Add going serverless

content/posts/going-serverless.md

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+title = "Going serverless"
+date = "2020-06-03"
+author = "Aloïs Micard"
+authorTwitter = "" #do not include @
+cover = ""
+tags = ["Dev Ops"]
+keywords = ["", ""]
+description = ""
+showFullContent = false
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+
+I used to manage a dozen VPS since many years: Zabbix, Gitlab/Gitlab CI, [private docker registry](https://blog.creekorful.com/2020/01/harbor-private-docker-registry/), 
+production environment (3 nodes docker swarm cluster), database server (MariaDB & MongoDB), 
+blog server (running [Ghost](https://ghost.org/)), logs collector ([Graylog](https://www.graylog.org/)), etc...
+
+I was spending a consequent amount of money & time for all these VPS, and it was time to change.
+
+---
+
+# From Ghost to Hugo
+
+One of the most important thing I run is this blog. It was previously running on [Ghost](https://ghost.org).
+
+Ghost is a really powerful CMS, with membership support, built-in [WYSIWYG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG) markdown editor, etc...
+It's a really complete solution, open source, 100% free if self-hosted.
+
+## What's the problem then?
+
+The biggest problem with Ghost, is that since it's a CMS, it's not static:
+
+You need to have a running [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/) server, a proxy server such as [Nginx](https://www.nginx.com/),
+a database server, etc... For me it was too much for something that can be a plain static website.
+I was ready to lose their beautiful editor to save some money / time.
+
+## The alternative
+
+The alternative I have chosen is [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/).
+Hugo is a free & open source static website generator. (i.e it parses markdown files and generate HTML)
+
+It was a good alternative for me, since I already write all my blog posts in markdown. With Hugo no need to have
+a database server or even a VPS with Node.JS support! All you need is a hosting provider that can serve static content.
+
+[Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/) is a perfect fit.
+
+Netlify is a free platform that allows deploy of static content directly from Git,
+with custom domains, free HTTPS support & fast CDN.
+
+Basically you write your blog posts on your computer and previewed them locally, 
+once your done you push the changes to your Git repository, 
+Netlify bots pull them each time you push, 
+they run the ``hugo build`` command to generate the website, and finally publish the HTML/CSS/IMGs in their CDN.
+
+All for **FREE** (check their [pricing](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/) for more details).
+
+N.B: By default, Hugo will add the /posts/ prefix before all your blog posts. If like me you are migrating
+and don't want to lose your page rank, you'll need to make sure the new blog post URL is the same as the
+old one.
+
+---
+
+# What's next?
+
+## Netlify all the way
+
+I have decided to move all my static websites to Netlify, thus saving 2 VPS (Nginx & my custom load balancer).
+
+## Lamdba?
+
+For complex use case, such as running a Golang / Python API, I'll certainly use [AWS lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda).
+
+Their [pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/) is interesting:
+
+> The AWS Lambda free usage tier includes 1M free requests per month and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month.
+
+And it's quite performant. (While you'll certainly need to re-design your API, since Lambda are designed
+to hold a single responsibility. You'll need to split one API endpoint per Lambda function)
+
+---
+
+# Conclusion
+
+For static websites (plain html, Angular / React application / etc...) I'll certainly go with Netlify.
+
+For complex use case like API, I'll try to split my code into little functions that I'll deploy on AWS lambda,
+and if I need storage I'll pick up [Amazon DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/) which is available on the free tier.
+
+But if I was worried about my application data, or the source code being monitored / analyzed, I'll certainly move on
+self hosted solution, like a manually provisioned Docker Swarm cluster running on OVH servers.
+
+Happy hacking!