Build Efficient & Cost Effective Solutions Using Azure Functions by Prakash Tripathi

Thanks everyone for joining and thanks to

Esha Connor and and this entire team for organizing this Azure conference and having me here so this will be talking about how we can build

effective and efficient solutions using Azure functions of course we'll start with some context about serverless computing and how Azure functions fits

in there we'll talk a brief about its your functions and we'll take some

real use case that you know how a different function can be used to make

solutions cost-effective okay this is pretty much about at a high level you

know who am I and what did I do I think Stefan anyway I talked about it if you

want to follow me on Twitter here you can and you know we can have a chat

later okay without any further details what's going okay I know there were a bunch of talk

talk around this year and you might have of course might have seen this slide or something similar

slides which talks about or is pass for the serverless but just a brief in case you you

are joining the sessions as a fresh or now so of course you know pass is there in the system from

uh longer than serverless serverless is a bit uh modern uh flavor on on top of uh pass if i say

so of course if you look at all the services so we have is pass serverless you know sas of course

um so of course below this there's something called on like you know how you have everything

your own uh like bare metal or something like that so so basically what happens is that if you look

at the right side of diagram or I mean look the overlap of these two so certainly this is something

that gives you a little more abstraction on top of pass okay in pass you care about data and maybe

to extend you care about configurations some kind of settings that hey I want to scale my app on

when my, you know, either loads become or number of users are of certain number or my CPU utilization goes x times or my, you know, my storage or space becomes this much

So, it's been something new machine or something like that. In some or less, you need to care even those things

So application settings and basically settings or configuration things is also taken care and you just need to care about your pure application logic and nothing else

So everything goes, everything's basically, you know, takes care of its own

So you need to at least, the developer needs to worry, you know, least on this particular platform on serverless

Okay. Okay, moving on, serverless computing of course, you know, what is that

So there is a little bit of, sometimes people pick the serverless on a little sense and

they assume that, hey, there is no server at all. Of course, it's not for you as a developer, but it has to be there somewhere and it is

there as well. It is not visible to you, of course, because you don't have to care or you don't have to manage it

But it is there somewhere to help you write the code or take care about the application you care about

How it is helping? Because since I don't take care of configuration and multiple other things

It is easier to go to market, it is easier to code, easier to scale and what exactly we

want most of the time. And most importantly, from a dollar or from cost perspective also, it is better because

you really need to pay for the time you're going to use any resource, not like you need

to own it and you need to pay even if you're not using

So it is like more aligned on a piece of pay and use instead of owning something and just

keep for the sake of it and paying without it is actually being used

So serverless computing gives you that power as a developer or as an admin or as a whoever

owner or founder of any firm that you just need to pay for something that you are actually

going to use. Of course, we talked about some of the benefits of serverless computing

So you don't have to care about infrastructure, of course. Scalability is dynamic

If we compare with PaaS, we already need to put some setting in place that, hey, I want

scalability to begin on certain threshold, whether it's a scale up or scale out, but

you need to define some rules there. it's all dynamic of course since it is the focus is more on application and

logic instead of anything else so you will be faster to market and and I said

about cost that you're going to pay for the time you're not using any particular

source so you're you're more efficient using resources and you're paying for

the actual use okay okay now coming to the the the topic of this day about as

your function so it's your function as the implementation of serverless computing in Microsoft Azure and it lets you create serverless functions where

we just create some event driven kind of you know you just logic and either it

is triggered by some upstream or you can write some independent code as well that is triggered

by either some HTTP calls or it can be just simple as a timer and it is running on certain time

So it could be anything of that nature. We'll talk more as it progress

So basically, it is like you're writing not so thick logic, but it's like dividing logic into different pieces

And, you know, sometimes people loosely call it a nano service as well

So you just write a code that is that is there for certain business logic

And either it is running independently or it is integrated with certain upstream or even some downstream

So, you know, it is kind of, there are binding created. So it is getting triggered on certain actions from a stream and it is doing certain jobs

after, after completion. So all those scenarios can be, can be put together on this Azure function

