Fission is a serverless platform that runs functions on Kubernetes. It allows short-lived stateless functions to have their own containers launched on demand in response to triggers like HTTP requests or events. This improves cluster utilization by only using resources when a function is actively running rather than reserving for all functions. Fission manages pools of generic containers that load functions on demand. It aims to provide the lightweight development of serverless with the portability of containers on Kubernetes.

1. Fission:
Serverless Functions For Kubernetes
Soam Vasani, Platform9 Systems

2. Serverless, adj.:
Using someone else’s Kubernetes cluster.
@ggreer on twitter
https://twitter.com/ggreer/status/839171195920498688

3. Containers
• Uniform
• But also: heavy!

4. Resource Allocation
• Rarely used services still need minimum resource alloc
• Cluster capacity as function of deployment size vs. actual usage

5. What if?
• What if we had the power of containers but very light dev
workflows?
• What if we could have cluster capacity as a proportion of actual
service usage?

6. Functions as a Service
• Short-lived stateless “functions”
• Source / function / module level
• Associated with an Event / HTTP / other trigger; activated on
request only
• Fast on-demand start (“cold start”)

7. Fission: FaaS on Kubernetes
• Functions
• Environments: “Generic” containers
• Triggers

8. Fission: how it works
• Pool of “generic” containers for each environment
• Functions loaded on demand

9. Fission: how it works

10. Fission: how it works

11. Fission: how it works

12. Fission: how it works

13. Fission: how it works

14. Fission: how it works

15. Fission: how it works

16. Fission: how it works

17. Fission: how it works

18. Fission: how it works

19. Use cases
• ~Small REST APIs
• Web hooks
• Kubernetes watch event handlers

20. Demos

21. Project Status
• Open sourced Nov 2016
• Currently alpha; beta mid-late this year
• Healthy community!
• 1600 Github stars, 25 contributors, active Slack channel
• Go, C#, PHP, Java support; Log aggregation/search, Web UI,
many bug fixes

22. Roadmap
• More powerful environments (packages, compile step)
• Event queues
• Better Kubernetes API & ecosystem integration
• Observability: metrics, tracing, …
• Kubernetes Volumes support
• Secrets, Config maps
• Unit testing
• Debugging
• Autoscaling

23. Thanks!
Github: https://github.com/fission/fission
Web: http://fission.io
Slack: http://slack.fission.io
Twitter:
@fissionio
@soamv

24. Roadmap — Environments v2
• Problems with single-file-loaded-at-runtime:
• Multiple files, modules etc.
• Compiled languages
• Syntax errors in interpreted languages
• Source and deployment packages; separate storage service
• “Build” step — check syntax errors / gather deps / compile

25. Roadmap — API
• Use ThirdPartyResources for state
• Version-controllable specs
• No extra DB to manage
• Label-based route->function mappings (idiomatic Kubernetes)
• Ingress
• Hide TPRs and YAML files from users (as much as possible)

26. Roadmap — Ingress integration
• Create ingress resources for HTTP triggers (optionally)
• Allows fine-grained control over what routes are visible
• Allows integrating with richer API gateways (e.g. traefik)