/faas

OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple

Primary LanguageGoMIT LicenseMIT

OpenFaaS ® - Serverless Functions Made Simple

Go Report Card Build Status GoDoc License: MIT OpenFaaS

OpenFaaS Logo

OpenFaaS® makes it easy for developers to deploy event-driven functions and microservices to Kubernetes without repetitive, boiler-plate coding. Package your code or an existing binary in a Docker image to get a highly scalable endpoint with auto-scaling and metrics.

Twitter URL

Highlights

  • Ease of use through UI portal and one-click install
  • Write services and functions in any language with Template Store or a Dockerfile
  • Build and ship your code in the Docker/OCI image format
  • Portable: runs on existing hardware or public/private cloud by leveraging Kubernetes
  • CLI available with YAML format for templating and defining functions
  • Auto-scales as demand increases including to zero

Want to dig deeper into OpenFaaS?

Overview of OpenFaaS (Serverless Functions Made Simple)

Conceptual architecture

Press / Branding / Website Sponsorship

  • Individual Sponsorships / End-users / Insiders Track 🍻

    OpenFaaS is free to use and completely open source under the MIT license, however financial backing is required to sustain the effort to maintain and develop the project.

    Users and contributors are encouraged to join their peers in supporting the work through GitHub Sponsors, all tiers gain exclusive access to the Insiders Track

  • Website Sponsorship 🌎

    Companies and brands are welcome to sponsor openfaas.com, the Gold and Platinum tiers come with a homepage logo, see costs and tiers. Website sponsorships can be paid by invoice to OpenFaaS Ltd.

  • Press / Branding 📸

    For information on branding, the press-kit, registered entities and sponsorship head over to the openfaas/media repo. You can also order custom SWAG or take part in the weekly Twitter contest #FaaSFriday

    Looking for statistics? This project does not use a mono-repo, but is split across several components. Use Ken Fukuyama's dashboard to gather accurate counts on contributors, stars and forks across the GitHub organisation.

    Note: Incubator projects are not counted in these totals and are hosted under openfaas-incubator awaiting graduation.

Governance

OpenFaaS® is an independent project founded by Alex Ellis which is now being built and shaped by a growing community of contributors, GitHub Organisation members, Core contributors and end-users. OpenFaaS Ltd hosts the OpenFaaS codebase and trademarks. Professional services, sponsorships, and commercial support packages are available upon request.

Users

View a selection of end-user companies who have given permission to have their logo listed at openfaas.com.

If you're using OpenFaaS please let us know on this thead. In addition, you are welcome to request to have your logo listed on the homepage. Thank you for your support.

Technical overview

Function Watchdog

  • You can make any Docker image into a serverless function by adding the Function Watchdog (a tiny Golang HTTP server)
  • The Function Watchdog is the entrypoint allowing HTTP requests to be forwarded to the target process via STDIN or HTTP. The response is sent back to the caller by writing to STDOUT or HTTP from your application.

API Gateway / UI Portal

  • The API Gateway provides an external route into your functions and collects Cloud Native metrics through Prometheus.
  • Your API Gateway will scale functions according to demand by altering the service replica count in the Docker Swarm or Kubernetes API.
  • A UI is baked in allowing you to invoke functions in your browser and create new ones as needed.

The API Gateway is a RESTful micro-service and you can view the Swagger docs here.

CLI

Using the faas-cli and faas-cli up you can create, build, distribute, and deploy your code in a very short period of time.

Any container or process in a Docker container can be a serverless workload in OpenFaaS, as long as it conforms to The Workload Contract.

Create new functions from templates for Node.js, Python, Go and many more. If you can't find a suitable template you can also use a Dockerfile or create your own.

The CLI is effectively a RESTful client for the API Gateway. When you have OpenFaaS configured you can get started with the CLI here

Examples

You can generate new functions using the faas-cli and built-in templates or use any binary for Windows or Linux in a Docker container.

Official templates exist for many popular languages and are easily extensible with Dockerfiles.

