tokyo azure meetup #7 - introduction to serverless architectures with azure functions, july 2016

Azure Update, JulyKanio Dimitrov

Main Azure Updates• VM - General availability of IaaS migration from classic to Resource

Manager

• Storage - General availability: Azure cool blob storage in Canada

• Azure Redis Cache: Preview of new administration options in Premium tier• Reboot• Schedule updates

Main Azure Updates• Azure Automation : Time zone support and daylight savings

• General availability: Always Encrypted for Azure SQL Database

• Public preview: New version of Azure Active Directory PowerShell cmdlets

• General availability: Azure ExpressRoute in additional locations• Paris, Newport/Wales, and Quebec City

Main Azure Updates• General availability: Two new Azure regions (West US 2 and West

Central US)

• General availability: SQL Server Stretch Database

• General availability: Microsoft Power BI Embedded

• General availability: Microsoft R Server for Linux virtual machines

Main Azure Updates• Microsoft introduces AppSource for SaaS business apps

• Public preview: Cortana Intelligence Suite with Bing Predicts

• General availability: Microsoft Azure IoT Hub S3 edition• 300 million messages per day

• General availability: Bing APIs in Microsoft Cognitive Services• Autosuggestion API, Spell Check API, Search API

Main Azure Updates• Preview: Microsoft R Client

• G-Series instances for Azure Virtual Machines available in Australia East

• General availability: Azure SQL Data Warehouse

• Azure App Service Authentication and Azure AD domain hints

Main Azure Updates• General availability: Service Bus Premium Messaging released to

general availability

• Azure DevTest Labs: Attach additional data disk to your lab VM

• General availability: Azure portal updates for Azure Stream Analytics:• Power BI Output• Data Lake Output• Simple Input

Introduction to Serverless Architecture

Kanio Dimitrov

About Me

Azure MVP, Architect & Advisor

Tokyo Azure Meetup Host

twitter: @azurekanio

blog: https://azurekan.wordpress.com/

Serverless Computing

Serverless computing refers to a model where the existence of servers is simply hidden from developers.

• Major shift in Cloud Computing

• Application Code Focus

• Cost Effectiveness

Microservices

Small Autonomous services that model business domain and have single responsibility

Recommendations

Inventory

Orders

Shopping Cart

Shipping

Monolithic System

Serverless Microservices

Order Microservice

GET Order

Create Order

Update Order

Remove OrderAPI

GatewayMobileClient

Serverless Principles

• Abstract completely underlying infrastructure

• Break business logic to functions

• Focus only on application code

• True auto scaling in seconds

• Integrate with external systems

Current State• AWS Lambda – market leader

• Google Cloud Functions

• Azure Functions – in Preview

• Auth0 Webtasks

• IBM OpenWhisk

Modern Ops Requirements• Engineers are responsible for the operational quality

• Software Engineers have to value operational excellence

• Software Engineers on call for their own services

• Ops skills are not optional for software engineers in 2016

• Software engineers own their systems from end to end

Modern Ops Requirements• The other side of DevOps - Software engineers need to level up at

operations

• Outsource as many ops responsibility as possible

• Build operational excellence for core business differentiators

• Aggregate metrics and graph them

DevOps requires time• Biggest obstacle to

innovation is that development times are too long

• DevOps adds to the development time

• Application builders need to manage their server infrastructure

Serverless Advantages• Rapid Development

• Truly Polyglot

• Event Driven

• Minimal Maintenance

• Very Scalable

• Pay Per Use

Serverless Disadvantages• Limited transparency

• Immature tooling (debugging and troubleshooting)

• Required security review and penetration testing guidance

• More and better documentation and best practices

• Vendor Lock-in (Huge dependency on cloud provider)

• Limits not well defined

Azure Functions

Input Code Output

• Trigger - specify what conditions cause the function to be called• Binder - specify how to get information into and out of method

parameters

Azure Functions vs Web Jobs• Web Jobs:

• + Extendable. Can run whatever you we want. Full control• - HTTP functionality requires more effort to be configured

• Functions:• + Many languages supported• + Completely managed with dynamic scaling• + Portal experience simplifies a lot development• - Host can’t be customized yet• - We are using dedicated "app" which requires additional configuration, but in long term is

advantage• - Better tooling required

Binding Integration

Time Based Processing

Azure service event processing

SaaS event processing

Serverless web application architectures

Serverless mobile backends

Real-time stream processing

Real-time bot messaging

Supported Platforms• C#• F#• JavaScript• Python• PHP• Bash• Batch• PowerShell

Demo – Hello World!

Let’s focus on C#

• .csx file – focus on writing business logic function

• Do not design classes and namespace, just Run method

• POCO classes inside the same file for data processing

Async & Cancellation Token• async keyword

• Task return type

public async static Task ProcessBlobEvent(Stream blobInput, Stream blobOutput, CancellationToken token){

await blobInput.CopyToAsync(blobOutput, 4096, token);}

Namespaces• Use using• Automatically imported:• System• System.Collections.Generic• System.IO• System.Linq• System.Net.Http• System.Threading.Tasks• Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs• Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Host

Framework Assemblies• Use #r "AssemblyName“• Automatically added:

• mscorlib• System• System.Core• System.Xml• System.Net.Http• Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs• Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Host• Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Extensions• System.Web.Http• System.Net.Http.Formatting

Special Case• Use only #r "AssemblyName“

• Newtonsoft.Json•Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Storage•Microsoft.ServiceBus•Microsoft.AspNet.WebHooks.Receivers•Microsoft.AspNEt.WebHooks.Common

Custom Assemblies

• Upload them to bin folder for the function:• Azure Portal• Kudu• FTP

• Reference using the file name - #r "MyAssembly.dll"

Packages• Upload project.json file to the function’s folder

• Specify NuGet packages

{ "frameworks": { "net46": { "dependencies": { "Microsoft.ProjectOxford.Face": "1.1.0" } }

} }

Configuration

• Via Environment variables

• Set on App Service Level

• Use System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable:• GetEnvironmentVariable(“FacialRecognitionApiKey”);

Code Reuse

• Use classes and methods defined in other .csx files in your run.csx file

• To do that, use #load directives in your run.csx file:• #load “logger.csx”

Logging

• Include a TraceWriter typed argument

• Recommended to name it log

• Don’t use Console.Write

Hosting Options

• App Service Plan

• Dynamic Service Plan• Dynamically allocated resources• Functions will run in parallel• Memory from 128 MB to 1536 MB• Limited support for App Service features

Development, Debugging & Testing• Local Development is coming

• Live debugging with Visual Studio

• Azure Storage Explorer

• HTTP Endpoints testing:• Postman, Fiddler, Browser

Scaling

• Classic App Serivce Plan scales based on set rules

• Dynamic Service plan scales independently based on traffic

•Major criteria is memory size of the execution environment

Pricing – “pay-per-user”

• Price = Memory size (in GB) x Total amount of execution time (in secs)

• Execution time – active time for all functions running inside that function app

• Unit of consumption will be GB-s (Gigabyte Seconds)

Demo – Azure Functions Scenarios

Next Tokyo Azure Meetup• Date – August, 29-th

• Time – 19:30 – 21:00

• Location – Microsoft Office

• Topic: DevOps / Azure Functions Deep Dive / Bot Framework or another topic. What is the most interesting one for you?