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Is there any real benefit Azure Functions bring to the table, that containers and AKS do not? Docker containers and AKS are evidently faster in the general case (though there are ways to help speed Azure Functions along), and they frankly seem to be able to do pretty much anything Azure Functions can, and then some.

I guess development of Azure Functions may be slightly less work, compared to containers and AKS, but not by much of an extent - not enough to warrant the disadvantages in production. And from a billing and infrastructural perspective, well, containers fit quite well into either proprietary setups or the cloud, whereas Azure Functions are primarily designed to be in the cloud.

Simply put, everything I see online basically suggests that containers and AKS are faster, more powerful, and more flexible than Azure Functions, with precious little, if anything, in the way of drawbacks.

So I'm designing a system of microservices right now and am trying to decide when to use one or the other (or even both). At the moment, Docker containers and AKS by themselves are winning out. What would make me change my mind?

Panzercrisis
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    Relevant: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/technology-choices/compute-decision-tree – Hong Ooi May 05 '20 at 16:10

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It depends. If you plan to consume / react to events originated on Azure, then functions brings a lot to the table with the native input / output bindings.

Thiago Custodio
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