Written by Rohit Chavan
Thursday, April 07, 2022
A new era of serverless computing is here with simulationHub
By
Rohit Chavan & Manish Kamath
Written by Manish Kamath
Introduction to Serverless Computing
The concept of serverless computing is one of cloud computing execution where the cloud service provider allocates machine resources as needed, outsourcing the servers to their customers. Servers still run code on behalf of developers, so to say that cloud providers use serverless technology is false. However, developers of serverless applications do not have to worry about capacity planning, configuration, management, maintenance, fault tolerance, or scaling of containers, virtual machines, or physical servers
Cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, and Google cloud offer serverless computing, hidden beneath abstractions, to provide a simple way for developers to execute computer programs on-demand based on defined events. Cloud service providers handle server management tasks such as scaling up and down based on demand, security checking, updates, and optimization.
From the developer's perspective, No server exists, so we can concentrate on implementing business logic more efficiently, creating a clean architecture, and optimizing core algorithms.
What is its significance?
Early in the history of cloud-based web applications, users who wanted to build a web application had to maintain their data servers, which was cumbersome and expensive. In addition to scalability and flexibility, serverless computing enables developers to release new software features faster. As a result, the software engineer can spend more time developing apps and less time maintaining servers. Deploying code to production can be streamlined with serverless computing.
Developers used to maintain servers for data, APIs, computation, and content delivery in the old way of developing web applications. Serverless added two benefits - one for business, which reduces costs dramatically with a Pay-As-You-Use model, meaning we are paying only for the CPU resources we use. The second benefit is for developers who can build the application productively and with peace of mind as regular maintenance of the server is offloaded to cloud providers. As a result, software developers work in a simple cycle of Code, Test, Deploy and Relax.
Benefits
Serverless computing offers a number of advantages over traditional cloud-based or server eccentric architecture. As a result, it is possible to establish what is essentially a virtual office, which allows you to get in touch with your business from anywhere. Nowadays, a growing number of web-enabled devices are being used in business environments (e.g. smartphones, tablets), making it even easier for you to access your data.
Serverless computing offers a lot of advantages over traditional cloud computing architecture
Peace of Mind for developers
One of the benefits of serverless computing is developer peace of mind. The following examples reduce stress - On launch day, developers don't have to worry about application performance because it will automatically scale up and down based on demand. Installing the latest OS security patches and upgrades is not necessary for developers. Furthermore, being down for unknown reasons is not a problem. It increases productivity.
Fail Fast for Business Heads
Business heads can imagine the benefits of working with a fresh mind and high-productivity developers. As development and deployment processes are streamlined, they are given an advantage in time to market. It reduces the gap between idea and implementation. They can cultivate a fail-fast mentality by trying out different ideas and going to market quickly to validate them with users. User feedback will allow them to pivot and create improved versions if it fails.
Low Cost
Application development without servers helps the company pay according to the actual cloud usage, the actual pay-as-you-go model.
Traditional web applications require you to host database servers, application servers, and many others. Cloud providers charge by the number of hours/days the servers run. For serverless applications, we only pay for the CPU cores used. If these cores are idle, there's no charge. Focus shifts from hours of allocation of infrastructure resources to hours of usage of infrastructure resources.
Why will it save cost ? Depending on the type of application, we have active users at night or at day time, on weekdays or weekends, in Asia or Europe. The charges for dedicated servers are round-the-clock in addition to many redundant servers based on location, unlike serverless where we pay when our program is running near the user location and not on all servers. Consequently, speed is improved and latency reduced.
Traditional web applications require you to host database servers, application servers, and many others. Cloud providers charge by the number of hours/days the servers run. For serverless applications, we only pay for the CPU cores used. If these cores are idle, there's no charge. Focus shifts from hours of allocation of infrastructure resources to hours of usage of infrastructure resources.
Why will it save cost ? Depending on the type of application, we have active users at night or at day time, on weekdays or weekends, in Asia or Europe. The charges for dedicated servers are round-the-clock in addition to many redundant servers based on location, unlike serverless where we pay when our program is running near the user location and not on all servers. Consequently, speed is improved and latency reduced.
simulationHub
simulationHub Web Services
SimulationHub provides easy-to-use cloud-based CFD applications that run on web browsers and offers the ability to perform CFD calculations in a fully managed and scalable cloud infrastructure. This platform enables a variety of APIs for rapidly developing and deploying CFD simulation apps. The valve industry, building design & exterior wind comfort are all hosted on simulationHub. These applications optimize the workflow for a variety of industrial challenges.
