Configuration is the next evolutionary step after hosting multiple scripts on a server and is especially important in the containerization world. The reason it's so important for containerization is the need for the containers themselves to be defined, as well as how the application will run on the container. A pertinent example of this is storing secure properties in a location external to the application and then accessing and pulling them down at runtime. This would typically be done by a script that is either sitting with the application itself in a container or on the server directly.

One consequence of having all these bespoke scripts or configuration files everywhere is that there is now a requirement for an entirely new concept of managing these automation scripts and configuration files. The scripts themselves are often running all the time on the server, performing a task when required, or they're on some kind of cron-type schedule to be executed at specific intervals. This is not the most optimized approach either; if you have a script performing a critical task required by an application and it is only running on a schedule, then the application either has to wait for the schedule to run or the schedule is running when it doesn't need to be, both of which are inefficient.

This inefficiency can then have a domino effect and require additional scripts or configuration to support the inefficiency of the initial script.

By introducing the serverless option, we can automate a lot of our traditional tasks using components we're already familiar with. We'll talk about this in the next section.