Red Hat Developer Network serverless introduction

2. Short Journey into Serverless World
Introduction to Serverless
bit.ly/faas-tutorial
https://learn.openshift.com/serverless
https://github.com/knative/

3. I am a Developer !
● Active Open Source Contributor
○ OpenWhisk
○ Eclipse Che
○ fabric8 Platform https://fabric8.io/
● Creator vert.x-maven-plugin →
https://vmp.fabric8.io/
kameshsampath
Kamesh Sampath
Director of Developer Experience at Red Hat
@kamesh_sampath
kamesh.sampath@hotmail.com
ksampath@redhat.com

4. 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.
https://www.cncf.io/blog/2018/02/14/cncf-takes-first-step-towards-serverless-computing

6. Good and Bad about Serverless
● Automatic Scalability
● Automatic Cost Reduction
● Quicker and Easier
Development
● Better Capacity planning
● Delivery speed
● Debugging
● Deployment and
Architectural complexity
● Deep learning curve
● Vendor Lock-in
● Monitoring
https://hackernoon.com/serverless-survey-77-delivery-speed-4-dev-workdays-mo-saved-26-aws-monthly-bill-d99174f70663

7. Microservices Serverless
Functions
Your Control
Long-Lived Processes
Known Programming Model
Often Sync Request-Response
Mature:
IDE Integration
Debuggers
Tracers
Monitoring
CI/CD
Cloud Control
Short-Lived Processes
New Programming Model
Event-Driven Async
Immature:
?

8. Business Logic
Application
Data
Containers
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
Container
as a Service
Business Logic
Application
Data
Runtime
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
Infrastructure as
a Service
Business Logic
Application
Data
Containers
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
Platform
as a Service
Business Logic
Application
Data
Containers
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
Backend
as a Service
Business Logic
Application
Data
Containers
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
Function
as a Service
Platform Responsibilities
Business Logic
Application
Data
Runtime
OS
Virtualization
Server, Storage,
Network
On Premises

9. KNative
Knative provides a set of middleware
components that are essential to build
modern, source-centric, and
container-based applications that can
run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud,
or even in a third-party data center.
Knative components are built on
Kubernetes and codify the best
practices shared by successful
real-world .
● Essential base primitives for all
● Developer-friendly software
● Supports popular development
patterns
● Best of both worlds: Flexibility
and control
● Operator-friendly
https://cloud.google.com/knative/

10. Apache OpenWhisk
● Open Source incubating under Apache
● A Cloud platform to execute functions
written in:
○ JavaScript
○ Swift
○ Java
○ Python
○ PHP
○ Docker
○ Go
● Deployable on
○ Any platform where docker can be run
○ Kubernetes/OpenShift

11. Some theory
● Actions
○ A stateless code snippet that gets executed
● Package
○ A bundle of actions and feeds synonymous to Java Packages
● Feeds
○ Acts as Interface between external Event Sources and OpenWhisk
Actions
● Triggers
○ Stimulus of external Events via Feeds
● Rules
○ Ties one or more Triggers to an Action or vice-versa
● Activation
○ Records the output/response of Running/Ran actions

12. Tooling
● wsk
○ The core command line interface to work OpenWhisk
● wskdeploy
○ The command line tool to allow deploying OpenWhisk actions, functions etc., using YAML base
manifest
● Maven (only for Java)
○ Generate OpenWhisk Java Functions
● Serverless Framework
○ JavaScript based template framework
○ Support for generating OpenWhisk Templated project
○ Ability to deploy functions to OpenWhisk

13. Invocation Patterns
ASYNCHRONOUS SYNCHRONOUS
SCHEDULED

14. Apache OpenWhisk - How does it work ?
Controller
Kafka
nginx
Invoker Invoker

15. Get the feel

16. Action Chaining
● Actions can be chained
● Pre-defined chain of actions
○ Sequences
● Action Chaining could also be determined at runtime
○ Conductors
● Only first function in Sequence can accept parameter
○ The output of previous step(Action) is input to next

17. Demo - Action Chaining

18. Event Driven Capabilities
● OpenWhisk functions can respond to Events
● Events could be
○ Another function
○ External event source called as Feed Provider
● Event Action is OpenWhisk Function that’s invoked for a Trigger
● Event Actions are invoked via Triggers
○ Rules tie Actions to Triggers
● Trigger can be registered to Event Provider via Feeds (Stream of Events)
○ Feed can be:
■ Polling
■ Webhook
■ Persistent Connection

19. Cloud Events
● Define specification for Cloud Events
○ Effort via CNCF’s Serverless Working
Group
● Major Cloud Providers, SaaS providers are
part of working committee
● https://cloudevents.io/

20. Feed the Trigger to Rule your Action

21. Demo - Feeds and Events

22. Thank you
bit.ly/faas-tutorial
https://learn.openshift.com/serverless
https://github.com/knative/
@kamesh_sampathkamesh.sampath@hotmail.com