Products offered by simulationHub
Autonomous HVAC CFD (AHC)
Leverage the power of autonomous HVAC CFD to design an efficient HVAC system for achieving indoor air quality and occupant thermal comfort
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Autonomous Valve CFD (AVC)
Get CV, KV performance curves within minutes for your valve design. An automated CFD
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Pedestrian Comfort Analysis (PCA)
Evaluate pedestrian comfort & safety in an urban environment. A must-have app for architects, environmental engineers & urban planners.
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simulationhub AWS integration
Platform Integration
simulationHub platform has worked closely with AWS since its inception. It has leveraged many AWS services to build the First CFD SaaS platform with the vision to democratize the technology. Migrating to serverless computing has indeed been an incredibly seamless, fast, and effective way of building SaaS because of the modular design of simulationHub's web services to take the benefit of event-driven architecture. The development of new products and adding new features has accelerated as we have shifted focus to building what customers need, whereas AWS handles a serverless architecture that enables us to run our software efficiently. The shift to serverless computing will allow simulationHub to capture AEC domains faster as it develops applications.
Services used of Amazon
Amazon Web Services has built serverless services at three stack levels, compute, integration, and data store, making it easy to build modern cloud applications using a serverless first strategy.
AWS serverless services used by simulationHub
AWS Lambda
The AWS Lambda service enables users to run their functions without managing any servers. It is an event-driven architecture that can trigger functions on over 200 servers in the cloud.The system allows users to pay only for compute time using their customized RAM allocation. The software is compatible with most available programming languages like java, c#, javascript, and python with memory provisioning of 10GB for a maximum of 15 minutes.
Amazon API Gateway
Developers can connect non-AWS applications to AWS back-end resources, such as code and servers. AWS customers now have easier access to compatible applications and other Amazon cloud services. Application program interfaces (APIs) allow software programs to communicate, making them more functional. APIs are created, managed, and maintained by AWS users within the Amazon API Gateway.
AWS Step Function
The AWS Step Functions feature enables you to automate workflows in resilient ways. Step Function workflows include error handling, parameter passing, recommended security settings, and state management, which save you a lot of time writing and maintaining code.
AWS Cognito
Amazon Cognito is a user identity and data synchronization service that enables you to securely manage and sync app data across your users' mobile devices. Several public login providers (Amazon, Facebook, and Google) allow you to create unique identities for users and support unauthenticated guests. Amazon Cognito allows saving all types of data in the AWS Cloud, such as app preferences or game states, without writing any code or managing any infrastructure. The focus is on creating great app experiences rather than having to worry about building and managing a backend system to manage identity management, network state, storage, and sync.
Amazon S3
The Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a cloud storage service that provides the highest level of security, scalability, and performance available. All kinds of businesses can store and protect data on Amazon S3, including data lakes, websites, mobile applications, backups and restores, archives, and enterprise applications. A key feature of Amazon S3 is its management capabilities permit users to organize, optimize, and configure access to their data, depending on specific business, organizational, and compliance requirements.
Amazon SNS
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) is a fully-managed messaging service that supports both application-to-application (A2A) and person-to-person (P2P) communication. This feature provides topics for many-to-many, push-based, high-throughput messages between distributed applications, microservices, and event-driven serverless applications. A2P provides the ability to send messages to users at scale via SMS, mobile push, or email.
Amazon SQS
SQS (Amazon Simple Queue Service) is a fully managed message queuing service that allows you to decouple and scale microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications. With SQLS, you can eliminate the complexity of managing and operating message-oriented middleware, so developers can concentrate on creating new products. SQS offers two types of message queues. Standard queues guarantee maximum throughput, best-effort ordering, and delivery at least once. SQS FIFO queues guarantee message processing exactly once, in the exact order that it is sent.
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB differs from other Amazon services by allowing developers to choose their service based on throughput rather than storage. Automatic scaling of the database occurs in Auto Scaling mode. Data and traffic can be distributed across several servers using solid-state drives, enabling DynamoDB to provide predictable performance. It also integrates with Hadoop via Elastic MapReduce.
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