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Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

openwhisk.apache.org

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Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#121

Post by INTPenis »

masukomi wrote: post #38

Can someone explain to me WHERE the servers exist for this "serverless" platform? Is this code i run on lamda and lamda competitors? Is apache hosting it? Do i have to set up my own servers to run the code? All the intro docs and FAQs seem to assume that "serverless" is literally no servers, just magical cloud fairies or something. I get that it uses docker containers, but where can i / am i expected to run those?

It's actually serverless for the user. You run a server but the user of your service (apache openwhisk) only needs to define code and triggers on your service, that runs on your servers.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#122

Post by polskibus »

CodeM0nkey wrote: post #91
polskibus wrote: post #3

Excellent, more competition in serverless means increased adoption. Even better if it is open source, in contrast to GOOG/AMZN/MSFT offerings! Seems like an undercutting attempt on the IBM side? Could someone with production-level serverless experience share his insights on OpenWhisk capabilities and roadmap? What's missing from the G/A/M stacks?

> Even better if it is open source, in contrast to GOOG/AMZN/MSFT offerings! Most of the Azure Functions codebase is actually open source under the MIT License: https://github.com/Azure/Azure-Functions

That's great but it would be good to know what's missing? Can I take that repo, deploy it and start selling FaaS?

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#123

Post by jupiter90000 »

masukomi wrote: post #38

Can someone explain to me WHERE the servers exist for this "serverless" platform? Is this code i run on lamda and lamda competitors? Is apache hosting it? Do i have to set up my own servers to run the code? All the intro docs and FAQs seem to assume that "serverless" is literally no servers, just magical cloud fairies or something. I get that it uses docker containers, but where can i / am i expected to run those?

It's essentially 'set up your own servers and run a lambda-like service yourself.'

Here's some documentation for OpenWhisk on Kubernetes (running locally or on your own servers or cloud providers' Kubernetes cluster meeting the requirements specified). https://github.com/apache/incubator-openwhisk-deploy-kube/bl...

There are other ways OpenWhisk could be deployed besides as well (see https://github.com/apache/incubator-openwhisk/blob/master/an... ), but it appears you will need server(s) or local computer to run OpenWhisk on.

I do completely agree the Apache site for the project seems lacking in terms of the deployment docs. Which is a shame, because as you can see from the links I posted, deployment can be quite involved. It is still incubating though. Maybe they need volunteers to step up and help with the documentation on the Apache site?

This is all just from what I could find in docs/searching for info, I've never run OpenWhisk.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#124

Post by sriku »

bri3d wrote: post #113
tinymollusk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember CGI; curious if you're able to elaborate how you see the analogy.

Pure CGI applications (before the mod_x / long-running workers strategy took over) are "stateless" / "function as a service" insofar as the application's internal state can only live for one request lifecycle. However, they generally ran with the external state (ex. local filesystem) preserved between requests, so the approach was still often a bit different than it is for modern FaaS applications, where state can on…

If you take a CGI based implementation and constrained it to use only external managed services, and you use Lambda to serve it up, you won't need to manage servers explicitly.

The real serverless apps are pure clients that use 3rd party services for everything - i.e. the developer doesn't write any backend code that runs on their own infra.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#125

Post by Gogogogirl »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #64

Nowadays when someone claims to be "serverless", there can be two interpretations: 1. It's a server actually. It's just that the server serves up functions, without state. So a more correct terminology would be "stateless servers" 2. Truly P2P (Like blockchain), therefore there truly are no "servers". Used to think Amazon did a great job coming up with the jargon that's great for marketing, but lately as we see more…

I thought there were nodes in blockchain.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#126

Post by maniacalrobot »

People hear server-less, and go straight to thinking about hardware … in my mind, server-less apps are missing the "application server" software, or it's extracted away so far as to appear to be the operating system from the server-less functions point of view.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#127

Post by gr__or »

_hyn3 wrote: post #109
CharlesW wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like "cloud computing", the name "serverless" doesn't make much sense when used literally. It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. P2P also doesn't mean "no servers", but that every node is as much server as client. Amazon popularized but didn't invent the term "serverless", which appears to have been first used in 2012.[1] [1] http://readw…

> It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. They already had stuff like that. S3. RDS. Elasticache. At least the cloud gives you the nebulous feeling of servers off in the ether somewhere. But serverless is neither specific nor accurate. It doesn't work. It's nothing more than lazy marketing-speak.

> S3. RDS. Elasticache.

A requirement for serverless would be having access to a general programming language which is why those examples don't really apply.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#128

Post by tushar-r »

manigandham wrote: post #107
tw1010 wrote: post #81

To anyone who has a good feel for this space. Where do you think all this is heading in a 3-5 year time period? What is the medium-term vision like? I'm just curious.

Consolidation. There are way too many frameworks right now and they offer nothing different, especially for something so commodity as packaging and running a single function. The major cloud vendors are also rapidly evolving with Azure Functions being the most integrated and useful with AWS second and GCP far behind. The next few years will see 1-2 open-source frameworks along with all the cloud vendors getting to pa…

>The major cloud vendors are also rapidly evolving with Azure Functions being the most integrated and useful with AWS second and GCP far behind.

Can you expand on this, please? I've got a very basic understanding of the first two, would like to know more.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#129

Post by oh-kumudo »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #64

Nowadays when someone claims to be "serverless", there can be two interpretations: 1. It's a server actually. It's just that the server serves up functions, without state. So a more correct terminology would be "stateless servers" 2. Truly P2P (Like blockchain), therefore there truly are no "servers". Used to think Amazon did a great job coming up with the jargon that's great for marketing, but lately as we see more…

Serverless means you don't have to explicit manage hosts yourself. They are transparent to you. In that case Lambda is no different from blockchain, where you have either AWS/server farm to run the actual code for you.

Which in term, makes this project weird. Because in order to use it, you still needs to hosts a group of servers yourself. If someones else hosts it for you, you don't really care what framework they are using.

Re: Apache OpenWhisk – A serverless, open-source cloud platform

#130

Post by closeparen »

CharlesW wrote: post #69
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #64

Nowadays when someone claims to be "serverless", there can be two interpretations: 1. It's a server actually. It's just that the server serves up functions, without state. So a more correct terminology would be "stateless servers" 2. Truly P2P (Like blockchain), therefore there truly are no "servers". Used to think Amazon did a great job coming up with the jargon that's great for marketing, but lately as we see more…

Like "cloud computing", the name "serverless" doesn't make much sense when used literally. It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. P2P also doesn't mean "no servers", but that every node is as much server as client. Amazon popularized but didn't invent the term "serverless", which appears to have been first used in 2012.[1] [1] http://readw…

The name for "just give us your code and we'll run it" has been PaaS for a while.
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