Serverless Computing: Design, Implementation, and Performance

We present the design of a novel performance-oriented serverless computing platform implemented in. NET, deployed in Microsoft Azure, and utilizing Windows containers as function execution environments. Implementation challenges such as function scaling and container discovery, lifecycle, and reuse are discussed in detail. We propose metrics to evaluate the execution performance of serverless platforms and conduct tests on our prototype as well as AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, Google Cloud Functions, and IBM's deployment of Apache OpenWhisk. Our measurements show the prototype achieving greater throughput than other platforms at most concurrency levels, and we examine the scaling and instance expiration trends in the implementations. Additionally, we discuss the gaps and limitations in our current design, propose possible solutions, and highlight future research.