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

What is OpenFaaS?


OpenFaaS is a framework and infrastructure preparation system for building serverless applications. It originated from the serverless framework in the Docker Swarm and now supports other kinds of infrastructure backends, such as Kubernetes or Hyper.sh. Functions in OpenFaaS are containers. Any program written in any language can be packed as a function by leveraging the container technologies of Docker. This enables us to fully reuse the existing code to consume a wide range of web service events without rewriting the code. OpenFaaS is a great tool for modernizing old systems to run on a cloud-based infrastructure.

There are several serverless frameworks out there in the cloud-native landscape. However, some problems need to be addressed by Alex Ellis, the original author of OpenFaaS. The driving factor behind the making of the framework is shaping the following, compelling features:

  • Ease of use: Basically, many serverless frameworks are complex to deploy by nature, as they...