Benchmark and Simulation of Cloud Functions (FaaS)

Function as a Service (FaaS) is the predominant reason why a lot of researchers and practioneers talk about Serverless Computing. Since Serverless is misleading per se, we use the terms cloud function  when talking about concrete instances of a deployed function and FaaS when talking about the concept to deal with the concept of short lived function running ephemerally in the cloud.

The goal of this PhD project is to understand runtime characteristics of the platform, function characteristics of the deployed cloud function and take dependent services like database into consideration when building a local clone of the platform at a developer's machine. These aspects enable us to configure the cloud function appropriately to the specified requirements upfront. Furthermore, we are able to build a simulation and benchmarking tool to conduct repeatable and fair experiments which is the second part of the mentioned project.

Publications:

Prototype:

SeMoDe - Serverless Monitoring and Debugging
This prototype implements the concepts we specified in the paper and tries to form the mentioned  benchmarking and simulation tool at the end of the PhD project.

Participants:

Johannes Manner
Prof. Dr. Guido Wirtz