Serverless WebAssemby: Roundtrip Scaling from 0 to 10k in 10 Seconds - Kate Goldenring & Joel Dice
Channel: CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]
Date: 2023-04-20

Serverless WebAssemby: Roundtrip Scaling from 0 to 10k in 10 Seconds - Kate Goldenring & Joel Dice, Fermyon

Cloud is expensive. This is in part due to applications idly waiting for inbound requests. What if applications could “scale-to-zero”, with instances only running when needed? Today, serverless or FaaS application paradigms aim to scale-to-zero but are limited by the underlying unit of compute. While containers provide isolation for applications in a multi-tenant cloud, they take seconds to start. WebAssembly (Wasm) modules are just as secure as containers with default sandboxing, yet they start almost instantly (in microseconds). Using Wasmtime and Nomad, we built Fermyon Cloud, a hosted platform for running Wasm applications that can truly scale to zero. Before launching Fermyon Cloud, we had to determine how many applications each of our nodes could handle. We built a load tester. The results: when the unit of compute is Wasm, a node can host 1000s of applications. In this session, we will discuss why Wasm is ideal for serverless computing, best practices for load testing, and demo load tests on the Fermyon Cloud. At the end of the session, you will have the knowledge and links to start scaling Wasm in the Cloud, whether on the Fermyon Cloud or on your own infrastructure with the open source Fermyon Platform.