Okay. Talking a little bit more on them. So as we, we can say that some residual functions or methods are put together into, into Azure

functions as the name suggests. and basically the concept of software development is reusability

So that is also being addressed with that, that you just put together something into your functions

and it can be used by multiple consumers of that particular logic

Some example could be that maybe some share market or kind of service

or some weather kind of service that the logic is there and it's just being used and, you know

there could be multiple consumers, okay. Event-driven we are saying because, of course

it can be configured to run, you know, on every minute or it can also be configured to run as some event

So, once something happens to that, those kind of scenarios come into play

on this kind of implementation, okay. Typically, it is designed to keep not so big code so that it is completing within a few minutes

Use cases where you want to run something for very long. Of course, in your template, we also got something called, they call it, you know

orchestrator kind of functions, durable functions, where you can expect those functions to do a little longer job

but in principle in ideal cases or in most of the cases one wants to go with some logic that is finishing in a few minutes maximum a few minutes maybe a few seconds as well

What are different things that are supported? Microsoft Azure is not just about .NET platform

It is it is to open source now from several years rather so

In the workload you have, there is typical my.net or Python or PHP

JavaScript, PowerShell, you know, all kind of all kind of basically with Java

all kind of language of platforms are supported. So you don't need to really know.net or C sharp

in order to work in, in order to write code in your functions. You can write pretty much what you

know and and I have highlighted something called CRM it is pretty popular in Linux

word or bash command or open of those commands so you can configure the timing

or like scheduling part you know using CRM expressions they can very much be

used and they're pretty easy way to schedule certain you know they're gonna

timeout kind of scenarios you can use and and you can have you have this this

thing set up yeah we talked about several as the functions and let's talk

about actually where it is used in real world right so for those on those to

those scenario where when you want to go for a dual function so I was talking

about what could be like, you know, you want a scheduler or some kind of timer to run on

For example, you want some mail to be sent, maybe let's say 10 a.m. or daily

or 10 a.m. Monday or whatever, right? You can set up those kind of logic in a timer function

So timer is one of the functions available for function app, one of the template

or type available for functionality right and that can help us this can help us on this kind

of scenario other could be that you want to do again uh for example once some document somebody

awarded on sharepoint you want to trigger some mail or you want to trigger uh certain uh other

you know actions like you want to insert some data into table or any income that anything uh

the required business case for you you can do that as well so it is like integrating upstream

system and down system and also those kind of use cases are supported uh a third example could be

for example you want to do certain actions on some message got at dinner in a you know in queue or

or something some notification came in uh on on this queuing scenario and those kind of things so

even though they're supported so it's pretty much most of the use cases if not all are supported

here and they're adding keep on adding multiple capabilities as i said recently not too recently

but yeah it is uh this is something called durable functions because there was a requirement from

developers community that hey we need something that can fit in for longer running uh scenarios

like orchestration scenarios where something is not completely competing in minutes but it is maybe

you know maybe 10 minutes or half an hour it is like long running kind of

thing so you should have something so they can have a durable function capability also okay we talked about this like for example timer based

processing some event processing you're doing or okay now you know like a stream

or okay enough scenario you can put together as you can say it is like 365

or so different integration points also available here so it's not just like

typical timer or HTTP or API kind of scenario but even even multiple business

process can also be indicated here you know with Azure functions kind of

template that we have this point there are many however I just put together the

the most commonly used could be timer could basically triggers blob event service for something

happening or some message added and you go to something so all kind of web hooks yeah so all

those kind of scenario commonly used of course there are more if you go to a job site you'll

find a big list i just put together as i said some mostly commonly used ones so yeah so as you

see like you know generally what we want to do on certain scenarios on on this case you know you

will get something of tablet there and just click it and you will you will get some kind of maybe

hello work enough easier example to explain you what exactly you know is being done there and you

can you can integrate you can make it make it more you can extend it based on your requirement and and

you know for real world application yeah okay uh how this function looks like right under the hood

what exactly it has so of course it has uh runtime it has to have the right how would it run um of

course when you get a function i would ask you whether you want dot and score you want java you

want python ruby php you need to tell actually to you know when you create a function so for example

