You just ran `serverless deploy` and now you can talk to your API but ... where's the server?
[[look up->cloud]]
[[look down->computer]]You look up and lo! In a sound like a clash and a poof of air that feels mildly humid, yet not terribly irritating, a cloud appears!
Now, you don't often see tiny, cat-size clouds on your day to day but you're good to go with it. Out of some instinct that you can't quite place the origin of, maybe your childhood desire to touch a hot stove, you reach out and graze the edges of the cloud ...
(link: "Poke the cloud")[ "HEY!" - the previously silent mass of water vapor
[[You step back->intro]]]Your computer and console are there. There's nothing interesting to be seen.
[[look up->cloud]] "Careful there!" says the little cloud, somehow cute even though it's really a mass of weather phenomena.
"My - my bad." You mumble in apology.
"Here I show up to see if you want to know where your server went, and this is the reception I get!"
"Are you here because ... of the deployment?"
[["No, I'm here because of the mystery"->mystery]]"The mystery?"
"Where's the server!" replies the cloud, somehow giving the semblance of rolling eyes that it doesn't have.
You don't really appreciate this cloud's attitude, but in for a penny in for a pound I guess.
[["Ok, where's the server?"->where]]"There <em>is</em> a server of course, but you might have trouble finding it because it's not always there."
The cloud shakes a bit, settling itself in mid-air, and continues:
"When you ran `serverless deploy`, you put the bits needed in place for your API to run, but there's no server running until you send it an event, like calling the API."
[["An HTTP call is the event?"->events]]Events are what you use to trigger your serverless function, which until that happens, is sitting in storage, just chilling, waiting for an event that makes it necessary for it to find a container home.
<strong>Author note: This is as far as I've gotten, stay tuned!</strong>When your code is first loaded into a container, that's called a "cold start" because the container ([[do you need a refresher on that?->containerdef]]) is loading things for the first time and might take a bit longer than other invocations.
Now let's say you have an eventDouble-click this passage to edit it.