Snafu: Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) Runtime Design and Implementation

TL;DR

Snafu is a modular, open-source FaaS runtime system designed for hosting and managing stateless functions, offering features useful for research and prototyping in serverless computing.

Contribution

The paper introduces Snafu, a novel FaaS runtime with unique features, detailed design, open-source implementation, and performance metrics, advancing research and development in serverless platforms.

Findings

Provides a functional FaaS runtime with distinct features

Offers collected metrics characterizing system performance

Facilitates research and prototyping in serverless computing

Abstract

Snafu, or Snake Functions, is a modular system to host, execute and manage language-level functions offered as stateless (micro-)services to diverse external triggers. The system interfaces resemble those of commercial FaaS providers but its implementation provides distinct features which make it overall useful to research on FaaS and prototyping of FaaS-based applications. This paper argues about the system motivation in the presence of already existing alternatives, its design and architecture, the open source implementation and collected metrics which characterise the system.