Which scenario is not well-suited for serverless computing?

• A. Short-lived stateless API endpoint with infrequent invocation
• B. Long-running background processing
• C. Event-driven microservice with bursty traffic
• D. Stateless function completing quickly

Answer: (B)

Serverless computing works best when tasks are short, stateless, and triggered by events, so the platform can scale automatically without you managing servers. The key issue with long-running background processing is the execution time limit imposed by many serverless platforms. If a job runs for an extended period (hours), it can hit timeout boundaries and become unreliable or costly to manage, and keeping state across many function invocations becomes complex. For these workloads, traditional compute options or containerized services, or breaking the work into smaller steps coordinated by a workflow service, are more appropriate.

The other scenarios align well with serverless patterns: a quick, stateless API endpoint can respond rapidly and scale with demand; an event-driven microservice can handle bursty traffic by scaling out as events arrive; and a stateless function that completes quickly fits the model where short executions and no persistent state are involved.