I have some demo for this core so it will have a code dependency on time of course only it can it

knows that I'm gonna write C sharp language or C sharp program right then there's some configuration

they get to you know bindings basically that what if in case I have I have to get some you know or

I want this to be run this function to be done on certain triggers like some message came in my queue

or some service bus basically got triggered or something like that so those kind of configuration

needs to be there and and in the you know the top most thing where that comes to us is is a code right

the real code what i want to do when this particular function is you know getting called okay

so basically these three things together make this uh the function but but generally developers cares

about code and in some cases maybe configuration yeah dependencies are taken care of by the platform itself so you just need to select what kind of

platform you're targeting to and it will be taken care automatically for you we

talked about upstream downstream typically here the causes of from bindings basically there are things but like upstream monster systems like how

you want to connect your Azure functions so you know whether you want certain logic to be executed

on some messages it says some message came in your queue you want to know certain in team to the

tables you want to send some notifications on you know push notifications so open up bindings and

again some could be triggered like you know something happened at this point some could be

like some data came as input or something is going as the outputs all all those kind of scenarios

Like it would be bi-directional, of course, which is both input output. All those settings go into the function configuration

and you can do that. We'll be looking into this demo on how this looks like. OK

Coming to testing part, so it is fairly easy. You can test on the portal itself

although you can also test on a bunch of other tools available like post-manager, API kind of things

also have some plugins like you know they call it uh adjust for those kind of plugins in a studio

you can you can pull it and you can this so there are a bunch of things available for testing

okay now the crucial part of the talk right uh is it really cost effective or yes

do i have an example for it yeah i do okay how it looks like real example

let's talk it take a scenario so i have a i need to build i got a requirement that

of course this requirement when i when i talk about cost of course our example of course gonna

be that the person or the uh you know company is is fairly new and you know they want their cost

cost effective routes of getting a premium one And they want to go with maybe free know free or maybe to extend D when they call it there are some charge it not to be

quickly free in the plan and what they want is that they want to build a

cellular okay or timer so example they want to send mail to all the for example

it's a startup you know just maybe five people right so they want to send some enough task hey guys this task for you maybe daily 9 a.m whatever so so this is a requirement they

have and of course you know it needs to run otherwise how it will take automatically the

the next day nine right it has to run continuously right so and of course as i said the company is

fairly new um it does it it does not it can't afford the over budget and you know it's trying

a free tier or maybe D1 they call it a bit of price, you can't afford, you know, basic

standard or of course premium is not an option anymore. So, suppose this kind of setup you have and you created a job and, you know, here things

goes, things become interesting that, you know, in order to have a continuous run, you

need to basically however always on feature okay otherwise you can't run and

you know what this always on feature comes with minimum basic plan it doesn't

come with either free or D1 so you have no choice now you're you're stuck right

so you can't you can't have a bad job because you you did not buy for either

basic or standard or premium tier you are just free or maybe to the max even

and then you can go to as you see the pictures it gives you that you know you

have always on and for always on if you go to Microsoft Docs will find this

coming to you over there it will say hey your web app can be time out after 20

minute of activity if you don't do anything and you've got to have always

on and this feature is available on what as I said basic isn't that in Premiere

forget about f1 or D1 okay so what next for the savior so see there is function is your bedrock timer function that they're

not sorry is type over here so it's your function and a function okay web jaws was

the previous one where you we couldn't got a stuck and you can't really because

you you did not get up you know the premium tier so so a job function timer

from a timer timer function of a job function is a savior for you you can have

a shared expression similar with that job and we're good to go we'll see in a

demo in a while yeah let's jump to the demo now guys I hope I have time so yeah

So let me share. Simone, you're there, right? Yes, I'm there

Okay. Let me... Simone, you're there? Yes, I'm there. I think I just shared the deck, not the entire screen

