Architecture Pattern
Serverless Architecture
Code runs in response to events without your team provisioning or managing the underlying servers.
What it is
Functions run on demand, triggered by events (an HTTP request, a file upload, a schedule), and the cloud provider handles scaling and infrastructure. You pay for actual execution time rather than a server running continuously.
When to use it
For workloads that are event-driven or intermittent — API endpoints, scheduled jobs, webhook handlers — where you don't want to manage servers that sit idle most of the time.
Real tradeoffs
- —Removes server management entirely, but introduces cold-start latency and execution time limits that don't fit every workload
- —Cost-efficient for intermittent workloads; can become more expensive than a standard server for consistently high, steady traffic
- —Debugging and local testing are genuinely harder than a traditional always-on server
Related
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