing the app as a self-contained unit. As you run the app via containers, you need to package the app along with the dependencies, which helps run the same within the container. Hence, you will run the container applications on any server you want.
Differences between serverless and container technology
Take a look at this section to find the differences between containers and serverless technology:
Maintenance
Though the containers are present within the cloud, the cloud service providers are not going to maintain and update them. Thus, the developers need to update and manage every container they are going to deploy. The serverless architecture, on the other hand, does not have any backend to manage. The vendor will take care of different software and management updates for the servers, which will execute the code.
Scalability
Speaking of the container-based architecture, the total number of deployed containers is determined in advance by the developers. On the other hand, in the serverless architecture, the backend will scale automatically and inherently to meet the demands.
Deployment time
In the beginning, the containers might take a longer time to set up and configure different libraries and system settings. After the containers are configured, it takes only some time for deployment. In addition, the serverless functions are smaller in size than the container microservices. As they do not include the system dependencies, it is going to take less time for deployment.
Testing
It becomes challenging to test the serverless web apps as the backend environment is difficult to replicate in the local environment. On the other hand, the containers will execute regardless of the deployment source. Thus, it becomes easy to test the container apps before they are deployed to production.
