From Functions-as-a-Service to Backend-as-a-Service, even Big Data-as-a-Service, Serverless is taking many different shapes. Learn what these mean and how Google Cloud Platform is building technology to make sure there's nothing standing between you and running your code. You'll see live demos of integration between Firebase, Cloud Functions, Cloud Pub/Sub (and even machine learning) to build autoscaling apps in record time - all without managing servers or application runtimes. Bret is on the Google Cloud Platform team at Google, focusing on serverless products like Google Cloud Functions, App Engine, Firebase, machine learning APIs, and more. He's often on the running trail, volleyball court or kickball field.

1. Serverless with
Google Cloud
Bret McGowen
Developer Advocate, Google
@bretmcg

2. @bretmcgSource: Google Trends
Buzzword status alert
Buzzword status alert

3. Agenda
● What is serverless?
● Serverless on Google Cloud
● Compare *aaSes
○ PaaS - App Engine
○ FaaS - Google Cloud Functions
○ BaaS - Firebase
○ Managed services
● What to use?

4. What is serverless?

5. @bretmcg
Google's new serverless data center
not
^
@bretmcg

6. @bretmcg
Content analyzer
Content Image
Services
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis

7. @bretmcg
Content analyzer
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Content
Cloud Load
Balancing

8. @bretmcg
Content analyzer
Content
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Image analysis
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines
Text analysis
Cloud Load
Balancing
Cloud
Pub/Sub
API
Compute Engine
Virtual Machines

9. @bretmcg
Content analyzer
code();

10. App Engine - PaaS
Easy to manage
Fully managed
No patches/updates
24x7 Google SREs
Autoscaling
Easy to develop
Build and test locally
Focus on app code
Versioning
Traffic splitting
Choice of runtimes
Java
Python
Go
PHP
Custom (Node.js, Ruby)

11. On the road to serverless
Stop for snacks at the
PaaS station

12. @bretmcg
Serverless characteristics
● No need to even think about servers
● No upfront provisioning; scales as needed
● Pay per use
● Stateless / ephemeral

13. @bretmcg
Serverless characteristics
● No need to even think about servers
● No upfront provisioning; scales as needed
● Pay per use
● Stateless / ephemeral

14. @bretmcg
20132008 2010
BigQuery
App Engine Cloud Storage
Cloud Datastore
Cloud Machine
Learning Engine
2014
Cloud Functions
2015 2016 2017
Firebase
...
Serverless building blocks on Google Cloud
Platform
Cloud Dataflow Cloud Pub/Sub

15. Functions as a Service (FaaS)

16. @bretmcg
Not-Yet-a-Service-as-a-Service
#NYaSaaS

17. @bretmcg
A serverless environment to build and
connect cloud services with code
Cloud Functions

18. @bretmcg
Google Cloud Functions
Automatic scalingNo server
management
Only pay for what you use
$

19. Types of Cloud Functions
Cloud Storage
Cloud Pub/Sub
HTTPS

20. @bretmcg
API endpoints
Cloud Functions use cases
Lightweight ETL
Webhooks
IoT
React to cloud
infra changes

21. Hello, HTTP!
Write a serverless backend with
just a few lines of code:
●
●
●
●
// This should look familiar...
exports.hello = functions((req, res) => {
res.status(200).send(‘Howdy Serverless fans!’);
});
Howdy, Serverless fans!

22. Deploy from
Cloud Console UI
$ gcloud functions deploy myFunc
--stage-bucket functions-src
--trigger-http
Command line
Local emulator

23. @bretmcg
Logging
● ⇒
● ⇒
●
○
○
○
Monitoring
●
○
○
○

24. @bretmcg
Cloud event triggers
Cloud Storage

25. @bretmcg
Cloud Storage Cloud Functions
Cloud event triggers

26. @bretmcg
Cloud Storage Cloud Functions Cloud Vision API
Cloud event triggers

27. @bretmcg
Cloud Storage Cloud Functions Cloud Vision API
Cloud event triggers

28. @bretmcg
Cloud event triggers
Cloud Functions Cloud Vision API
Cloud Functions
Cloud Storage
Cloud Storage

29. *aaS decisions
App Engine (Paas)
Scales at app
Per minute billing
Cloud Endpoints integration
Multiple code languages
Traffic splitting/versioning
Cloud Functions (Faas)
Scales at function
Usage-based billing
Event-triggered
Node.js
APIs

30. Should I go serverless with Cloud Functions?
Existing monolithic applications
Long-running compute tasks
Guaranteed response times (synchronous)
Stateless / ephemeral

31. Backend as a Service (BaaS)

33. ● Cloud-hosted NoSQL database
● Synchronization & conflict resolution
in real-time
● Access directly from your app

37. Function better with Firebase
Cloud Storage (incl. Firebase)
Cloud Pub/Sub
HTTPS
Firebase Realtime Database
Firebase Authentication
Firebase Analytics
Firebase Hosting
new!

38. Database decisions
Firebase database
NoSQL
Mobile app
Web app
Real-time data sync
Cloud Datastore
NoSQL
Backend services
Massive scalability
Querying

39. PaaS vs Faas?
Firebase vs
Cloud Datastore?
Serverless?

40. Managed services

41. @bretmcg
BigQuery
Managed big data analytics warehouse
● Fast: terabytes in seconds
● Simple: SQL
● Interoperable: Java, Python, Tableau, R…
● Instant data sharing
● Free monthly quota - 1 TB

42. @bretmcg
Cloud Pub/Sub
Designed for
fast data
Provides reliable, real-time,
many-to-many,
asynchronous messaging
between applications
Send data into processing
pipelines and out to other
apps, devices and Google
Cloud Services
Global by design and highly
available. ‘fire-and-forget’
with minimal latency
Redundant forwarding paths
Designed for
Google scale
Reliable and
Real-time messaging

43. @bretmcg
Cloud Machine Learning Engine
Managed scalable machine learning
● TensorFlow
● Handles provisioning, scaling, and monitoring
● Integrated: dataflow, storage, datalab
● Automatically tune models with HyperTune

44. Serverless with Google
USE CASE SERVERLESS WITH GOOGLE
Mobile apps Firebase
Web clients Firebase
Web backend App Engine Standard -> Datastore
Microservices Cloud Functions -> Datastore
Bots Cloud Functions
IoT device messages Cloud Pub/Sub -> Dataflow
NoSQL database Cloud Datastore
ETL Cloud Dataflow -> BigQuery
Blob file storage Cloud Storage
Analytics warehouse (SQL) BigQuery
Personalization Cloud Machine Learning Engine
@bretmcg

45. @bretmcg
Scale down to $zero*
Zero upfront provisioning
*storage
Manage zero servers
Serverless on Google Cloud

46. What we learned
● What is serverless?
● Serverless on Google Cloud
● Compare *aaSes
○ PaaS - App Engine
○ FaaS - Google Cloud
Functions
○ BaaS - Firebase
○ Managed services
● What to use?

47. Thank you!
Bret McGowen
@bretmcg