Chapter 15: Serverless Computing, FaaS, and BaaS
In this chapter, you'll learn what serverless computing is, how FaaS and BaaS work, when serverless makes sense, and the real pitfalls, including cold starts, vendor lock-in, and cost traps.
In Chapter 14 of the LFCA Certification Course, you learned how cloud providers design for high availability through regions and availability zones, the difference between vertical and horizontal scaling, how auto-scaling adjusts instance counts based on demand metrics, and how load balancers distribute traffic and check instance health.
This chapter covers serverless computing, which takes the abstraction of cloud infrastructure one level further, and it connects directly to the scaling and cost concepts from Chapter 14, since the serverless billing model is fundamentally different from paying for running instances.
The Cloud Computing Fundamentals domain (18%) of the LFCA exam tests serverless at a conceptual level: what it is, how it differs from IaaS and PaaS, what the cost model looks like, and what the real pitfalls are, and this chapter covers all of that with enough depth to handle any scenario-based question the exam throws at it.
Every concept in this chapter applies regardless of which cloud provider or Linux distribution you use.