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OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple

OpenFaaS Logo

OpenFaaS (Functions as a Service) is a framework for building serverless functions with Docker and Kubernetes which has first class support for metrics. Any process can be packaged as a function enabling you to consume a range of web events without repetitive boiler-plate coding.

Highlights

  • Ease of use through UI portal and one-click install
  • Write functions in any language for Linux or Windows and package in Docker/OCI image format
  • Portable - runs on existing hardware or public/private cloud - Kubernetes and Docker Swarm native
  • CLI available with YAML format for templating and defining functions
  • Auto-scales as demand increases
  • Scales to zero and back again
  • Compatible with Istio Service Mesh. mTLS supported via exec health checks.

Deploy OpenFaaS

Note: You must also pass --set rbac=false if your cluster is not configured with role-based access control. For further information, see here.

Note: If you can not use helm with Tiller, skip below for alternative install instructions.

Install

We recommend creating two namespaces, one for the OpenFaaS core services and one for the functions:

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faas-netes/master/namespaces.yml

You will now have openfaas and openfaas-fn. If you want to change the names or to install into multiple installations then edit namespaces.yml from the faas-netes repo.

Add the OpenFaaS helm chart:

$ helm repo add openfaas https://openfaas.github.io/faas-netes/
"openfaas" has been added to your repositories

Generate secrets so that we can enable basic authentication for the gateway:

# generate a random password
PASSWORD=$(head -c 12 /dev/urandom | shasum| cut -d' ' -f1)

kubectl -n openfaas create secret generic basic-auth \
--from-literal=basic-auth-user=admin \
--from-literal=basic-auth-password="$PASSWORD"

Now decide how you want to expose the services and edit the helm upgrade command as required.

  • To use NodePorts (default) pass no additional flags
  • To use a LoadBalancer add --set serviceType=LoadBalancer
  • To use an IngressController add --set ingress.enabled=true

Note: even without a LoadBalancer or IngressController you can access your gateway at any time via kubectl port-forward.

Now deploy OpenFaaS from the helm chart repo:

$ helm repo update \
 && helm upgrade openfaas --install openfaas/openfaas \
    --namespace openfaas  \
    --set basic_auth=true \
    --set functionNamespace=openfaas-fn

The above command will also update your helm repo to pull in any new releases.

Verify the installation

Once all the services are up and running, log into your gateway using the OpenFaaS CLI. This will cache your credentials into your ~/.openfaas/config.yml file.

Fetch your public IP or NodePort via kubectl get svc -n openfaas gateway-external -o wide and set it as an environmental variable as below:

export OPENFAAS_URL=http://...

Now log in:

echo -n $PASSWORD | faas-cli login -g $OPENFAAS_URL -u admin --password-stdin

OpenFaaS Operator / CRD controller

If you would like to work with CRDs there is an alternative controller to faas-netes named OpenFaaS Operator which can be swapped in at deployment time. The OpenFaaS Operator is suitable for development and testing and may replace the faas-netes controller in the future. The Operator is compatible with Kubernetes 1.9 or later.

To use it, add the flag: --set operator.create=true when installing with Helm.

faas-netes vs OpenFaaS Operator

The faas-netes controller is the most tested, stable and supported version of the OpenFaaS integration with Kubernetes. In contrast the OpenFaaS Operator is based upon the codebase and features from faas-netes, but offers a tighter integration with Kubernetes through CustomResourceDefinitions. This means you can type in kubectl get functions for instance.

Deployment with helm template

This option is good for those that have issues with installing Tiller, the server/cluster component of helm. Using the helm CLI, we can pre-render and then apply the templates using kubectl.

  1. Clone the faas-netes repository

    $ git clone https://github.com/openfaas/faas-netes.git

  2. Render the chart to a Kubernetes manifest called openfaas.yaml

    $ helm template faas-netes/chart/openfaas \
    --name openfaas \
    --namespace openfaas  \
    --set basic_auth=true \
    --set functionNamespace=openfaas-fn > $HOME/openfaas.yaml

    You can set the values and overrides just as you would in the install/upgrade commands above.

