Amazon.com, Inc.
Managing sandbox reuse in an on-demand code execution system

Abstract:

Systems and methods are described for managing reuse of sandboxed computing environments in a network-based on-demand code execution system. Users may generate tasks on the system by submitting code to a frontend, which may interact with multiple worker managers that manage task execution in sandboxed computing environments such as containers or virtual machine instances. A sandbox may be reusable once provisioned, but the resources required to definitively locate an idle sandbox may be significant relative to the cost of provisioning a new sandbox. The system may therefore manage reuse by randomly or semi-randomly selecting a worker manager and requesting that it provide an existing sandbox if one is available. If not, then the system may select a different worker manager and repeat the request, or after consuming a threshold amount of resources may request that the next worker manager provision a new sandbox if an existing one is not available.