Serverless cloud platforms are a major trend in 2016. Following on from Amazon’s Lambda service, released last year, this year has seen Google, IBM and Microsoft all launch their own solutions. Serverless microservices are executed on-demand, in milliseconds, rather than having to sit idle waiting. Users pay only for the raw computation time used. In this talk detail how to build a distributed serverless, event-driven, microservices framework on OpenStack

1. @AnimeshSingh
How to build an event-driven, polyglot serverless
microservices framework on OpenStack
Animesh Singh, STSM IBM Cloud Platform
OpenStack Summit Barcelona, October 2016
Serverless - Functions as a Service
Ease of getting startedFull stack Control
FunctionsPaaSContainersIaaS

2. @AnimeshSingh
Cloud Computing Evolution
Bare Metal
IaaS
Container Orchestrators
PaaS

3. @AnimeshSingh
Problem: It’s expensive to scale microservices, even
on a PaaS
Explosion in number of
containers / processes:
1. Increase of infrastructure
cost footprint
2. Increase of operational
management cost and
complexity
Region B
Region A
Break-down into microservices
Make each micro service HA
Protect against regional outages
Monolithic application

4. @AnimeshSingh
Problem: the programming and cost model doesn’t
help
• Continuous polling needed in the absence of an
event driven programming model.
• Charged for resources, even when idle.
• Worries persist about capacity management.
Swift
Application
Container
VM
CF
2
Polling
1b
Request
1a

5. @AnimeshSingh
Bare Metal
IaaS
Container Orchestrators
PaaS
Enter Serverless!
Serverless

6. Introducing OpenWhisk,
a fabric and platform for
the serverless, event driven
programming model

7. @AnimeshSingh
OpenWhisk- A distributed compute service to
execute application logic in response to events.

8. @AnimeshSingh
OpenWhisk: How does it work?
}
1
Event Providers
OpenWhisk
Cloudant
Git
Weather
…
…
Data event occurs, e.g.
- Commit on a Git Repository
- CRUD operation on Cloudant
- ….
Trigger execution
of associated
OpenWhisk action
2
…
JS Swift! Docker …

9. @AnimeshSingh
OpenWhisk: How does it work?
OpenWhisk
JS Swift! Docker …
Incoming HTTP request, e.g.
HTTP GET mynewcoolapp.com/customers
1 2 Invoke associated
OpenWhisk action
„getCustomers“
Browser
Mobile App
Web App
Variety of
languages

10. The OpenWhisk
programming model

11. @AnimeshSingh
Programming model
• Services define the events they emit as triggers, and developers
associate the actions to handle the events via rules
• The developer only needs to care about implementing the desired
application logic - the system handles the rest
T A R

12. @AnimeshSingh
Trigger: A class of events that can happenT
Programming model

13. @AnimeshSingh
Actions: An event-handler, i.e. code that runs in response to an
event
A
Programming model

14. @AnimeshSingh
Programming model
Actions: Multi-runtime support, e.g. JavaScriptA
function main(msg) {
return { message: 'Hello, ' + msg.name + ' from ' + msg.place };
};

15. @AnimeshSingh
Actions: Multi-runtime support, e.g. SwiftA
func main(params:[String:Any]) -> [String:Any] {
var reply = [String:Any] ()
if let name = params[“name”] as? String {
print(“Hello (name)”)
reply[“msg”] = “Goodbye (name)”
}
return reply
}
Programming model

16. @AnimeshSingh
Actions: In any other language by packaging with Docker
A
Programming model

17. @AnimeshSingh
Rules: An association of a trigger and an actionR
R := T A
Programming model

18. @AnimeshSingh
Actions: Can be chained to create sequences to increase
flexibility and foster reuse
A
AA
:= A1
+ A2
+ A3
AB
:= A2
+ A1
+ A3
AC
:= A3
+ A1
+ A2
Programming model

19. @AnimeshSingh
Packages: A shared collection of triggers and actionsP
A
A read
write
T changes A translate A forecast
A post
T topic
Open
Source A myAction
T myFeed
Yours
T commit
Third
Party
Programming model

20. OpenWhisk
backend architecture

21. @AnimeshSingh
OpenWhisk Architecture
Controller
Kafka
Invoker Invoker … Invoker
Router
(nginx)
NodeJsJavaSwift
Consul
Couch
DB

22. 22
Controller
…
Invoker InvokerInvoker
1!
2!
3,4!
5!
6!
7!
8!
OpenWhisk Topology

23. OpenWhisk
on Openstack

24. @AnimeshSingh
Architecture: Distributed OpenWhisk on OpenStack
Bootstrapper
Machine !
!
!
!
!
!

