Container Governance vs Serverless Governance

Governance is essential in any organization for smooth and effective functioning. The cloud computing industry is no different, and governance is crucial to ensure proper usage of computing resources, compliance with regulatory requirements, data security, and accountability. Container and serverless are two of the most popular compute options in cloud computing.

In this article, we will compare container governance and serverless governance, touching on their similarities and differences. We will provide you with factual, unbiased information that will help you make an informed decision on which governance model to choose.

Container Governance

Containers in cloud computing provide an efficient way to deploy and run applications. Container governance is the ability to manage, secure, and monitor the entire container ecosystem across your cloud infrastructure. Managing container governance may involve setting policies for container deployment, regulating the use of container images, assigning permissions of workload management, and auditing containers for compliance with organizational policies.

Container governance needs to ensure that all containers are secure, compliant with the policies, and track the container lifecycle.

Advantages of Container Governance

• Containers allow for isolation and segregation of duties, which reinforces security and control.
• Containers offer consistent runtime environments for the applications since the software packages used during development, and deployment processes are kept the same.
• Containers allow for portability, making it effortless to move applications from one environment to another, and thus the governance capabilities are transportable.

Challenges of Container Governance

• Containers require active management because of their dynamic and ephemeral nature. There are a large number of containers to manage, and they can also be short-lived, which makes managing policies complex.
• Continuous updates and software changes make it difficult to maintain container security.
• Configurations in containers are specific to individual applications, making it harder to enforce consistent governance policies.

Serverless Governance

Serverless computing is a model where an application is divided into smaller independent functions, and these functions are triggered when certain events happen. It provides developers with the convenience of building applications with minimal operational overhead.

Serverless governance is the ability to manage, secure, and monitor the serverless ecosystem across your cloud infrastructure. It involves setting up policies and access controls across the function app, identifying and managing function dependencies, monitoring performance and usage, tracing appropriate data for debugging, and auditing serverless components to ensure compliance.

Advantages of Serverless Governance

• Serverless architectures enable rapid development while placing a minimum operational burden on DevOps. In addition, serverless governance correlates with agile methodologies.
• Since the serverless components rely on cloud functions only, the cost of governance can be lessened.
• Developers could focus on the codes, with the monitoring and logging automatically handled by the service provider. This makes the governance process consistent.

Challenges of Serverless Governance

• Adding new event triggers to the serverless application could cause unforeseen consequences that result in unexpected costs.
• Since serverless is an event-driven computing model, monitoring and logging can be demanding, and functioning with a limited time frame can be complex as well.
• Serverless might not be ideal for complex and stateful applications. Governance requirements for stateful functions are substantially more than the simpler examples.

Conclusion

Both container and serverless governance prove to be efficient methods to manage resources, but each has its own benefits and challenges, making it essential to choose the right one for your organization. Container governance provides a higher level of granularity and control, while serverless governance makes it easier to prioritize developer productivity. Both governance models align with different enterprise models and traditional practices. Still, both containers governance and serverless governance have matured with time to enable confident and secure application deployment in modern cloud infrastructure.

References:

• Falgiano, F. (2019). Managing container governance in the enterprise. Computing, 101(7), 26-29.
• Samani, L., Nagarethinam, R., & Radhakrishnan, G. (2019). A comprehensive review study on serverless architecture. Journal of Advanced Research in Dynamical & Control Systems, 11(7), 2335-2350.