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.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Stabilizing the configuration


Let's start by carefully stabilizing the cluster configuration. At the time of writing, a Docker cluster works best with the following configuration. Figure: 7.1 illustrated in this section depicts it well:

  • Ubuntu Server 16.04.3 LTS: Although Red Hat Linux or CentOS may work best for you, Ubuntu Server is easy to handle. We are constantly informed that Docker has been really well tested with Ubuntu Server. If you choose to use Red Hat or CentOS, please go with version 7.4.
  • Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS: The 4.4 kernel is an LTS and it's great for Docker. You can also use kernel 4.9 but the kernel, like 4.13, is still too new for Docker.
  • Overlay2as the Docker storage driver: Although the advanced multi-layered unification filesystem (AUFS) has worked well for Docker for quite a long time, overlay2should be the new default storage driver for Docker running on the 4.4+ kernel. If you get a chance to run a production cluster on CentOS or RHEL 7.4, overlay2 is also a good option...