25. @AnimeshSingh
OpenStack Configuration
• Services: Tested on OpenStack Kilo and Mitaka releases. We expect at a minimum
following OpenStack Services available: Identity (Keystone), Compute (Nova), Image
(Glance) and Network (Neutron).
• Capacity: For each component VM, we would recommend 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 60
GB disk. So if you deploy just 1 Invoker VM, you can expect to have a minimum capacity
of around 36 vCPUs, 64 GB of RAM and 480 GB local disk. For 25 concurrent
invocations/sec, we would recommend around 10 Invoker VMs.
• Network: We would recommend creating a virtual router, network and subnet for
OpenWhisk, ideally in its own tenant. Also except for the ‘Router’ none of the VMs
provisioned would need an external IP, so once the deployment is complete we can
assign a floating ip to the ‘Router’ from the external network.

26. @AnimeshSingh
External Shared Customer Network
OpenWhisk Tenant Private Neutron Network
Neutron
OpenWhisk
Tenant
Router
OpenWhisk VMs Other Tenant VMs
Other
VMs
Other
VMs
Other
VMs
Tenant Private Network
Physical Router
OpenWhisk - VM Networking View
Other
Tenant
Router

27. @AnimeshSingh
Deployment Overview:
• To kickoff things, spin a VM which we call ‘bootstrapper’, and it’s essentially using Gradle and
Ansible under the covers to do the build and deployment respectively.
• Setup the bootstrapper using the instructions listed here
https://github.com/openwhisk/openwhisk/blob/master/tools/ubuntu-setup/README.md
• Once bootstrapper is ready jump to the following link to build and deploy OpenWhisk on
OpenStack
https://github.com/openwhisk/openwhisk/blob/master/ansible/README_DISTRIBUTED.md
• In addition to the default Ansible modules, we add Ansible Cloud Modules for OpenStack, and
then based on a set of environment variables, we build and deploy OpenWhisk on your
OpenStack.
http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/list_of_cloud_modules.html

28. @AnimeshSingh
Deployment Parameters:
• For instances and hosts file to be generated and managed by Ansible, set values for the following keys using
environment variables.
• OS_WSK_DB_VOLUME is optional. If not specified, local disk will be used instead of persistent disk for CouchDB.
export OS_FLAVOR=m1.medium
export OS_IMAGE=Ubuntu14.04-1Nic
export OS_KEY_NAME=key_name
export OS_NET_NAME=network_name
export OS_NET_ID=e489dcf2-4601-4809-a459-e3821a95d23a
export OS_USERNAME=abcxyz
export OS_PASSWORD=*******
export OS_PROJECT_NAME=OpenWhisk
export OS_SECURITY_GROUPS=sec_group
export OS_WSK_DB_VOLUME=15
## Keystone v2
export OS_AUTH_URL=https://OpenStack_URL:5000/v2.0
export OS_TENANT_NAME="OpenWhisk"
export OS_TENANT_ID=a9e6a61ab914455cb4329592d5733325
## Keystone v3
export OS_AUTH_URL=https://OpenStack_URL:5000/v3
export OS_PROJECT_ID=a9e6a61ab914455cb4329592d5733325
export OS_USER_DOMAIN_NAME="domain"

29. @AnimeshSingh
• Use Whisk CLI or Node-RED to create Multi cloud Serveless Applications!
OpenWhisk deployed! Compose Serverless Applications
$ wsk property set --apihost
openwhisk.ng.bluemix.net --auth 96294c7b-
e6f4-4ccf --namespace “animeshsingh"
$ wsk action invoke /whisk.system/utils/
echo -p message hello --blocking --result
{
"message": "hello"
}

30. Summary

31. @AnimeshSingh
What you learned today
• We’re in the early days of an evolution that is empowering developers
to write cloud native applications better, faster, and cheaper
• OpenWhisk provides an open source platform to enable cloud native,
serverless, event driven applications
• Open source OpenWhisk can be run on OpenStack in a scalable
manner

32. @AnimeshSingh
Experiment with OpenWhisk on Bluemix
bit.ly/ow-bm

33. @AnimeshSingh
Deploy OpenWhisk on OpenStack
http://ibm.co/
2ecCyxD

34. @AnimeshSingh
Join us to build a cloud native platform for the future!
OpenWhisk.org
dwopen.slack.com #openwhisk
bluemix.net

35. Thank You