Introduction to Serverless Computing

with Apache OpenWhisk, an open source, distributed Serverless platform

Upkar Lidder

Developer Advocate, IBM 

> ulidder@us.ibm.com

> @lidderupk

> upkar.dev

https://slides.com/upkar/serverless-long

http://tirefi.re/serverless/

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

What is Serverless

Serverless computing refers to the concept of building and running applications that do not require server management.

It describes a finer-grained deployment model where applications, bundled as one or more functions, are uploaded to a platform and then executed, scaled, and billed in response to the exact demand needed at the moment.

It refers to the idea that consumers of serverless computing no longer need to spend time and resources on server provisioning, maintenance, updates, scaling, and capacity planning. Instead, all of these tasks and capabilities are handled by a serverless platform and are completely abstracted away from the developers​.

Cloud Native Computing Foundation

https://github.com/cncf/wg-serverless/tree/master/whitepapers/serverless-overview

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Use Cases

• Secure and scalable APIs
  • API Gateway ➸ Function
  • HTTP level scaling

• Backend services / micro services
  • function/service level scaling
  • polyglot functions

• Event Driven Programming
  • Changes in database
  • Social events

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Leans well to ...

• Small, focused, asynchronous, concurrent, easy to parallelize into independent units of work

• Infrequent or has sporadic demand, with large, unpredictable variance in scaling requirements

• Stateless, ephemeral, without a major need for instantaneous cold start time

• Highly dynamic in terms of changing business requirements that drive a need for accelerated developer velocity

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Example - Game App

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Example - Conference App

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Serverless Landscape

https://github.com/cncf/landscape#serverless

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Serverless Landscape

Amazon Lambda

•Node.js, Python, Java, C# and Go

IBM Cloud Functions

•Node.js 8, Node.js 6, Python 3.6.4, Python 3.6.1, PHP 7.1, PHP 7.2,  and Swift 4, Swift 3.1.1, Ruby 2.5, Docker

•Recent change – 2GB max memory and 10 minutes run limit.

Microsoft Azure

•C#, F#, Node.js (in GA), Java, Python, PHP, TypeScript, Bash, PowerShell (experimental mode)

Google Cloud Function

•Node.js, Python

This space is constantly changing !

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk

Packages

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Solid Foundations

Leverages existing opensource solutions

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Solid Foundations

Leverages existing opensource solutions

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Built on Open Source

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

WSK CLI

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

WSK SYSTEM PACKAGES

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

WSK SYSTEM PACKAGES

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (create)

wsk action create helloJava target/hello-world-java.jar --main com.example.FunctionApp

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (invoke)

wsk action invoke --result helloJava --param name World

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (js)

Entry point

Object In

Object Out

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (js)

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

@lidderupk

IBM Cloud - http://bit.ly/wwc-openwhisk

Apache OpenWhisk - more real example

1user registers

2tail logs

3SMS

4email

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk - more real example

https://github.com/lidderupk/openwhisk-registration/tree/master/javascript

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Composition / Orchestration

CONDITION Action Name

Code

THEN Action Name

Code

ELSE Action Name

Code

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Composition / Orchestration

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

So much more ...

• More Compositions - Use higher-level programming constructs to declaratively chain together multiple actions.
  • while, repeat, let, retry, try, if, etc

• HTTP Actions (web == true)

• Packages community (couchdb, kafka, etc)

• API Gateway (rate limiting, authentication/authorization)

• Install external packages, debugging, etc

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Community and Help

• Slack
• http://openwhisk-team.slack.com/

• Github and OpenWhisk docs

• Youtube/Medium/Twitter

• Bi-weekly interexchange meetings

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

KUI Shell

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

KUI Shell

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Some things to 🤔

• Functions are stateless. Need some sort of persistence between runs.
• Are you able to test and develop locally ? Does provider have CLI ?
• Can you easily version your functions ? Source control ?
• Can you easily monitor your functions ?
• Security and API gateway
• Avoid long-running loops / mini-monoliths ?
• Latency (cold, warm and hot loads)
• How do you track dependencies ?

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Future of Serverless ?

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Thank you

Let's chat !

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Upkar Lidder, IBM

@lidderupk

https://github.com/lidderupk/

ulidder@us.ibm.com

IBM Code Patterns

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk - simple action

Entry point

JsonObject In

JsonObject Out

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

JsonObject In

Fat JAR

Apache OpenWhisk - sample pom.xml

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk - make jar

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk - Runtime Exception

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IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (py)

Entry point 

Dictionary

Dictionary

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

OpenWhisk

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

@lidderupk

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IBM Cloud Functions

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Example - Banking App

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

More Examples

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

1

2

3

4

Apache OpenWhisk (java)

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (tail log)

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (js)

1

2

3

4

5

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Apache OpenWhisk (py)

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Thank you

Let's chat !

@lidderupk

IBM Developer

Upkar Lidder, IBM

@lidderupk

https://github.com/lidderupk/

ulidder@us.ibm.com