FaaS (Function as a Service)

FaaS (Function as a Service) is a cloud computing service model that allows developers to run event-triggered functions without managing servers. The cloud provider takes care of all server management, capacity planning, and resource allocation. The developer just focuses on writing the function code.

With FaaS, you deploy individual functions that run in response to events like HTTP requests, database changes, queue messages, etc. The functions execute in ephemeral containers that are spun up on-demand when the event occurs. This auto-scaling capability removes the need to provision and manage servers. FaaS is ideal for automating tasks, processing data streams, and building microservices architectures.

For example, you could use a FaaS function to resize images whenever they are uploaded to storage, trigger notifications on new user registrations, or append data to a database. Popular FaaS platforms include AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Microsoft Azure Functions. The pay-per-use pricing model of FaaS makes it very cost efficient for workloads that are intermittent or have variable traffic.