IBM Bluemix Paris Meetup #22-20170315 Meetup @VillagebyCA - Serverless & OpenWhisk

© 2016 IBM Corporation© 2016 IBM Corporation
Introduction to
serverless and
OpenWhisk

THE CASE FOR
SERVERLESS

Welcome to Industrial internet!

Devices can be...

How would you implement it?

OK, let’s move step by step

And if you want it to be HA?

What about another device?

Let’s be smart!

An unexpected spike!

Scaling out!

And traffic goes down...

An excessive compute?

Or maybe those ones?

And in the meantime...

And further down...

And...

Ideal case

Compute follows traffic

So what are the requirements?
● Invoke and scale as fast as possible
● Terminate after completion

● Charge per compute used

● Guaranteed message delivery
● Load balancing

● Load balancing
● High availability
● Self-healing

● Load balancing
● Self-healing
● Support of multiple
technologies
● Have possibility to launch other
microservices
● Write and read data from
multiple data sources

● Load balancing
● Self-healing
● Support of multiple
technologies
● Have possibility to launch other
microservices
● Write and read data from
multiple data sources
● Abstract developers from the
infrastructure

Twelve Factor App was created as a methodology for building SaaS…
I. Codebase
One codebase tracked in revision control,
many deploys
II. Dependencies
Explicitly declare and isolate dependencies
III. Config
Store config in the environment
IV. Backing services
Treat backing services as attached resources
V. Build, release, run
Strictly separate build and run stages
VI. Processes
Execute the app as one or more stateless
processes
https://12factor.net/
VII. Port binding
Export services via port binding
VIII. Concurrency
Scale out via the process model
IX. Disposability
Maximize robustness with fast startup and graceful
shutdown
X. Dev/prod parity
Keep development, staging, and production as
similar as possible
XI. Logs
Treat logs as event streams
XII. Admin processes
Run admin/management tasks as one-off processes
Serverless and the 12 Factor App?

SERVERLESS
&
OPENWHISK

OpenWhisk in a nutshell
„Event-action platform to execute code in response to events“
* whisk (v): to move nimbly and quickly (source: merriam-webster.com)

OpenWhisk in a nutshell
„Event-action platform to execute code in response to events“
Delivered as open source & managed service on IBM Bluemix
* whisk (v): to move nimbly and quickly (source: merriam-webster.com)

Swift
Application
Container VMCF
2
Polling
1b
Request
1a
• Continuous polling
• Charges even when idling due to poor utilization
• Worry about scaling
- When to scale? (mem-, cpu-, response time-driven)
- How fast to scale?
• Worry about resiliency
- At least 2 processes for HA (driving cost)
- Deployment in multiple regions (driving cost)
- Keep them running & healthy Process & idle
Traditional model

• Introduces event programming model
• Charges only for what is used due to optimal
utilization
• Scales inherently
- One process per request
• No cost overhead for resiliency
- No long running process for HA
3
Running
action
1
Trigger
2
Pool of actions
Swift DockerJS
Running
action
Running
action
Deploy action within millisecs,
run it,
free up resources
OpenWhisk
Engine
OpenWhisk model

}
1
Event Providers
OpenWhisk
Cloudant
Push Notifcations
IoT message
File Storage
Data event occurs, e.g.
-Commit on a Git Repository
-CRUD operation on Cloudant
-….
Trigger execution
of associated
OpenWhisk action
2
…
JS Swift Docker …
Action triggered by an external event

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
Action triggered directly by an application (Action as API)

JavaPythonJavaScriptSwiftContainer
Polyglot action implementation
Trigger
Event
Action

• 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 R A
Triggers > Rules > Actions

Trigger: „A class of events that can happen“T
Trigger

A Actions: „An event-handler, i.e. code that runs in response to an event“
Action

A
AA
:= A1
+ A2
+ A3
AB
:= A2
+ A1
+ A3
AC
:= A3
+ A1
+ A2
Actions: Can be chained to create sequences to increase flexibility and foster
reuse
Action Sequence

R
R := T A
Rules: „An association of a trigger and an action“
Rule

myAction
myFeedT
A
Packages: „A shared collection of triggers and actions“P
A forecast
Open
Source
Yours
Third
Party
translate
languageId
textToSpeechA
A
A
databaseCreate
documentRead
...
changesT
A
A
A
Push
Notifications
sendMessage
webhookT
A
webhookT
postA
Websocket
sendA
Package

Some usage Scenarios
Microservices-based apps / APIs
Mobile Backends
Data (Stream) Processing
IoT
Cognitive
Bots

What is serverless good for?

Less is more… Avoid heavy-weight functions
• Harder to debug
• Harder to reuse
Triggers do not guarantee order of processing…
• Message affinity is bad… avoid it at all costs
Plan how your input and output are designed to maximize reuse
• Ability to re-use an action depends on the assumption it is making about its input
• Assert aggressively!
What should you keep in mind while working with serverless?

You want to try OpenWhisk on your own?
• Want to try out our IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk offering?
Sign-up today at: https://console.ng.bluemix.net/openwhisk/
• Want to try out our open-source OpenWhisk offering?
Visit: https://developer.ibm.com/openwhisk/
Try it today

GETTING
STARTED

https://github.com/openwhisk

OpenWhisk Command Line
wsk trigger create <trigger-name>
1. Creating a trigger
wsk package create <package-name>
2. Creating a package
wsk action create <package>/<action> <Jar File>.jar
3. Creating an action
wsk package bind /whisk.system/websocket <bind-name> -p uri ws://<url>
4. Create a binding for an action
wsk rule create <rule-name> <trigger> <action>
5. Create a rule for triggering an action
Installing OpenWhisk CLI can be found here: https://new-console.ng.bluemix.net/openwhisk/cli

Deploying Locally
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/openwhisk/openwhisk.git
cd openwhisk/tools/vagrant
./hello
1. Deploying OpenWhisk in a VM:
Pre-requistes:
• VirtualBox
• Vagrant
wsk -i property set --apihost 192.168.33.13 --auth `vagrant
ssh -- cat openwhisk/ansible/files/auth.guest`
2. Setting up wsk CLI environment
Note: There are a more complete deployment of OpenWhisk
described in github but this approach provides a good way to
test your actions locally.

Dark Vision
https://github.com/IBM-Bluemix/openwhisk-darkvisionapp
Discover dark data in videos with IBM Watson and IBM Bluemix OpenWhisk

One last demo… did you like my talk?
https://github.com/l2fprod/openwhisk-emoting
Simplicity can be unsettling…

DISCUSSION

IBM Bluemix Paris Meetup #22-20170315 Meetup @VillagebyCA - Serverless & OpenWhisk

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IBM Bluemix Paris Meetup #22-20170315 Meetup @VillagebyCA - Serverless & OpenWhisk