Cloud Functions and Serverless (Cloud Run)

GCP offers several serverless compute options that let you run code without managing infrastructure. This lesson covers Cloud Functions for event-driven functions and Cloud Run for containerised applications.

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What Is Serverless on GCP?

Serverless means you don't manage servers. GCP handles provisioning, scaling, patching, and availability. You focus on your code and pay only for what you use.

GCP Serverless Compute Options

Service	Unit of Deployment	Use Case
Cloud Functions	A single function	Event-driven, lightweight operations
Cloud Run	A container image	Any HTTP service, APIs, microservices
App Engine	An application	Web applications, full app lifecycle

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Cloud Functions

Cloud Functions is GCP's Functions-as-a-Service (FaaS) offering. Write a single-purpose function, deploy it, and GCP runs it in response to events.

How It Works

1. You write a function in a supported language
2. You configure a trigger (HTTP request, Cloud Storage event, Pub/Sub message, etc.)
3. When the trigger fires, Cloud Functions executes your code
4. The platform scales automatically — from zero to thousands of instances

Supported Runtimes