Book Image

Docker for Serverless Applications

By : Chanwit Kaewkasi
Book Image

Docker for Serverless Applications

By: Chanwit Kaewkasi

Overview of this book

Serverless applications have gained a lot of popularity among developers and are currently the buzzwords in the tech market. Docker and serverless are two terms that go hand-in-hand. This book will start by explaining serverless and Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) concepts, and why they are important. Then, it will introduce the concepts of containerization and how Docker fits into the Serverless ideology. It will explore the architectures and components of three major Docker-based FaaS platforms, how to deploy and how to use their CLI. Then, this book will discuss how to set up and operate a production-grade Docker cluster. We will cover all concepts of FaaS frameworks with practical use cases, followed by deploying and orchestrating these serverless systems using Docker. Finally, we will also explore advanced topics and prototypes for FaaS architectures in the last chapter. By the end of this book, you will be in a position to build and deploy your own FaaS platform using Docker.

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Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Contributors
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Serverless and Docker
Serverless and Docker
What is serverless?
Common architecture of a serverless FaaS
Serverless/FaaS use cases
Hello world, the FaaS/Docker way
Exercise
Summary
2
Docker and Swarm Clusters
Docker and Swarm Clusters
What is a container?
What is Docker?
Docker Swarm clusters
Exercises
Summary
3
Serverless Frameworks
Serverless Frameworks
AWS Lambda
Azure Functions
Google Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
The Serverless Framework
Exercise
Summary
4
OpenFaaS on Docker
OpenFaaS on Docker
What is OpenFaaS?
Architecture
OpenFaaS components
Installing OpenFaaS
Preparing a function
Using the OpenFaaS CLI
The OpenFaaS dashboard
Exercises
Summary
5
The Fn Project
The Fn Project
The Fn Project
Fn's architecture
Using Fn CLI
Let's deploy a local function
Deploying Fn on Docker Swarm
Exercise
Summary
6
OpenWhisk on Docker
OpenWhisk on Docker
What is OpenWhisk?
Components and architecture
Function preparation
Invoking functions
User interface
Exercises
Summary
7
Operating FaaS Clusters
Operating FaaS Clusters
Stabilizing the configuration
Retry and circuit breaker
Preparing a production cluster
Logging
Scripting Docker with Golang
Exercises
Summary
8
Putting Them All Together
Putting Them All Together
A mobile payment scenario
A Parse platform as a backend
Preparing a WebHook in Fn
An event state machine with a blockchain
Wrapping a legacy with a function
A function as a Glue
A stream processor
Inter-FaaS platform networking
Exercises
Summary
9
The Future of Serverless
The Future of Serverless
FaaS and Docker reviews
Runtime for function containers
LinuxKit – immutable infrastructure for FaaS
Beyond serverless
Declarative containers
Exercises
Summary
References
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think
Index
Index

Using Fn CLI

This section will discuss how to use the basics of the Fn CLI, a command line to control Fn. Let's start with the installation of the Fn CLI. Make sure that the curl command exists on your system:

$ curl -LSs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fnproject/cli/master/install | sh

After installing the previous command, check its version and help by typing fn. The current version of the command line is 0.4.43 at the time of writing. Things move fast, so you can expect to use the different version anyway:

$ fn
fn 0.4.43

Fn command line tool

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES:
   FN_API_URL - Fn server address
   FN_REGISTRY - Docker registry to push images to, use username only to push to Docker Hub - [[registry.hub.docker.com/]USERNAME]

COMMANDS:
...

There are several sub-commands provided by fn, for example:

  • fn start is a thin wrapper around the docker run command. This subcommand starts the new Fn Server instance. The default address will be http://localhost:8080. The Fn CLI will however be trying...
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