8 new facts to consider in the Serverless v Containers debate

It’s evident from the latest DataDog Survey that serverless computing has become a significant trend in modern computing, with organizations adopting various serverless offerings to build and manage applications. Read through our 8 facts that you need to consider next time the Serverless v Containers debate starts.

The report highlights several key insights:

Fact 1: Major Cloud Providers’ Serverless Adoption

• Adoption of serverless technologies has continued to grow across major cloud providers.
• Azure and Google Cloud have seen a growth rate of 6% and 7%, respectively, while AWS has seen a 3% growth rate.
• Over 70% of AWS customers and 60% of Google Cloud customers are using serverless solutions, while Azure follows closely at 49%.

Fact 2: Managed Container-Based Serverless Adoption

• Organizations are moving beyond traditional function-as-a-service (FaaS) solutions to container-based serverless workloads.
• Google Cloud leads in fully managed container-based serverless adoption with 66% of organizations using container-based solutions.
• AWS and Azure are also growing in this category, with 26% and 22% of organizations, respectively.

Fact 3: Emerging Serverless Platforms for Frontend Development

• Emerging cloud platforms like Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare, and Fastly offer specialized serverless compute capabilities.
• 7% of organizations are using these emerging platforms, with 62% using frontend development platforms and 39% using CDNs with edge compute capabilities.

Fact 4: AWS Lambda Language Usage

• Python and Node.js are the most popular languages for AWS Lambda functions.
• Java is the third most common language, followed by custom runtimes and Go.

Fact 5: AWS Lambda Cold Starts by Language

• Cold start durations vary by runtime. Java functions have the longest cold start durations, while Node.js and Python have shorter durations.
• Memory allocation affects cold start durations, with larger memory allocations reducing cold start times.

Fact 6: AWS Lambda on ARM Adoption

• Adoption of AWS Lambda functions on ARM-based Graviton2 processors has doubled in the past year.
• 11% of organizations are using ARM for Lambda functions, with 29% of ARM-eligible runtime functions running on ARM.

Fact 7: Preferred AWS Lambda Deployment Tools

• Terraform is preferred by larger organizations for deploying and managing AWS Lambda functions.
• Serverless Framework is popular among startup and serverless-only teams.

Fact 8: AWS Lambda Functions Connected to VPCs

• 65% of organizations have connected AWS Lambda functions to dedicated VPCs.
• VPCs offer granular network security and integration with existing infrastructure services.

These insights highlight the continued growth of serverless adoption across different cloud providers and showcase trends such as container-based serverless, emerging serverless platforms, language preferences for Lambda, cold start considerations, ARM adoption, deployment tool preferences, and VPC connectivity. Serverless computing is clearly transforming the way applications are built and managed in modern computing environments.