Challenge
Several of our clients relied on small scheduled tasks: a queue of text messages, a nightly follow-up, a monthly finance report.
These ran on an office computer or an aging server. They failed silently when that machine had a bad day, and the first sign was a customer who had not heard back.
Approach
We rebuilt the tasks as serverless functions in the cloud, which run only when there is work to do.
- Rewrite each task as a small function kept in version control.
- Trigger it on a schedule or when work is waiting in a queue.
- Retry automatically when an outside system is unavailable.
- Report failures to a person the same day.
- Store the files each job produces so any result can be traced.
Result
The jobs now run whether or not anyone is in the office.
- No server to patch for routine work.
- Failures reported, not discovered.
- Cost that follows actual use.
Our advice
Look for the tasks that run on a machine under someone's desk. They are usually cheap to move and expensive to lose.
Related service: Cloud computing.