Overview

Azure Functions

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Followers705

Votes62

Zappa

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Followers99

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Azure Functions vs Zappa: What are the differences?

Introduction

Azure Functions and Zappa are both frameworks used for serverless computing. They have some key differences that differentiate them from each other.

Deployment and Scaling: One key difference between Azure Functions and Zappa is in how they handle deployment and scaling. Azure Functions is a service provided by Microsoft Azure that automatically scales based on the number of triggers and events. This allows for efficient resource allocation and cost optimization. On the other hand, Zappa is primarily used with AWS Lambda, which also has automatic scaling capabilities. However, Zappa requires manual configuration for scaling based on the expected traffic load.
Supported Platforms: Azure Functions is a cloud-based service provided by Microsoft Azure and supports various programming languages such as C#, JavaScript, PowerShell, Python, and others. It can be integrated with other Azure services and APIs. Zappa, on the other hand, is specifically designed for Python applications and is mainly used with AWS Lambda. It provides easy deployment and management for Python web applications.
Pricing Structure: Azure Functions offers a consumption-based pricing model, which means that you only pay for the resources used during the execution of your functions. This can be cost-effective for applications with occasional or unpredictable loads. Zappa, on the other hand, follows AWS Lambda pricing, where you pay for the number of requests and the time it takes to execute the functions. This can be advantageous for applications with consistent loads as you can allocate resources accordingly.
Integration with Azure Services: Azure Functions being a service provided by Microsoft Azure, offers seamless integration with other Azure services and APIs, such as Azure Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Event Grid, and more. This allows developers to easily build scalable applications by leveraging the power of these services. Zappa, however, is more focused on integration with AWS services, such as AWS S3, Amazon DynamoDB, and others.
Serverless Architecture: Both Azure Functions and Zappa are serverless computing frameworks, but they have different approaches to how the functions are invoked. Azure Functions provide various triggers, such as HTTP triggers, timer triggers, and more, to invoke the functions based on events. Zappa, on the other hand, is primarily focused on web applications and uses WSGI (Web Server Gateway Interface) to handle requests and invoke the corresponding functions.
Development and Deployment Process: Azure Functions provide a more integrated development experience with the Azure portal, Visual Studio, and Azure DevOps. It offers easy management and monitoring capabilities. Zappa, on the other hand, provides command-line tools for deployment and management of Python web applications. It integrates well with frameworks like Flask and Django, providing a streamlined development and deployment experience for Python developers.

In Summary, Azure Functions and Zappa have key differences in deployment and scaling, supported platforms, pricing structure, integration with services, serverless architecture, and development/deployment processes.

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Advice on Azure Functions, Zappa

Mark

Nov 2, 2020

Needs adviceon

Microsoft Azure

Need advice on what platform, systems and tools to use.

Evaluating whether to start a new digital business for which we will need to build a website that handles all traffic. Website only right now. May add smartphone apps later. No desktop app will ever be added. Website to serve various countries and languages. B2B and B2C type customers. Need to handle heavy traffic, be low cost, and scale well.

We are open to either build it on AWS or on Microsoft Azure.

Apologies if I'm leaving out some info. My first post. :) Thanks in advance!

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Detailed Comparison

Azure Functions	Zappa
Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.	Zappa makes it super easy to deploy all Python WSGI applications on AWS Lambda + API Gateway. Think of it as "serverless" web hosting for your Python web apps. That means infinite scaling, zero downtime, zero maintenance - and at a fraction of the cost of your current deployments!
Easily schedule event-driven tasks across services;Expose Functions as HTTP API endpoints;Scale Functions based on customer demand;Develop how you want, using a browser-based UI or existing tools;Get continuous deployment, remote debugging, and authentication out of the box	-
Statistics
Stacks 785	Stacks 68
Followers 705	Followers 99
Votes 62	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Pay only when invoked 11 Great developer experience for C# 9 Multiple languages supported 7 Great debugging support 5 Can be used as lightweight https service Cons 1 Poor support for Linux environments 1 Sporadic server & language runtime issues 1 Not suited for long-running applications 1 No persistent (writable) file system available	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Azure DevOps Java Bitbucket Node.js Microsoft Azure GitHub Visual Studio Code JavaScript Azure Cosmos DB C#	Amazon API Gateway AWS Lambda

What are some alternatives to Azure Functions, Zappa?

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

Serverless

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

Cloud Functions for Firebase

Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you create functions that are triggered by Firebase products, such as changes to data in the Realtime Database, uploads to Cloud Storage, new user sign ups via Authentication, and conversion events in Analytics.

AWS Batch

It enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. It dynamically provisions the optimal quantity and type of compute resources (e.g., CPU or memory optimized instances) based on the volume and specific resource requirements of the batch jobs submitted.