FaaS vs Google Cloud Run

Overview

FaaS

Stacks5

Followers28

Votes1

Google Cloud Run

Stacks290

Followers243

Votes62

FaaS vs Google Cloud Run: What are the differences?

Introduction In this article, we will explore the key differences between Function as a Service (FaaS) and Google Cloud Run, two popular serverless computing platforms. FaaS and Google Cloud Run are both designed to offer scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, but they differ in their underlying architectures and capabilities.

Architecture: FaaS follows a true Function as a Service model, where functions are executed in response to events or triggers. Each function is independent and stateless, making it ideal for event-driven tasks and microservices architectures. On the other hand, Google Cloud Run is built on top of containers, allowing you to deploy any stateless HTTP container to it. This makes it a more flexible platform for running serverless workloads, whether they are event-driven or not.
Isolation: FaaS platforms generally execute functions in more isolated sandboxes, ensuring better security and resource utilization. Google Cloud Run, being container-based, provides a higher level of isolation as each container runs in its own sandbox environment. This ensures that your workloads are fully isolated from each other, making it suitable for highly regulated applications.
Startup Time: FaaS platforms have a cold start problem, which means that functions often have a noticeable delay in their first execution due to infrastructure setup. Google Cloud Run, being based on containers, has faster startup times compared to FaaS platforms, as containers can be pre-initialized and constantly kept warm to reduce cold starts. This makes Google Cloud Run more suitable for applications with low-latency requirements.
Scaling: FaaS platforms are known for their automatic scaling capabilities, where functions scale seamlessly to handle incoming requests based on demand. In Google Cloud Run, you need to specify the target concurrency level to control the scaling behavior. It offers auto-scaling based on the number of incoming requests, but it may take a few seconds to scale up or down compared to FaaS platforms, which can scale almost instantly.
Billing: FaaS platforms typically charge based on the number of function invocations and their execution time. This means you pay for the actual compute resources consumed by your functions. In contrast, Google Cloud Run charges based on the number of requests, as well as the duration of those requests. The pricing structure is slightly different, as you are billed for the container instances used to run your workload, but it provides more granular billing options for certain use cases.
Portability: FaaS platforms generally offer more cloud provider-agnostic capabilities, allowing you to write functions once and deploy them across multiple platforms. Google Cloud Run, being a Google Cloud-specific service, offers a higher level of integration with other Google Cloud services. This can be advantageous if you are using other Google Cloud services extensively and require seamless integration throughout your application architecture.

In summary, FaaS and Google Cloud Run differ in their underlying architectures, isolation levels, startup time, scaling behavior, billing structure, and portability options. Understanding these differences can help you choose the right serverless computing platform based on your specific requirements and constraints.

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Advice on FaaS, Google Cloud Run

Clifford

Software Engineer at Bidvest Advisory Services

Mar 28, 2020

Decided

Run cloud service containers instead of cloud-native services

Running containers means that your microservices are not "cooked" into a cloud provider's architecture.
Moving from one cloud to the next means that you simply spin up new instances of your containers in the new cloud using that cloud's container service.
Start redirecting your traffic to the new resources.
Turn off the containers in the cloud you migrated from.

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Detailed Comparison

FaaS	Google Cloud Run
FaaS is a platform for building serverless functions on Docker Swarm Mode with first class metrics. Any UNIX process can be packaged as a function in FaaS enabling you to consume a range of web events without repetitive boiler-plate coding.	A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.
-	Simple developer experience; Fast autoscaling; Managed; Any language, any library, any binary; Leverage container workflows and standards; Redundancy; Integrated logging and monitoring; Built on Knative; Custom domains
Statistics
Stacks 5	Stacks 290
Followers 28	Followers 243
Votes 1	Votes 62
Pros & Cons
Pros 1 Simple way to build serverless applications	Pros 11 HTTPS endpoints 10 Fully managed 10 Pay per use 7 Serverless 7 Deploy containers
Integrations
Docker Docker Swarm	Google Kubernetes Engine Google Cloud Build Docker Knative

What are some alternatives to FaaS, Google Cloud Run?

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Serverless

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

Cloud Functions for Firebase

Cloud Functions for Firebase lets you create functions that are triggered by Firebase products, such as changes to data in the Realtime Database, uploads to Cloud Storage, new user sign ups via Authentication, and conversion events in Analytics.

AWS Batch

It enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. It dynamically provisions the optimal quantity and type of compute resources (e.g., CPU or memory optimized instances) based on the volume and specific resource requirements of the batch jobs submitted.

Related Comparisons

FaaS vs Google Cloud Run: What are the differences?

Architecture: FaaS follows a true Function as a Service model, where functions are executed in response to events or triggers. Each function is independent and stateless, making it ideal for event-driven tasks and microservices architectures. On the other hand, Google Cloud Run is built on top of containers, allowing you to deploy any stateless HTTP container to it. This makes it a more flexible platform for running serverless workloads, whether they are event-driven or not.
Isolation: FaaS platforms generally execute functions in more isolated sandboxes, ensuring better security and resource utilization. Google Cloud Run, being container-based, provides a higher level of isolation as each container runs in its own sandbox environment. This ensures that your workloads are fully isolated from each other, making it suitable for highly regulated applications.
Startup Time: FaaS platforms have a cold start problem, which means that functions often have a noticeable delay in their first execution due to infrastructure setup. Google Cloud Run, being based on containers, has faster startup times compared to FaaS platforms, as containers can be pre-initialized and constantly kept warm to reduce cold starts. This makes Google Cloud Run more suitable for applications with low-latency requirements.
Scaling: FaaS platforms are known for their automatic scaling capabilities, where functions scale seamlessly to handle incoming requests based on demand. In Google Cloud Run, you need to specify the target concurrency level to control the scaling behavior. It offers auto-scaling based on the number of incoming requests, but it may take a few seconds to scale up or down compared to FaaS platforms, which can scale almost instantly.
Billing: FaaS platforms typically charge based on the number of function invocations and their execution time. This means you pay for the actual compute resources consumed by your functions. In contrast, Google Cloud Run charges based on the number of requests, as well as the duration of those requests. The pricing structure is slightly different, as you are billed for the container instances used to run your workload, but it provides more granular billing options for certain use cases.
Portability: FaaS platforms generally offer more cloud provider-agnostic capabilities, allowing you to write functions once and deploy them across multiple platforms. Google Cloud Run, being a Google Cloud-specific service, offers a higher level of integration with other Google Cloud services. This can be advantageous if you are using other Google Cloud services extensively and require seamless integration throughout your application architecture.

FaaS vs Google Cloud Run

Overview