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I'm pleased to announce that my latest Pluralsight course, "Azure Serverless Compute Operations", is now available. In it I cover how to implement, configure, deploy and monitor Azure Functions applications.

Serverless Functions and Workflows in Azure

Azure Functions has been around for a while now and regular readers of my blog will know that it is one of my favourite Azure services (I've also created several other Pluralsight courses on it, most recently my Azure Functions Deep Dive). Its straightforward programming model with easy integrations and bindings to other Azure services makes it the obvious choice for many event-driven scenarios - whether all you need is a couple of scheduled jobs, or you want to handle high volumes of messages.

The serverless hosting model offers the benefits of being very cost-effective and supporting rapid and dynamic scaling. But it's not necessarily the right choice for every application, so one thing I really appreciate about Azure Functions is that you don't have to choose between the benefits of serverless versus having some always-ready instances. The Flex Consumption hosting plan gives you the freedom to choose what makes the most sense for your application.

Perhaps my favourite feature of Azure Functions is Durable Functions, which provides a way to create reliable, observable workflows with clear orchestration that solves many of the problems you can run into if you simply rely on chaining together message handlers (the "choreography" approach). It does take a bit of learning, but it opens up new workflow patterns (such as fan-out and fan-in), and gives you much more visibility and control if things go wrong. I've written about this before in The Case for Durable Workflows.

What's in the Course

Here's a quick overview of what I cover in the course...

I start with implementing Azure Functions, where I show how to get set up for development, create a new function app, and create timer, blob and queue triggered functions.

In understanding serverless I explain the various Azure Functions hosting plans and their trade-offs, and discuss the benefits of using Durable Functions for serverless workflows.

I then move on to deploying Azure Functions, showing how to use Bicep and the Azure CLI to deploy a Flex Consumption plan and its associated resources, and then how to publish your code, test your function and update your app.

Finally, I cover operating Azure Functions, where I demonstrate how to monitor with Azure Monitor, configure scaling, and handle various kinds of failure (including in Durable Functions), as well as showing some troubleshooting tips for dealing with permissions issues and how to set up more secure connections using managed identities and RBAC.

So if you're a Pluralsight subscriber, do check out Azure Serverless Compute Operations.