VMware, Inc.
Network functions support for serverless and granular computing environments

Abstract:

The disclosure provides an approach for enabling network functions to be executed in serverless computing environments. One embodiment employs a per-packet architecture, in which the trigger for launching a serverless computing instance is receipt of a packet. In such a case, each received packet is packaged into a request to invoke network function(s) required to process the packet, and a serverless computing environment in turn executes the requested network function(s) as serverless computing instance(s) that process the packet and return a response. Another embodiment employs a per-flow architecture in which the trigger for launching a serverless computing instance is receipt of a packet belonging to a new traffic flow. In such a case, a coordinator identifies (or receives notification of) a received packet that belongs to a new sub-flow and launches a serverless computing instance to process packets of the sub-flow that are redirected to the serverless computing instance.