Started in 2017, Bref is an open-source project that helps run PHP serverless on AWS. Today, Bref is used by thousands of companies and handles over 10 billion requests and jobs each month. But how does it really work? Not just the 'hello world' demo where we take a basic Symfony or Laravel app and deploy it with a few commands. I invite you to lift the hood and understand how Bref runs PHP, how AWS Lambda scales, how it runs on servers and their data centers down to the bare metal. A compilation of public information, as well as experiences and surprises encountered while maintaining Bref over the past 6 years. If serverless has always been vague or confusing to you, it will no longer be magical after this.