BenchFaaS: Benchmarking Serverless Functions in an Edge Computing Network Testbed
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The serverless computing model has evolved as one of the key solutions in the cloud for fast autoscaling and capacity planning. In edge computing environments, however, the serverless model is challenged by the system heterogeneity and performance variability. In this paper, we introduce BenchFaaS, an edge computing network testbed built with state-of-the-art free- and open source software tools which automates the deployment and benchmarking of serverless functions. Our edge computing network considers a cluster of virtual machines and Raspberry Pis, and is designed to benchmark serverless functions under different hardware and network conditions. We measure and evaluate: (i) overhead incurred by testbed, (ii) performance of compute intensive tasks, (iii) impact of application payload size, (iv) scalability, and (v) performance of chained serverless functions. We share the lessons learnt in engineering and implementing an open source edge computing network testbed. The measurements indicate that a properly dimensioned system can effectively deploy resource constrained edge computing devices as a serverless infrastructure. We also show that a computer system closer to the edge does not always yield a better network system performance overall.
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