  • Node.js (node10-express) example:

    "use strict"
    
    module.exports = (event, context) => {
    
    context
        .headers({"Content-Type": "text/html"})
        .status(200)
        .succeed(`
        <h1>
            👋 Hello World 🌍
        </h1>`)
    }

    handler.js

  • Python 3 example:

    import requests
    
    def handle(req):
        r =  requests.get(req, timeout = 1)
        return "{} => {:d}".format(req, r.status_code)

    handler.py

  • Golang example (golang-http)

    package function
    
    import (
        "log"
    
        "github.com/openfaas-incubator/go-function-sdk"
    )
    
    func Handle(req handler.Request) (handler.Response, error) {
        var err error
    
        return handler.Response{
            Body: []byte("Try us out today!"),
            Header: map[string][]string{
                "X-Served-By": []string{"openfaas.com"},
            },
        }, err
    }

The easiest way to get started with functions is to take the workshop or one of the tutorials in the documentation.

Get started with OpenFaaS

Join the Community

Official blog and documentation

Workshop (hands-on learning)

You can learn how to build functions and microservices with OpenFaaS using the OpenFaaS workshop. The Workshop has been curated carefully by dozens of community members to guide you through everything you need to know from setting up on Kubernetes to making use of secrets to integrating with GitHub and auto-scaling.

Deploy OpenFaaS

Here is a screenshot of the API gateway portal - designed for ease of use with the inception function.

Portal

Kubernetes

OpenFaaS is Kubernetes-native - you can follow the deployment guide here.

Docker Swarm

The deployment guide for Docker Swarm contains a simple one-line command to get you up and running in around 60 seconds. It also includes a set of sample functions which you can use with the TestDrive instructions below.

Deployment guide for Docker Swarm

  • Docker Playground

    You can quickly start OpenFaaS on Docker Swarm online using the community-run Docker playground: Play-with-Docker (PWD)

    Simply follow the deployment guide for Swarm above in a new session

    You will need a free Docker Hub account to get access. Get one here: Docker Hub

Find out more about OpenFaaS

Welcome to Serverless 2.0 @ Goto Chicago 2019

Featuring a manifesto for Serverless 2.0 including comparisons and synergies between OpenFaaS, AWS Lambda, Knative, and Kubeless.

How LivePerson is Tailoring its Conversational Platform Using OpenFaaS @ KubeCon 2019

Hear how LivePerson took one of the most popular open source Serverless projects (OpenFaaS) and built it into their product to add value for customers. Functions allow customers to create custom chatbot behaviour, messaging extensions and commerce workflows. You’ll see a live demo and hear about how the team put together the solution

Digital Transformation of Vision Banco Paraguay with Serverless Functions @ KubeCon late-2018

Alex Ellis co-presents at KubeCon with Patricio Diaz Senior Analyst, Vision Banco SAECA

Serverless Beyond the Hype (goto Copenhagen) late-2018

Overview of the Serverless landscape for Kubernetes, OpenFaaS and OpenFaaS Cloud with live demos and most update information.

The Cube interview @ DevNet Create mid-2018

TechFieldDay presentation (Dockercon EU) late-2017

15 minute overview with demos on Kubernetes and with Alexa - HD YouTube video

Closing Keynote at Dockercon early-2017

Functions as a Service or FaaS was a winner in the Cool Hacks contest for Dockercon 2017.

If you'd like to find the functions I used in the demos head over to the faas-dockercon repository.

Background story

Community events and blog posts

Have you written a blog about OpenFaaS? Do you have a speaking event? Send a Pull Request to the community page below.

If you'd like to join OpenFaaS community Slack channel to chat with contributors or get some help then check out this page on community.

Roadmap and contributing

OpenFaaS is written in Golang and is MIT licensed - contributions are welcomed whether that means providing feedback, testing existing and new feature or hacking on the source.

How do I become a contributor?

Please see the guide on community & contributing

Roadmap

The roadmap for OpenFaaS is represented in GitHub issues and a Trello board.

Roadmap: OpenFaaS Cloud

OpenFaaS Cloud is a platform built on top of the OpenFaaS framework which enables a multi-user experience driven by GitOps. It can be installed wherever you already have OpenFaaS and packages a dashboard along with CI/CD integration with GitHub so that you can push code to a private or public Git repo and get live HTTPS endpoints.

Dashboards

Example of a Grafana dashboards linked to OpenFaaS showing auto-scaling live in action: here

An alternative community dashboard is available here