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Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

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Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#161

Post by gdsdfe »

sequoia wrote: post #160
gdsdfe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You basically have a git repo that contains your business logic implemented as 'functions' and some configuration : knative will build, containerize, deploy, and glue/route those functions for you to make it a full fledged app. it will also take care of load balancing/scaling etc. So all you need really is focus on you business logic code and write some config for knative ... well this is at least the vision

So it's like Serverless framework for k8s? https://serverless.com/

I think it's more like what you would use to build serverless.com a more fair comparison IMO would be to https://cloud.google.com/functions/

but it didn't use neither so ...

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#162

Post by pwaai »

jacques_chester wrote: post #145
pwaai wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tells me not much....is it pinging to keep instances warm?

No. The intention is that the autoscaler will support both floor and ceiling values for its work. So while scale-to-zero is the default, you can make an economic decision that you want scale-to-1, scale-to-10, whatever makes sense for your case. Pinging won't be necessary to artificially create this behaviour. This is an example of nesting reactive control (the autoscaler) with predictive control (the min/max values)…

interesting...by floor and ceiling is that like the minimum and maximum threshold for latency?

here's my pain point. I built a serverless REST API with token authentication on Lambda. However, if many people aren't using it all the time it will sleep and then the next sucker who calls the endpoint is stuck with waiting for the serverless instance to wake up.

In some cases even getting a token from a simple POST request would take an awful long time. This was a few years ago and I stopped using serverless since then.

But now I'm interested in serverless because I've been hearing that the cold startup problem is being reduced.

I wonder if in the future developers will be just taking core logics from serverless repository and wiring up the components, sort of like how wordpress does it without the crazy layers of PHP and bloat.

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#163

Post by jacques_chester »

pwaai wrote: post #162
jacques_chester wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The intention is that the autoscaler will support both floor and ceiling values for its work. So while scale-to-zero is the default, you can make an economic decision that you want scale-to-1, scale-to-10, whatever makes sense for your case. Pinging won't be necessary to artificially create this behaviour. This is an example of nesting reactive control (the autoscaler) with predictive control (the min/max values)…

interesting...by floor and ceiling is that like the minimum and maximum threshold for latency? here's my pain point. I built a serverless REST API with token authentication on Lambda. However, if many people aren't using it all the time it will sleep and then the next sucker who calls the endpoint is stuck with waiting for the serverless instance to wake up. In some cases even getting a token from a simple POST reque…

There are two aspects here: engineering and economic.

Our engineering view is that we want startup to be as fast as possible, which is a surprisingly nuanced problem with lots of moving parts that need to collectively do something smart, even before you get to the startup time of your own code. This will show a lot of improvement as we go, but right now it's early days.

The economic question is about trading off the risk of hitting a slow start vs the cost of maintaining idle instances. It is impossible for Knative's contributors to solve that problem with a black box solution. What we can do is to provide you with some knobs and dials to express your preferences.

Edit: I didn't answer this question --

> interesting...by floor and ceiling is that like the minimum and maximum threshold for latency?

Not for now, this would be bounds on what scale the autoscaler can choose. Latency is an example of an output setpoint that an autoscaler could attempt to control, as opposed to a process input. We have in mind to make autoscaling somewhat pluggable because different people want to target different signals.

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#164

Post by cmonfeat »

mchmarny wrote: post #14

I wrote a little post to explain why Knative is important from the developer perspective https://medium.com/@mchmarny/build-deploy-manage-modern-serv...

Great post, really cleared up the value proposition of this project for me!

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#165

Post by sequoia »

gdsdfe wrote: post #161
sequoia wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's like Serverless framework for k8s? https://serverless.com/

I think it's more like what you would use to build serverless.com a more fair comparison IMO would be to https://cloud.google.com/functions/ but it didn't use neither so ...

serverless is a config/deploy thing that deploys "functions" (to lambda etc.), ties them to HTTP routes or other events, provisions resources (storage etc.), ties them to your applicatoins etc.. The main thing it does not do is scaling etc. because you're deploying to a platform that handles that.

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#166

Post by yebyen »

yebyen wrote: post #140
peterwwillis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the docs, the high level overview is misleading. You don't have to explain physics to explain how a car works. You only have to explain it in terms of something your audience is familiar with. Magnetization would be hard to explain to someone without physics, because there's no other parallel to quantum mechanics for the average person. But a car is based on general principles which most of us understand…

> ...But a car is based on general principles which most of us understand... (etc) This is bar none the best explanation I have ever read of how a car works, without hand waving, to clarify for non-believers in car technology. I want to reward you, but I am kind of an outsider who honestly just strives to use Kubernetes, unsuccessfully, and I haven't got it off the ground at my organization yet (and I may never...) S…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEf4DhoyF00

This is about 20 sentences, ...

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#167

Post by yebyen »

yebyen wrote: post #158
barrkel wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The car analogy is just right, IMO. It's a functional description of how a car works at a high level, so that we can understand how it's put together; and if we're reasonably expert in mechanics, we can fill in a lot of missing details. Whereas "a box that you sit in that lets you get to where you want to go quickly" leaves out far too much detail. Too many descriptions of tools for devs sell benefits instead of func…

Yeah, on the other hand I'm looking closely at this one just because of the people that showed up in this thread. I know some of these guys and their past work is exceptional, so if they're claiming to be involved in this, I am sure I'll be sorry if I don't check it out.

OK they're obviously not just involved, actually driving...

Re: Knative – Kubernetes-based platform to manage modern serverless workloads

#168

Post by hemapani »

1) It is mentioned that KNative "deliver a serverless experience to developers on any cloud". How does it work with any cloud? Are you referring to fact that all clouds has k8s? Is it already supported in any cloud or will be supported?

2) If any cloud is supported, does it virtualize services such as storage, queues, API management and Identity

3) Does Knative can seamlessly switch monitoring to what is provided by each cloud.

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