So let me stop and quickly I'll open up for demo actually

Okay. Mm-hmm. So screen. Entire desktop. Where is that? Oh, is this

The first option. Right? Okay. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. I'll go with this

Learning new tools every day. Yeah. Here we go. So my machine is visible, I guess

Is it? Yeah. Your portal is visible. Oh, nice. Yeah. That's what I wanted to show. Okay

I get in just a time I get two demos before this call

So one is to talk about the constraint that was there. You know, that is kind of a, they said

I chose the basic tier or the free or shared tier and how I can be blocked if I don't use

in this case the function, right? So as you see here, this is my web job, you know

and it is pending restart. Why so? Let's go to log. okay select this and go to logs and you're gonna see what I just told you okay

what is saying saying guys forget this can run why because it doesn't appear to

be having this always on and blah blah and looks like you this feature is

available only in basic is in here and premium right forget about the shared and

free you you you it's not for you simple okay how I can look into this right so

let's go a little deeper so this my app service and what I'm going to do is

let's go on overview and and go to your plan as you can see it is free right it

it is free and if you go to configuration here, so we go there, it doesn't come in here one sec

So it comes into here configuration. And if you go inside general setting where

typically it's allow us to change this thing, look at here, it is simple for me

The reason is I'm a free tier guy in this case. Okay, so it is not for me

Then what is there for me? This is savior for me. So savior for me is Azure function and let's quickly look

Oh, I need to, what happened? Let me log in again. Okay

So the second example talk about how we can do this. How can I achieve this with Azure function

So I have, you know, I have, let me go to my own sources

I'll show quickly to you. So I have two app service. One is for, I just showed you

and another is for this one. So this app service, and this service again

has a free only, if you look at, how you can look at, let it load basically

So it is free. Come on, so yeah, see it is free only, okay

It's free tier. So how can I make it work in this case

and don't lose my requirements so this is my app uh is your function app service and this is the

app i created timer function okay when you create a timer function it will let you define how exactly

you want so i was showing you you guys the template so there are a bunch of templates here

and currently we're interested in this one timer so i if i can select timer so here it will let me

choose what schedule and the name so since I already have so I'm just going

to cancel I just want to show how it looks like okay so it is enabled let me

double click here and go into more details of how it looks like so as you

see it is okay so the CRN expression as you were seeing it was like every five

minute runs okay so I think maybe few hours back I spend this so let me go to

monitor I should have some message coming in oh yeah I ran bunch of times I

think it is running a bit five times so as you see look at the time guys here so

yeah so it is it has run 14 so I think it is taking UTC time here so I guess

what's UTC right now okay whatever so it is looks like it ran 419 59

basically 420 okay so now it will run as you see it is running every five minute

so and and it is running that's what I wanted and what message it is printing

hello Prakash it's your function timer so it is running actually every five

minute in in my free tier so it is doing my job whereas if you look at this guy

this is the job and it is saying hey you are not eligible you need to have this

is premium right Manually it can run yes And I run myself manually just for testing So if you look at some message will come in the down somewhere that you know hello Prakash Yeah hello Prakash came in but it was a manual run It can run automatic because always on is not on and always not on has to have this kind of your plan Whereas in this case timer case you don really need and you can go ahead or work around this case with

with Azure Function and timer template or timer type of Azure Function

where you can have a pre-tier and you can do the job, right

So we wanted that, you know, the requirement was the timer function

If I come back to my deck, what was the requirement? The requirement was that, hey, I just need, you know

a scheduler, I need, I'm in free tier, and, you know, I want continuously run

So basically every five minutes is fine. I can even reduce to one minute, right

So it is running continuously. Okay, so who said to me, so the function timer job saved me

So yeah, that's good. That's what I wanted. Okay, since I have time

so let me also talk a little more on this. I had some slides there for remaining time

