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by deferredposts 3244 days ago
How does this differ from the existing FaaS frameworks on top of Kubernetes?
1 comments
alexellisuk 3243 days ago
FaaS is the first Kubernetes FaaS framework to natively support Docker Swarm and Kubernetes. Rather than using a highly specific / burnt-in JavaScript and Python runtime (as the other frameworks do) - any process or container can be deployed as a serverless function. This is because the execution of your functions is separate from the orchestration layer.

A tiny Golang shim (watchdog) is embedded in your container and means you don't have to create and maintain individual runtimes. You can even make `cat` or `gofmt` into a serverless function with no extra code. Communication is by stdin/stdout pipes (similar to CGI) meaning you can also support native Windows processes too - such as .NET.

You have a UI built-in for testing/viewing functions and metrics are used to auto-scale your functions for demand.

If you're already using Docker to package applications, it will be easy to adopt this OSS FaaS - whether building for Windows or Linux. More info on the README https://github.com/alexellis/faas/

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posnet 3243 days ago
How does the overhead of creating a new process for every request compare to language specific runtimes.

I realise it will be more, since it adds flexibility, just curious how much.

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alexellisuk 3243 days ago
Good question - it depends entirely on the disk storage, RAM generation & speed and CPU. Golang and Python are fastest. I am sure it could be further optimized for a given combination.

Tested on a Type 3 Packet Bare Metal host with latest Docker Swarm. The NodeJS example called NodeInfo comes back in around 0.1s / 100ms for a round-trip. A bash built-in (cat) is 0.015s / 15ms. Golang sample markdown function - 0.024s / 24ms.

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