>> Hello, everybody. This is
Lara Rubbelke with Azure Friday,
the special edition, Azure Friday on the go at Build.
And today, we're here with Chris Gilum,
we're going to be talking about Azure Functions and
all the great announcements that
we got this week at Build.
So Chris, you're an adept over the Azure Functions too.
Talk to us about what are
Azure Functions and why do
we use them in our applications?
>> Right. So Azure Functions
are server-less, event-driven, compute platforms.
And so basically, well what does that mean?
We have basically a bunch of,
well, servers, if you understand
server-less and basically event-driven.
The ideas that, we have a bunch of message input sources,
let's say for example HTTP or Q messages
or something from Azure Events Group.
And basically, when some message arrives you want
to be able to have some piece
of code that goes and executes.
You don't necessarily care where that code lives,
you don't necessarily want to deploy
any servers or manage scale on yourself.
>> Right, or manage.
>> You just have a piece of code,
you just want it to run.
And so, that's basically
what the Azure Functions Platform is.
We have a set of events,
you can upload some code
and we will run that code
for you when those events get filed,
you don't have to vision any servers
and it's a purely consumption based billing model.
So you only pay for when your code is actually running.
If nothing's happening,
you don't have to pay for anything.
>> Fantastic. And we've been seeing a lot of people
adopting our functions for
many different kinds of scenarios.
And one of the great things that I
heard this week that I think
a lot of my customers have been working with has,
it's been in previews that the Durable Functions.
And so I love Durable Functions,
talk to me about what
you've delivered with Durable Functions.
>> Right. So basically Durable Functions,
the simple way to kind of understand it is that it's
the ability to write long running orchestrations,
long running function orchestrations in code.
So well, what does that mean?
So I'll give you an example.
Let's say that you have
some application that you want to build server-less.
Let's say it has a bunch of steps.
First, you want to
receive a message that comes in from a queue.
Then maybe you want to go and
download something from a Globe,
then let's say you want to go and
do some cognitive analysis.
On the space, we've got a sequence of steps
that you kind of need to
orchestrate using a variety of functions.
Well, functions today your stay-less.
They basically take some input,
they do one thing and then there's some output.
They don't talk to each other,
they don't necessarily coordinate with each other.
>> And they don't remember things between
these types double test. Exactly.
>> Exactly. So the idea of Double Functions is, "Hey,
I've got a whole bunch of functions,
I want to wire them up together and make
them kind of cooperate with each other."
So for example, you could
write what's called an orchestrator function
which then goes and calls out to a bunch of
different other functions and tells them,
"Hey, I've got this work for you to do,
please go and do this work."
And maybe that orchestrator will then waits for
all of those guys to complete
and then go on to move to the next step.
So it's really just kind of a way to create
these long running workflows,
orchestrate a whole bunch of functions
together to do something meaningful.
>> That's fantastic. I am super excited about this.
I know that, like you said,
we've been working with a lot of
customers who've been implementing this already.
Where can I go and ask,
the rest of our audience out there to learn
more and get started with the Durable Functions?
Yes. So on doxilmicrosoft.com,
we have an overview page on Durable Functions.
It's really easy to find, if you just
to Bing and search for Durable Functions.
And we will go through basically the entire fold,
give you a nice overview of what it
is and what problems that can be used to solve.
There's a whole bunch of different problems than
it solves and solved some really well.
Another thing that you,
and so that will give you all the steps
for things like samples,
how to get started as well as what you can do.
We're also open sourced.
So we're on Github and I believe
that under the Azure team group and then-
>> So that means you can run functions anywhere?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> Any cloud, any datacenter?
>> Absolutely.
>> That's pretty great.
>> So we like it if you run it in Azure.
>> Absolutely. It is Azure Friday, so-
>> But if you want go and take it somewhere else,
you can absolutely do that.
>> Great.
>> And so, yeah, check us out on Github too.
If you can ask questions there and file issues,
if you play with it and something
doesn't quite work right.
We're very responsive with it.
And if you want to, we take contributions.
Actually, a lot of Durable Functions
was written by contributors
from within Microsoft and
outside of Microsoft who just really liked it.
>> That's great, yeah.
>> They just wanted to add features and value to it.
>> So, it's really becoming a community service.
>> It really is.
>> I mean a project.
>> It really is. It's kind of surprised me how
engaged the folks have been with it
and I love it. So, I encourage that.
>> Bringing the function and the intelligence from
everybody around the world. So, fantastic.
There was one other thing that we
announced and this also is,
for me a pretty core capability that
helps with how we may manage our functions.
That's the integration with application services,
or Application Insights, I'm sorry, Application Insights.
Can you talk to me about that integration
and what you announced this week?
>> Sure. So we've had
integration with Application Insights for a while.
The problem was, it wasn't very tightly integrated.
For example, the experience
we had for some time was, "Hey,
go to Application Insights,
go find your key and then go
paste it into an upsetting of a particular name."
And then it's set up,
assuming you've copied the right thing over
and which when I use this first I copied the wrong thing.
>> You get a file upload,
we can't read your documentation,
set of steps to be able to just get monitoring a set up.
>> Exactly, just to get the set up.
And then even if, let's say you
want to go do the monitoring,
then you have to go separating the up insides,
you click the right buttons get
the right path, you find it.
What we announced today is kind of
a very tight integration between those two.
Application Insights is set up for you by default.
>> By default, perfect.
>> So you don't have to go through those steps.
Basically, we have a button now
from the functions portal.
You can go directly to
the Application Insights and see
exactly what's going on with
your function, it's kind of right away.
>> So it's gathering all the lag,
you can create the lags,
you can pin that into your
monitoring dashboard if you want,
so a single pane of glass. Wonderful.
>> So we just made it dramatically simpler.
>> Great.
>> So, it's a great way to think about it.
>> Fantastic. All right.
Well, thank you very much for this time today.
And it's great learning about everything
that you've delivered over on Azure Functions.
And keep going, looking for the next conversation.
>> All right, Thanks a lot.
>> Again, this is Azure Friday
and we were learning today about Azure Functions.