Cloud Native: Serverless & Microservices

Stop managing servers. Focus on code. Learn the modern way to deploy applications on AWS.

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1. Cloud Concepts

What is Cloud Native?

Building applications specifically designed to run in a cloud environment (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).

Microservices: Breaking apps into small pieces.
Containers: Packaging code (Docker).
Serverless: Running code without provisioning servers.

IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS

IaaS (Infrastructure): AWS EC2 (Virtual Machines). You manage OS updates.
PaaS (Platform): Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk. You manage code, they manage OS.
SaaS (Software): Google Docs, Slack. You just use it.

2. AWS Core Services

1. AWS Lambda (Compute)

Run code without thinking about servers. You pay only for the compute time you consume.

Example: A Simple Lambda Function (Node.js)

exports.handler = async (event) => {
    const response = {
        statusCode: 200,
        body: JSON.stringify('Hello from Lambda!'),
    };
    return response;
};

2. Amazon S3 (Storage)

Simple Storage Service. Object storage for files (images, videos, backups).

Bucket: Like a folder.
Object: The file itself.
Infinite Scaling: Store as much as you want.

3. Amazon RDS / DynamoDB (Database)

RDS: Managed Relational Service (MySQL, Postgres). AWS handles backups and patching.
DynamoDB: Managed NoSQL Database. Key-Value store. Single-digit millisecond latency.

3. Serverless Architecture

The “Modern Stack”:

Frontend: React App hosted on S3 + CloudFront (CDN).
API: API Gateway routes requests to Lambda.
Backend Logic: Lambda functions handle business logic.
Database: DynamoDB stores data.

Pros:

Cost: Zero cost when idle.
Scale: Automatically handles 1 request or 1 million requests.
Maintenance: No OS updates or security patches.

Cons:

Cold Starts: First request might be slow (container spinning up).
Complexity: Debugging distributed systems is hard.
Vendor Lock-in: Hard to move from AWS to Azure.

4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Don’t click around in the AWS Console. Define your infrastructure in code.

Terraform Example

Define an S3 bucket in a .tf file:

provider "aws" {
  region = "us-west-2"
}

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "my_bucket" {
  bucket = "my-unique-bucket-name"
  acl    = "private"

  tags = {
    Name        = "My bucket"
    Environment = "Dev"
  }
}

Run terraform apply, and AWS creates the bucket for you!

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