1. Firebase Cloud Functions
the GA, the Beta, and the Ugly
Joseph Lust mabl engineer @lustcoder

3. “The secret of change is to focus all of your
energy, not on fighting the old, but on building
the new.”
–Socrates

4. startups must push or perish
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5. serverless just works
■ No Provisioning
■ Transparent Scaling
■ Event Driven
■ Pay only for Use
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6. how developers deploy code
2014
2007 2013
VPS
Machine
Image
Docker
Containers
war File
AWS
Lambda
6
2000
Container Era
Serverless Era
Firebase
CF
Serverless functions
GCF
2016 2017

7. event driven all the way
Trigger Events Firebase CF GCF
Cloud Storage Events ✔ ✔
PubSub Topics ✔ ✔
HTTP Endpoint ✔ ✔
Auth Events ✔ ✘
Database Events ✔ ✘
Google Analytics Events ✔ ✘
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8. no function provider is a clear winner
Features Firebase CF GCF
Stackdriver Error Reports ✔ ✔
Cloud Logging ✔ ✔
Environment Configs ✔ ✘
Code Based Wireup ✔ ✘
Rich Function Dashboard ✘ ✔
Deployment Wireup ✘ ✔
SCM Base Deploy ✘ ✔
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9. function clarity through dashboards
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10. live function health tracking
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12. but, there are some speed bumps...
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13. the ugly: firebase cloud functions
■ All functions run as FB project Editor
■ No failure retry semantics
■ Cannot access resources cross project
■ CLI deploy requires rigid project layout
■ Automatic undeploy of all functions for non-standard layouts
■ Slow deployment ~ 5min
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14. the uglier: gcf
■ Cannot pass configs to function
■ No failure retry semantics
■ All functions run as project Editor
■ Complex multi-module deploy
▲ Impossible from SCM deploy
■ Slow deployment ~ 2min
■ Non-Deterministic Deployment Failures
■ Single Supported Region (Iowa US-Centra1)
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15. functions are not designed for failure
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16. functions require total trust
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17. blazing fast function deployment
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18. lossy pubsub deployments
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19. work arounds to the rescue
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20. work around the warts
■ Load ServiceAccount key from KMS encrypted CS file
■ Cache resources between function calls
■ Use Firebase Admin lib from GCF
▲ Best of most worlds
■ Use the lowest sensible memory and timeout limits
■ Use --local-path and --include-ignored-files for multi-module deploy
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21. embrace serverless
■ to focus on shipping code
■ to harness NodeJS microservices
■ to power low latency experiences
■ to provision, deploy, and scale automatically
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22. cloud functions resources
■ FB CF Examples Repo: github.com/firebase/functions-samples
■ GCF Examples: github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/nodejs-docs-samples
■ I/O 2017 CF Presentations
▲ Building the Fire!sale demo app: youtu.be/G-MBeEW92v4
▲ FB and ML with CF: youtu.be/RdqV_N0sCpM
▲ FB CF and Testability: youtu.be/SnWwkURpwxs
▲ Data Pipelines with CF: youtu.be/guo-4IOqx2M
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23. Questions?

24. gcf is cheaper by half
■ FB CF 125K req/mo FREE, 2.5M/ $1
■ GCF 2M req/mo FREE, 5M/ $1 after
* Also see execution time, bandwidth, and memory costs
Source GCP Pricing, FB Pricing
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