So we'll talk more about the function. So demo is covered. Now let's talk about some little more deeper architecture side that given the Azure products

if I have been tasked to, hey, Prakash, you just come up with some kind of solution architecture

and you got to use Microsoft products as much as possible. And you also try to have a Azure function somewhere embedded and I need to come up with architecture

And these are some of the products or whatever you call it, capabilities or whatever you call it, I am about to use

So how I can proceed about it? So let's build some context here

So as an architect, I need to look into different things that how my sequence of communication is going to be

and what different building blocks needs to be there and what will be stored at what time and what product will have those

capabilities all kind of you know I need to have a big picture so I started

having those those basically what I call scenarios I put together it so how is

how gonna look like so you should be existing the web app in browsers and

and will have a signed feature typical to any e-commerce site I need to show

some product images of course I will be interested on putting them on or taking

them from CDN for faster access and yeah you know I should be able to query or

search different products and I may be interested on storing them into the

SQL database or SQL Azure in this case. What else? I want a product when I click

it should go to some kind of a queue so that it is there

and I can just keep shuffling it if I want to remove or add

those kind of thing. For performance reason, I may want to cache some data so that it is not going to

the back end every time and response is good. this could be capability

I want some logic to be built in so that when I click on pay order

or pay, all the items in my bucket or bin are based on the rates

or taxes, whatever. It is giving me the final amount, right, net price

And of course, this should also be capable to talk to some payment provider and upon

successful it should be able to make an entry into some persistent storage maybe database again or if

it is failure so the failure notification or the cause of the failure should be also be noted

somewhere so this is my requirement now how I'm gonna you know plug those requirements and put

together okay so usually comes in a browser of course there's a first

section CDNs storing my static images for for faster retrieval I have MFA for

extra security then I want to have basically so if you look at the

sequencing so that could be that you know then there's only even be login

right so you want to sell something you know any any any categories suppose I

want to get a phone so I'll be searching some model or some you know some phone

or brand so it should have it should load some data right so it will make a

maybe some search call and it will bring all those products of what my what I put

together in the UI so it needs to you know maybe typically it comes from

persistence so as initially at least literate passes but initially it comes

from back-end so SQL database can be the good option here how blob is coming so

blob is coming like you know I'm just keep playing about different items back

and forth I'm not sure maybe I I'm going to use our phone to to buy so maybe I'm

suffering like initially selecting Sun and the leader something else like that

I also want to cache so that my next response, if I'm searching something similar, it is

not again coming from backend, it is kind of returned from cache

Okay. I want some logic to be there so that when I'm clicking on paste, it is able to calculate

my entire amount and it is talking to or able to talk different like provider it

could be up I could bring thing else the bank or debit or whatever and in the end

it is also making an entry to the percentage stories like for example

sequel in this case so that I have a you know reference that what happened to

that order whether it's got success or failure or yeah so this how so how this

engine function is coming so if you look at it right it is what where you have

basket and it is it is calculating each line item on that basket and it is it

has the logic to get the the rate prevailing rate on certain if it is a

global sites of certain country and taxes and maybe discount, right? All those calculations can be put together into the function

Okay. Because it's like a state less, it will change based on the user

It is not something, you know, it will be like what you've chosen on your, your

side and it will give you the, the, the amount based on what you selected or what

you're buying rather. And so, you know, it can, it has the logic built in and it can give, give

the final amount that hey this is what you have you're buying and this is your

final value right so this kind of so you can be put together into into function

and also you can make a call to the to the payment provider and and has ability

to you know basically store the response of that payment provider into the

database in this case okay I have I hope I have time yeah I do a minute so I

I think I'm on time so guys these additional resources I use myself to

learn and on this so you can also find you know in these slides can be shared

later so you can if you want to can so thanks again this time I had and I think

I was able to meet the time and for any additional queries guys this is my

editor handle I generally able to respond to the faster than other

communication so use in case you want to talk to me later thanks thanks again for

decisions and having me see one over to you