Jeff Hollan on Azure Functions and Serverless - Episode 61

This week, Jeff Hollan is joining the podcast! Jeff is a Principal Program Manager on the Azure Functions team. He is always developing and shipping solutions on the latest and greatest tech, and is passionate about speaking at conferences around the world — he truly lives and breathes all things serverless!

Jeff will be sharing tons of information about Azure Functions and the landscape of serverless on this episode! He shares how to start with going serverless and navigating the many different ways to do it, and gives his recommendations on where to get started with Azure Functions if you've never written a function before. Jeffrey and Jeff also trace through the DevOps lifecycle for a function — really digging as to not miss any important details!

Topics of Discussion:

[:40] Be sure to visit AzureDevOps.Show for past episodes and show notes!

[:48] Jeffrey gives a few quick announcements.

[:55] About today's guest, Jeff Hollan.

[1:13] Jeffrey welcomes Jeff to the show!

[1:31] Jeff shares his career journey up to this point in time.

[3:22] Jeff speaks about what is new in serverless as well as the options that people should be paying attention to these days!

[4:55] Without Visual Studio, can a function just be PowerShell?

[6:25] With there being so many different ways now to do serverless, how do you even choose?

[9:17] Can you write some code as an Azure function but then install it as a regular Windows service inside of an on-premise VM?

[11:06] When would Jeff say not to use Azure Functions and would alternatively recommend something else?

[13:58] What is the deployable package format that is best for deployability to an Azure function resource in Azure?

[18:30] A word from the Azure DevOps Podcast's sponsor: Clear Measure.

[19:00] Jeffrey gives some more announcements and lets you know where to get a hold of his book, .NET DevOps for Azure.

[20:50] Jeff shares the recommended way of creating Azure resources for the environments.

[23:26] In Jeff's opinion, is it a better pattern to deploy the command lines for tweaks and modifications to your Azure functions' resource at the same time you deploy the application changes? Or, is it better to have a separate pipeline?

[25:11] Does the slot concept work the same way as Azure Websites or are there any differences?

[28:00] For those who haven't used slots before, Jeffrey asks Jeff: 'If someone has a production environment, a UAT environment, and two other environments, are they creating one Azure function with 8 slots or do they need a separate Azure function per environment? Is there a general rule of thumb?

[30:55] Jeff speaks about when and why functions can go cold.

[32:25] With Azure Functions, what are the configurations to choose to just play around with it for as-close-to-free as possible?

[34:05] Jeff speaks about what's coming down the pipeline that people should be keeping an eye out for!

[35:34] If you've never written a function, Jeff recommends some go-to resources to get started with!

Mentioned in this Episode:

Azure DevOps

Clear Measure (Sponsor)

Microsoft Ignite 2019

Party with Palermo - Microsoft Ignite Conference 2019 (Eventbrite)

Special pre-release offer that expires Nov. 2nd: email Jeffrey at [email protected] and tell him who his very first guest on the podcast was then he'll send you a free e-book copy!

.NET DevOps for Azure: A Developer's Guide to DevOps Architecture the Right Way, by Jeffrey Palermo — Pre-order on Amazon here!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsebook — Click here to download the .NET DevOps for Azure ebook!

bit.ly/dotnetdevopsbookforcommunity — Visit to get your hands on two free books to give away at conferences or events!

Jeffrey's .NET DevOps Bootcamp (Oct. 28-30th, in Lakeway, TX)

Jeffrey Palermo's Youtube

Jeffrey Palermo's Twitter — Follow to stay informed about future events!

.NET Conf 2019

Jeff Hollan's Blog

Jeff Hollan's Twitter: @JeffHollan
Azure Functions

Python

Docs.Microsoft.com

Microsoft Learn