Chapter 1, Serverless and Docker, introduces serverless and Docker. We will find the relationship between them in this chapter. We will also learn the common architecture crystallized from studying architectures of several FaaS platforms. By the end of this chapter, we will learn how to say hello world using all three FaaS platforms, OpenFaaS, The Fn Project, and OpenWhisk.
Chapter 2, Docker and Swarm Clusters, reviews the container technology, namespaces and cgroups. Then, we will follow this by introducing Docker, how to install it, how to use its basic commands, and understand its workflow for build, ship, and run. Continuing further, we will then move to review its built-in orchestration engine, Docker Swarm. We will learn how to set up a cluster and see how Docker Swarm works internally. We will then learn how to set up a Docker network, attach it to containers, and how to scale services in Docker Swarm.
Chapter 3, Serverless Frameworks, discusses serverless frameworks, including platforms such as AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Azure Functions, and IBM Cloud Functions. We will end this chapter with a FaaS platform-independent framework, the serverless framework.
Chapter 4, OpenFaaS on Docker, explains how to use OpenFaaS. We will explore its architecture and components. Then we will learn how to prepare, build, and deploy functions with its provided tools and templates, how to prepare its cluster on top of Swarm, how to use its user interface, and how OpenFaaS leverages Docker multi-stage build. And we will also discuss how to use Prometheus to monitor the FaaS platform.
Chapter 5, The Fn Project, explores another FaaS platform. Similar to Chapter 4, OpenFaaS on Docker, we will start with its architecture and components, then go through a set of CLI commands to build, package, and deploy functions to Fn. Later in this chapter, we will learn how to monitor the platform using its built-in UI. Also, we will use a familiar tool to help analyze its logs.
Chapter 6, OpenWhisk on Docker, discusses OpenWhisk, the third and final FaaS platform for this book. We will walk through its concept and architecture.
Chapter 7, Operating FaaS Clusters, speaks about several techniques of preparing and operating production-grade FaaS clusters using Docker Swarm. We will discuss how to replace the whole layer of networking with another easy-to-use container networking plugin. We will also show how to implement the new routing mesh mechanism to avoid bugs from the current ingress implementation. Also, we will discuss some advanced topics such as distributed tracing and how to implement it. We will even cover the concept of cost reduction with spot instances and how to implement Swarm on this dynamic infrastructure.
Chapter 8, Putting Them All Together, explains how to implement a heterogeneous FaaS system combining all three FaaS platforms running seamlessly together on a robust product-grade Swarm cluster. We will show a mobile-based bank transfer use case, also with a legacy wrapper, a mobile backend WebHook, and stream data processing with FaaS. A bonus here is we also add a blockchain to the use case to show their interoperation.
Chapter 9, The Future of Serverless, concludes this book with advanced concepts and research prototype implementations that go beyond the current serverless and FaaS technologies.
