☁️Serverless Showdown: Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph vs. AWS Lambda — Comprehensive Comparison

Mücahid Özçelik
Huawei Developers
Published in
6 min readJul 28, 2023
Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph & AWS Lambda

Introduction🚀

Hi everyone 😎, in recent years, it allows developers to build applications without the hassle of managing the underlying infrastructure, enabling them to focus solely on writing code. Among the leading providers in the serverless space are Huawei Cloud Function Graph and AWS Lambda. In this detailed comparison, we will explore the features, capabilities, and unique strengths of these platforms to help you make an informed decision for your serverless projects.

1️⃣ Platform Overview

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: Developed by Huawei Cloud, Function Graph offers Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) capabilities in the Huawei Cloud ecosystem. FunctionGraph hosts and computes event-driven functions in a serverless context while ensuring high availability, high scalability, and zero maintenance. All you need to do is write your code and set conditions. You pay only for what you use and you are not charged when your code is not running. Function Graph allows developers to write functions in popular languages like Java, Python, Go, C#, PHP, and Node.js. The platform is continuously expanding its language support to cater to diverse developer needs.

FunctionGraph Console

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda is a compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. Lambda runs your code on a high-availability compute infrastructure and performs all of the administration of the compute resources, including server and operating system maintenance, capacity provisioning and automatic scaling, and logging. With Lambda, all you need to do is supply your code in one of the language runtimes that Lambda supports. Its comprehensive language support includes Node.js, Python, Java, Go, Ruby, and .NET, making it one of the most versatile platforms in this regard.

Lambda Console

2️⃣ Event Sources and Triggers

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: FunctionGraph supports various event sources, including HTTP requests, timers, and events from other Huawei Cloud services such as OBS (Object Storage Service). This flexibility allows developers to create serverless workflows that suit their specific use cases.

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda also supports various event sources and triggers. Various events such as HTTP requests, timers, and events from other AWS services can be used to trigger Lambda functions. In this way, developers can create and run serverless applications that suit their needs.

AWS Lambda

3️⃣ Scalability

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: Function Graph automatically scales functions in response to incoming requests. This elasticity ensures optimal resource utilization and provides high availability for applications with varying workloads.

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda follows the same auto-scaling approach, allowing developers to handle bursts of traffic without manual intervention. As demand increases or decreases, AWS Lambda efficiently allocates and deallocates resources to match the required capacity.

4️⃣ Billing Model

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: FunctionGraph uses pay-per-use billing, and the price is calculated based on the number of requests and execution duration. There are no minimum charges required.FunctionGraph offers a free tier, which you can share with your IAM users.

  • Requests: 1 million free requests every month.
  • Execution duration: 400,000 GB-seconds free execution every month. For example, if the memory for a function is 1 GB, the free execution duration every month is 400,000s. If the memory is 512 MB, the free execution duration is 800,000s.
  • Flow node executions: 5000 free executions per month.
FunctionGraph free execution duration

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda charges are also based on a pay-per-use model. Users are billed for the number of requests made to functions and the time taken to execute those functions. This cost-effective approach encourages efficient resource utilization.
The AWS Lambda free tier includes one million free requests per month and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per month, usable for functions powered by both x86, and Graviton2 processors, in aggregate. Additionally, the free tier includes 100GiB of HTTP response streaming per month, beyond the first 6MB per request, which are free.

Let’s have a look at 400,000 GB seconds per month in some different configurations:

  • 0.5 GB Memory → 400,000 / 0.5 GB → 800,000 GB-seconds → 9.2 days of execution
  • 1.0 GB Memory → 400,000 / 1.0 GB → 400,000 GB-seconds → ~4.6 days of execution
  • 10 GB Memory → 400,000 / 10 GB → 40,000 GB-seconds → ~0.5 days of execution

5️⃣ Integration with Cloud Services

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: As part of the Huawei Cloud ecosystem, Function Graph seamlessly integrates with other Huawei Cloud services. This integration facilitates data exchange and interaction with various cloud resources, making it easier for developers to build complex applications.

FunctionGraph with Other Services

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda’s major strength lies in its extensive integration with the vast AWS ecosystem. This allows developers to access a wide array of AWS services, databases, storage options, machine learning tools, and more, providing unparalleled flexibility and power.

Lambda with Other Services

6️⃣ Region Availability

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: Huawei Cloud services, including Function Graph, are available in specific regions where Huawei Cloud operates. Depending on your geographical requirements, this could impact your choice of platform.

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda enjoys global availability, with services offered in all AWS regions worldwide. This wide coverage ensures that developers can deploy applications closer to their end-users for reduced latency and improved performance.

7️⃣ Ecosystem and Community Support

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph: As a relatively new entrant in the serverless market, Function Graph’s ecosystem and community support are growing. It has a growing community of developers and enthusiasts within the Huawei Cloud ecosystem.

AWS Lambda: AWS Lambda has been in the market for a longer time and benefits from a mature ecosystem with extensive documentation, a vast collection of tutorials, and an active community of developers. This wealth of resources can be invaluable when seeking help or exploring applications.

Conclusion🔍

Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph and AWS Lambda are formidable players in the serverless computing space, each with its own set of strengths and advantages. Choosing between the two platforms ultimately depends on your specific needs, preferences, and existing cloud infrastructure.

If you are already invested in the Huawei Cloud ecosystem, Function Graph provides a cohesive solution with seamless integration with other Huawei Cloud services. On the other hand, if you seek the extensive language support, global availability, and rich ecosystem that AWS offers, AWS Lambda may be the better fit.

When deciding between Huawei Cloud Function Graph and AWS Lambda, consider factors such as language support, event triggers, integration with existing services, geographical availability, and the size of the developer community.

Both platforms embrace the core tenets of serverless computing, providing developers with the agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness needed to build innovative and resilient applications in the cloud. As serverless computing continues to evolve, staying informed about the latest updates and improvements from these providers will empower you to leverage the full potential of serverless architecture for your projects.

👓You can reach me from my Linkedin account for all your questions and requests.

References📚

1- Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph

2- AWS Lambda

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