  3. Install the components using kubectl

    $ kubectl apply -f faas-netes/namespaces.yml
$ kubectl apply -f $HOME/openfaas.yaml

Now verify your installation.

Deploy for development / testing

You can run the following command from within the faas-netes/chart folder in the faas-netes repo.

$ helm upgrade --install openfaas openfaas/ \
   --namespace openfaas \
   --set functionNamespace=openfaas-fn

Exposing services

NodePorts

By default a NodePort will be created for the API Gateway.

LB

If you're running on a cloud such as AKS or GKE you will need to pass an additional flag of --set serviceType=LoadBalancer to tell helm to create LoadBalancer objects instead. An alternative to using multiple LoadBalancers is to install an Ingress controller.

Deploy with an IngressController

In order to make use of automatic ingress settings you will need an IngressController in your cluster such as Traefik or Nginx.

Add --set ingress.enabled to enable ingress pass --set ingress.enabled=true when running the installation via helm.

By default services will be exposed with following hostnames (can be changed, see values.yaml for details):

  • gateway.openfaas.local

SSL / TLS

If you require TLS/SSL then please make use of an IngressController. A full guide is provided to enable TLS for the OpenFaaS Gateway using cert-manager and Let's Encrypt.

Zero scale

Scaling up from zero replicas is enabled by default, to turn it off set zero_scale to false in the helm chart.

Scaling to zero is done by the faas-idler component and by default will only carry out a dry-run. Pass the following to helm to enable scaling to zero replicas of idle functions. You will also need to read the docs on how to configure functions to opt into scaling down.

--set faasIdler.dryRun=false

Configuration

Additional OpenFaaS options in values.yaml.

Parameter Description Default
operator.create Use the OpenFaaS operator CRD controller, default uses faas-netes as the Kubernetes controller false
functionNamespace Functions namespace, preferred openfaas-fn default
async Deploys NATS true
exposeServices Expose NodePorts/LoadBalancer true
serviceType Type of external service to use NodePort/LoadBalancer NodePort
ingress.enabled Create ingress resources false
rbac Enable RBAC true
basic_auth Enable basic authentication on the Gateway false
faasnetes.readTimeout Queue worker read timeout 60s
faasnetes.writeTimeout Queue worker write timeout 60s
faasnetes.imagePullPolicy Image pull policy for deployed functions Always
gateway.replicas Replicas of the gateway, pick more than 1 for HA 1
gateway.readTimeout Queue worker read timeout 65s
gateway.writeTimeout Queue worker write timeout 65s
gateway.upstreamTimeout Maximum duration of upstream function call, should be lower than readTimeout/writeTimeout 60s
gateway.scaleFromZero Enables an intercepting proxy which will scale any function from 0 replicas to the desired amount true
gateway.maxIdleConns Set max idle connections from gateway to functions 1024
gateway.maxIdleConnsPerHost Set max idle connections from gateway to functions per host 1024
queueWorker.replicas Replicas of the queue-worker, pick more than 1 for HA 1
queueWorker.ackWait Max duration of any async task/request 60s
nats.enableMonitoring Enable the NATS monitoring endpoints on port 8222 false
openfaasImagePullPolicy Image pull policy for openfaas components, can change to IfNotPresent in offline env Always
kubernetesDNSDomain Domain name of the Kubernetes cluster cluster.local
faasIdler.inactivityDuration Duration after which faas-idler will scale function down to 0 5m
faasIdler.reconcileInterval The time between each of reconciliation 30s
faasIdler.dryRun When set to false the OpenFaaS API will be called to scale down idle functions, by default this is set to only print in the logs. true

Specify each parameter using the --set key=value[,key=value] argument to helm install. See values.yaml for detailed configuration.

Removing the OpenFaaS

All control plane components can be cleaned up with helm:

$ helm delete --purge openfaas

Follow this by the following to remove all other associated objects:

$ kubectl delete namespace/openfaas
$ kubectl delete namespace/openfaas-fn

In some cases your additional functions may need to be either deleted before deleting the chart with faas-cli or manually deleted using kubectl delete.