Summary: Serverless Framework

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) plays a critical role in managing modern cloud-based applications. It serves as a blueprint for creating, configuring, and managing infrastructure, increasing consistency, promoting reusability, easing collaboration, reducing errors, and streamlining change management.

• Without IaC, teams can face challenges, including inconsistent configurations, redundant work, difficulties in collaboration, error-prone processes, and inefficient change management.

• AWS supports several Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools popular for managing serverless applications. These include AWS CloudFormation, AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), Terraform, AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit), and the Serverless Framework.

• Each IaC tool has its own strengths and use cases, depending on factors such as ease of use, language support, multi-cloud capabilities, and integration with existing development and deployment workflows.

• This course will specifically focus on the Serverless Framework for defining serverless infrastructure using simple YAML configuration files and deploying it via the command line.

The Serverless Framework

• The Serverless Framework, developed by Serverless Inc., is a powerful tool for simplifying the development, deployment, and management of serverless applications across multiple cloud providers. It uses YAML configuration files, making the setup process efficient and user-friendly.

• The Serverless Framework stands out for its multi-cloud support, extensibility via a rich ecosystem of plugins and integrations, developer-friendly features for local development, debugging, and testing, as well as a large and active community contributing to its development.

• The deployment process of Serverless Framework leverages AWS CloudFormation. This integration ensures consistent infrastructure management, automates provisioning of AWS resources, enables version control for infrastructure changes, and allows for infrastructure configuration validation before deployment.

• Serverless Framework's extensibility is emphasized through its support for plugins, which are Node.js modules that extend the functionality of the framework. Plugins can range from supporting offline development, integrating AWS services, optimizing Lambda function sizes, to managing environment configurations, among others.

• The Serverless Framework, with its combination of easy configuration, extensive plugin support, local development features, and CloudFormation integration, is a robust solution for building, deploying, and managing serverless applications on AWS and other cloud platforms.

Practice

• In the practice lesson, we delved into the structure and components of a Serverless Framework project, drawing an analogy between constructing a project and building a house. We learned that the serverless.yml file is the backbone of every Serverless Framework project, akin to a blueprint for building a house.

• We explored a basic serverless.yml file and identified key components, including the service (equivalent to the house name), the provider (analogous to the construction materials), functions (the rooms of the house), and events (the doors providing access to the rooms). Next, we introduced the Serverless Framework CLI, a vital tool for managing serverless applications. We compared it to a magic wand that simplifies complex tasks, making serverless technologies more approachable.

• To better understand the Serverless Framework CLI, we installed it using npm. We then examined several key CLI commands, such as serverless, sls, serverless help, serverless deploy, and serverless remove. Each command served a distinct purpose in creating, managing, and removing our serverless project.

• We also followed a hands-on walkthrough, during which we created a new serverless project using the CLI. We explored the generated project's files, observed the structure of an exported function in index.js, and deployed the project to the cloud. Following deployment, we navigated to the AWS console to confirm the creation of the Lambda function. Finally, to tidy up our workspace, we used the serverless remove command to delete the deployed service and its associated resources from AWS.

• This lesson provided a comprehensive introduction to the Serverless Framework, equipping us with the knowledge and skills to construct, deploy, and manage our serverless applications.