Konflux: Optimized Function Fusion for Serverless Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces Konflux, a system that efficiently analyzes all possible function fusion configurations in serverless applications to optimize cost and latency without disrupting live platforms.

Contribution

Konflux provides a novel emulation-based approach to evaluate all fusion options in complex FaaS applications, enabling cost-effective optimization.

Findings

Limited fusion configurations are optimal for cost and latency trade-offs.

Fusion configuration optimality depends on specific pricing models.

Emulation reduces cost and time compared to live benchmarking.

Abstract

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) has become a central paradigm in serverless cloud computing, yet optimizing FaaS deployments remains challenging. Using function fusion, multiple functions can be combined into a single deployment unit, which can be used to reduce cost and latency of complex serverless applications comprising multiple functions. Even in small-scale applications, the number of possible fusion configurations is vast, making brute-force benchmarking in production both cost- and time-prohibitive. In this paper, we present a system that can analyze every possible fusion setup of complex applications. By emulating the FaaS platform, our system enables local experimentation, eliminating the need to reconfigure the live platform and significantly reducing associated cost and time. We evaluate all fusion configurations across a number of example FaaS applications and resource limits. Our results reveal that, when analyzing cost and latency trade-offs, only a limited set of fusion configurations represent optimal solutions, which are strongly influenced by the specific pricing model in use.