Build Systems that Drive Business
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Serverless sessions

Serverless, the next phase of the ongoing migration of systems to the cloud, has now been around long enough for us to start getting a good handle on its promise, its limitations, and a few things to make us go ‘hmmm…’ The Serverless track at Velocity captures all of these elements—practical instruction; explorations of how we need to adapt our architecture and operations; and some ideas that are practical today, yet feel like a glimpse into the future.

Track host

Mike Roberts (Symphonia)Mike Roberts (Symphonia) is an engineering leader and co-founder of Symphonia, a serverless and cloud technology consultancy. Mike is a longtime proponent of Agile and DevOps values and is excited by the role that cloud technologies have played in enabling such values for many high-functioning software teams. He sees serverless architectures as the next technological evolution of cloud systems and is optimistic about their ability to help teams be awesome. Mike can be reached at mike@symphonia.io.

11:25am–12:05pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Crossing the serverless fireswamp
Location: 230 B Level: Advanced
Secondary topics: Systems Architecture & Infrastructure
Mike Roberts (Symphonia)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 2 ratings)
Mike Roberts leads a warts-and-all journey through some of the limitations of a serverless approach and shares a practical set of techniques for dealing with these concerns. Read more.
1:15pm–1:55pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Serverless SQL
Location: 230 B Level: Intermediate
Secondary topics: Systems Architecture & Infrastructure
Lynn Langit (Lynn Langit Consulting)
Average rating: ****.
(4.67, 3 ratings)
Serverless data access (via SQL and other data query/processing languages such as Spark) is fast becoming the norm. Lynn Langit compares the state of public cloud serverless SQL via AWS Athena, Google Big Query, and others and explores architectural patterns and examples of services for emerging serverless and data lake cloud pipelines. Read more.
2:10pm–2:50pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Tooling in the age of serverless computing
Location: 230 B Level: Intermediate
Secondary topics: Systems Architecture & Infrastructure
Donna Malayeri (Pulumi)
Tooling is necessary for serverless and service-full applications. Donna Malayeri shares a decision framework for choosing infrastructure deployment tools, based on whether you need flexibility and control or simplicity and ease-of-use. You'll learn how to evaluate several popular cloud automation tools, including AWS SAM, Terraform, Chalice, Serverless Framework, and more. Read more.
3:40pm–4:20pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Function composition in a serverless world
Location: 230 B Level: Intermediate
Secondary topics: Systems Architecture & Infrastructure
Soam Vasani (Platform9 Systems), Timirah James (Platform9 Systems)
FaaS functions are great for small functionality but not for complex real-world applications. Soam Vasani and Timirah James explore four available options for composing functions, along with a deep dive into workflows. Read more.
4:35pm–5:15pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
The state of statelessness
Location: 230 B Level: Intermediate
Secondary topics: Systems Monitoring & Orchestration
Erica Windisch (IOpipe)
Serverless and other stateless applications still manipulate state—somewhere. Erica Windisch explains why observing this state and knowing where, how, and why that state is manipulated is important for operational security and developer concerns such as debugging. Read more.