Building the Serverless Container Experience: Kevin McGrath, Spotinst, Serverless NYC 2018

1. Building The Serverless Container Experience
Kevin McGrath
VP of Architecture

2. Company Snapshot

3. Is it a big architectural conflict or perhaps a
powerful combination?

4. Applications
as a Service
(ASP)
Platforms as a
Service / IaaS
Microservices /
Containers
Functions as a
Service
Evolution of SOA

5. The Ecosystem
● Functions as a Service is an emerging new product
● Containers are now industry accepted products
● VMs are moving towards commodity
● 83% of organizations are actively using containers today - Forbes 2017
● 38% of enterprises see public cloud as their top priority in 2018 - RightScale

6. Cost is a Challenge
● Pay per request introduces a complex billing model
● Right sizing environments
● Understanding scale
● Inclusion of more other services
● The “hidden” costs of Serverless - 5.6K claps
https://spotinst.com/serverless-costs

7. So, Why Functions With
Containers?

8. Function Patterns
● Service to Service integration (attach s3 /
Kinesis / other with compute)
● Moderate concurrency
● Latency tolerant - functions calling other
functions
● Focused, single purpose implementation

9. Container Patterns
● Execution environment defined by
the Image
● Traditional dependency
management
● Platform independent
● Variety of use cases

10. Use existing tools for
Microservices deployments

11. Language / Platform independent

12. Applications can benefit from handling multiple
requests simultaneously
application

13. Functions that need to be warm -
cold start is prohibitive

14. Long running socket, calculations
or rendering that consumes more
than X minutes

15. Large variation in request rates

16. So, What if..?

17. Functions and Containers Combined
No management of
underlying infrastructure
Utility Billing
Pay only for what you use
Scale by request

18. Bridge the Gap
Monolithic
Application
The
Serverless
Experience
Containers

19. Who Manages the Infrastructure ?
Customer managed Provider managed Shared - customer owns,
managed by third party

20. What is a Serverless Experience?
No management underlying
infrastructure
Gateway - accessible API or other
endpoint by default when an
application is deployed
Traffic Shifting - Ability to move
traffic between versions, regions or
applications
Scale by request - The service will
scale availability based on real time
requests
Utility billing - You are charged for
you what you use. When the system
is idle, you pay nothing
Scale to Zero - The application can scale all
the way down to zero resources. At this level
there is no cost for the service

21. The Future of Serverless
spotinst.com/driftfargate/ACI

22. Serverless Now
● Don’t force applications into a mold they do not belong in
● Containers bring functions to everyone - on any platform
● Understand how Serverless works and is built
● Knowledge of where code runs is still important

23. kevin@spotinst.com
@catlgrep
Thank you