Serverless computing and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS)

27.03.2017

Serverless Computing / FaaS

About me

Co-Founder and CTOVoice and chat user interfaces in combination with AI to boost productivity at the workplace.

botconnect.io

Senior Analyst in ResidenceObserving the technology industry and its impact on business and society to deliver insight and foresight.

crisp-research.com

What is FaaS?

Trigger Function Integration

… in the cloud*

* for discussion of serverless computing on premise see Hausenblas: Serverless Ops

FaaS vs PaaS

• unit of computation is a function

• job oriented

• no provisioning

• transparent autoscaling

• low latency*

* 10 - 100 ms for Javascript and Python, >10s for JVM under certain conditions

FaaS providers

• Amazon AWS Lambda

• Microsoft Azure Functions

• Google Cloud Functions

• IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk

• Iron Functions*

• Galactic Fog Gestalt Framework*

* Open Source

Differences in offerings

• triggers

• programming languages

• pricing

• cloud / on-premise

How to use

example: AWS Lambda

• create lambda function

• choose template

• choose trigger

• configure function

• implement function

Use Case Alexa

• templates: alexa skills templates

• trigger: alexa skills kit

• function: handling intents

Use Case AWS IoT

• templates: IoT templates

• trigger: AWS IoT

• function: handling MQTT message

Use Case API Gateway

• templates: api gateway / microservice templates

• trigger: API gateway

• function: handling http requests

Other services

User

HTTP requests

Integration requests

API Gateway

Lambda

serverless.com

Source: serverless.com

serverless.com

• serverless CLI

• credentials (e. g. .aws/credentials)

• serverless.yml (service)

• handler.js (function)

serverless.com / workflow

serverless create

serverless deploy

serverless remove

Source: serverless.com

Serverless.com / functions

Source: serverless.com

Serverless.com / events

Source: serverless.com

Serverless.com / very simple example

serverless.yml

handler.js

aws api gateway

Conclusions

• „serverless" is a confusing name

• FaaS is still in an early stage

• not the right approach for every problem

• pros: development / deployment / operations / scaling / lean & fast

• cons: debugging / monitoring

Resources

• https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html

• http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/serverless-ops.csp

thank you

[email protected]@mostwi