Praktikumsblatt 10 - Serverless Computing (part 2) by Yasodhara Modupalli

OpenFaaS UI portal allows user to view the list of functions and invoke them with a button click. In this internship we first observe how to deploy and invoke function from the OpenFaaS UI. In the next task, you will create a custom function then deploy and invoke it using faas-cli, which will be added to the functions list in the UI.

 

Task 1 – Deploy a random function from store

1. Open OpenFaaS UI portal in the browser with OPENFAAS_URL.
2. Click on Deploy New Function and select a function from store list and click Deploy.
3. For example, select figlet function and deploy. That will be added to the list in the left panel of the portal. Now, click on the function and wait until the status changes to Ready. Then, invoke the function with an input text. You will see the response in the Response body section.
4.  Now list the deployed functions with the number of invocations. Which command do you use for that?
5.  Which command do you use to invoke a function from command line?

 

 Task 2 – Dockerhub login and pull the scaffolding language templates

1.  The function that we create now will be built as a docker image and then deployed to cluster using OpenFaaS. For that, we need to login to Docker from command line using docker login command.
2. OpenFaaS supports various programming languages to create functions. The supported languages are available as templates. Before creating a function from template, we need to pull the templates from the GitHub.
   Note: Functions created using unsupported languages can be built as dockerfile.
3.  Which command is used to pull the templates using faas-cli? Which command lists the available languages in templates?

 

 Task 3 – Create a custom function and deploy

1.  To create a function use the command in the following format:
   faas-cli new --lang <language-name> <function-name> --prefix="<your-docker-username-here>"
   Note: If the language of your choice is not available you can use dockerfile template.
2.  The above command will create three files and directory. Can you mention the directory structure with file names?
3. The contents of <function-name>.yml file should meet the below specifications:
   •  The name of the function is represented by the key under functions i.e, <function-name>.
   •  The language is represented by the lang field.
   • The folder used to build from is called handler, this must be a folder not a file.
   • The docker image to be used is under the field image.
     Note: You can also mention <docker-username> before the image name under image field in the .yml file if you forgot to add with the --prefix=”<docker-username>” tag.
4.  Change the contents of handler.xx file. Any values returned to stdout will eventually be returned to the calling program.
5.  Build and deploy the function with the command:
   faas-cli up -f <function-name>.yml
   Note: faas-cli up command combines build, push, and deploy commands of faas-cli together. Alternatively, you can use three commands one after another.
6.  Now invoke the function using faas-cli. Which command did you use?
7.  Finally, you can check the functions list in terminal with faas-cli list. Additionally, you can also check in the UI portal and invoke from there.
8.  You can find out the hight-level information on every invocation of your function from the container logs. Which command will you use to trouble shoot the function that you created above?  

 

Optional Task:

OpenFaaS tracks metrics on your functions automatically using Prometheus. The metrics can be turned into a useful dashboard with free and Open-Source tools like Grafana.

1.  Run Grafana in OpenFaaS kubernetes namespace. Provide the commands used.
2.  Expose Grafana with a NodePort or use port-forwarding method. Which command is used for that?
3.  After the service has been created open Grafana in your browser with username admin and password admin. Now you can access the OpenFaaS dashboard at $GRAFANA_URL and monitor the metrics.