Cloud-scale runtime verification of serverless applications

Kalev Alpernas, Aurojit Panda, Leonid Ryzhyk, Mooly Sagiv

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Serverless platforms aim to simplify the deployment, scaling, and management of cloud applications. Serverless applications are inherently distributed, and are executed using shortlived ephemeral processes. The use of short-lived ephemeral processes simplifies application scaling and management, but also means that existing approaches to monitoring distributed systems and detecting bugs cannot be applied to serverless applications. In this paper we propose Watchtower, a framework that enables runtime monitoring of serverless applications. Watchtower takes program properties as inputs, and can detect cases where applications violate these properties. We design Watchtower to minimize application changes, and to scale at the same rate as the application. We achieve the former by instrumenting libraries rather than application code, and the latter by structuring Watchtower as a serverless application. Once a bug is found, developers can use the Watchtower debugger to identify and address the root cause of the bug.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSoCC 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages92-107
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781450386388
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2021
Event12th Annual ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, SoCC 2021 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: Nov 1 2021Nov 4 2021

Publication series

NameSoCC 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing

Conference

Conference12th Annual ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, SoCC 2021
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period11/1/2111/4/21

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Computer Science Applications

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