The University of Leeds School of Computing

COMP5850M Coursework 2 - 2021/2022

Deadline: 25 March 2022, 17:00

1 Introduction

This exercise aims to give you some practical experience of using serverless architectures. It will also give you the opportunity to research on the cloud computing domain of Function as a Service (FaaS), technologies and performance.

Serverless computing is revolutionising cloud application development as it offers the ability to create modular, highly- scalable, fault-tolerant applications, with minimal operational management. In order to contribute to its widespread adoption of serverless platforms, the design and performance of language runtimes that are available in FaaS serverless platforms is key. This coursework aims to investigate the performance impact of such language runtimes.

The following deliverables are expected:

(a) a research report on the domain of investigation.

(b) material developed as part of the experiment design (code, scripts).

You should review the lecture notes on this topic carefully before you start work.

2 Useful Resources

Useful resources are available on COMP5850M module area on Minerva: https://minerva.leeds.ac.uk

3 Tasks

(a) Research into the performance of serverless architectures (commercial) in order to provide insight into their capabilities and increase awareness of their potential. The coursework specifically considers Microsoft Azure Function App and focuses on language runtimes available on Azure;

(b) Design a set of experiments to assess the capabilities and performance of the serverless architecture. Investigate the performance impact of two language runtimes of your choice. You can choose among Python, Java, Node.js and .NET. Propose a cloud-based technical solution for benchmarking and analysis of the serverless architecture using a set of test functions and demonstrate its performance in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

4 Requirements

(a) Report on Azure serverless architecture;

(b) Consider two functions of your choice, e.g. sum of an array of numbers, matrix multiplication, file read operation, file write operation, HTTP request ...

(c) Consider two programming languages for implementation of your function;

(d) Evaluate the performance of the language runtimes in terms of scalability, e.g. by increasing the number of function invocations;

(e) Consider a benchmark for performance comparison, e.g. local execution of your function on bare metal.

5 Submission

Address the questions in relation the problem motivation, related work, experimental design and implementa- tion, discussion of results, and evidence of execution on Gradescope.

To submit your code/scripts for the exercise, create a Zip or tar archive of the file which make up your solution and submit the file through the same link on Gradescope. Remember to include a descriptive README file as well as any additional material which you think are useful. Ensure you include all files needed to work as part of your submission.

6 Marking Scheme

Report

Problem motivation 5 Related work 5 Experimental Design and Implementation 10 Results 10 Quality of evaluation 15 Code/scripts 5

50

7 Weight

This coursework accounts for 20% of the assessment.

8 Lateness Penalty

5% of the maximum available mark per day will be applied.

9 Notes