faasd is OpenFaaS reimagined, but without the cost and complexity of Kubernetes. It runs on a single host with very modest requirements, making it fast and easy to manage. Under the hood it uses containerd and Container Networking Interface (CNI) along with the same core OpenFaaS components from the main project.

When should you use faasd over OpenFaaS on Kubernetes?

You have a cost sensitive project - run faasd on a 5-10 USD VPS or on your Raspberry Pi
When you just need a few functions or microservices, without the cost of a cluster
When you don't have the bandwidth to learn or manage Kubernetes
To deploy embedded apps in IoT and edge use-cases
To shrink-wrap applications for use with a customer or client

faasd does not create the same maintenance burden you'll find with maintaining, upgrading, and securing a Kubernetes cluster. You can deploy it and walk away, in the worst case, just deploy a new VM and deploy your functions again.

About faasd

is a single Golang binary
uses the same core components and ecosystem of OpenFaaS
is multi-arch, so works on Intel x86_64 and ARM out the box
can be set-up and left alone to run your applications

Demo of faasd running in KVM

Try faasd for the first time

faasd is OpenFaaS, so many things you read in the docs or in blog posts will work the same way.

Use-cases and tutorials:

Additional resources:

For reference: OpenFaaS docs
For use-cases and tutorials: OpenFaaS blog
For self-paced learning: OpenFaaS workshop

Deploy faasd

The easiest way to deploy faasd is with cloud-init, we give several examples below, and post IaaS platforms will accept "user-data" pasted into their UI, or via their API.

For trying out fasad on MacOS or Windows, we recommend using multipass.

If you don't use cloud-init, or have already created your Linux server you can use the installation script as per below:

git clone https://github.com/openfaas/faasd
cd faasd

./hack/install.sh

This approach also works for Raspberry Pi

It's recommended that you do not install Docker on the same host as faasd, since 1) they may both use different versions of containerd and 2) docker's networking rules can disrupt faasd's networking. When using faasd - make your faasd server a faasd server, and build container image on your laptop or in a CI pipeline.

Run locally on MacOS, Linux, or Windows with multipass

Get up and running with your own faasd installation on your Mac/Ubuntu or Windows with cloud-config

DigitalOcean tutorial with Terraform and TLS

The terraform can be adapted for any IaaS provider:

Bring a lightweight Serverless experience to DigitalOcean with Terraform and faasd

Get started on armhf / Raspberry Pi

You can run this tutorial on your Raspberry Pi, or adapt the steps for a regular Linux VM/VPS host.

faasd - lightweight Serverless for your Raspberry Pi

Terraform for DigitalOcean

Automate everything within < 60 seconds and get a public URL and IP address back. Customise as required, or adapt to your preferred cloud such as AWS EC2.

faasd handbook - everything you need to know to run functions without Kubernetes (early access)

faasd is a portable, and open source serverless engine. It runs a number of core services for its REST API, for background processing, and for metrics. The project schedules functions with containerd directly, and supports scale to and from zero, but without the need for clustering or Kubernetes.

It makes for a quick and easy way to start hosting APIs and websites, benefiting from containers and cloud native technology without having to manage Kubernetes, or pay significant hosting costs.

This handbook is written for those deploying faasd to self-hosted or cloud infrastructure. Whilst OpenFaaS has reference documentation, here we focus on everything you need to know about faasd itself.

Topics include:

Should you deploy to a VPS or Raspberry Pi?
Deploying your server with bash, cloud-init or terraform
Using a private container registry
Building your first function, and customising templates
Monitoring your functions with Grafana and Prometheus
Scheduling invocations and background jobs
Tuning timeouts, parallelism, running tasks in the background
Upgrading faasd
Setting memory limits for functions
Exposing the core services like Prometheus and NATS

faasd users can upgrade to Kubernetes when the need presents itself and can bring their functions with them.

Find out more on Gumroad

Finding logs

Logs for functions

You can view the logs of functions using journalctl:

journalctl -t openfaas-fn:FUNCTION_NAME


faas-cli store deploy figlet
journalctl -t openfaas-fn:figlet -f &
echo logs | faas-cli invoke figlet

What does faasd deploy?

faasd - itself, and its faas-provider for containerd - CRUD for functions and services, implements the OpenFaaS REST API
Prometheus - for monitoring of services, metrics, scaling and dashboards
OpenFaaS Gateway - the UI portal, CLI, and other OpenFaaS tooling can talk to this.
OpenFaaS queue-worker for NATS - run your invocations in the background without adding any code. See also: asynchronous invocations
NATS for asynchronous processing and queues

You'll also need:

You can use the standard faas-cli along with pre-packaged functions from the Function Store, or build your own using any OpenFaaS template.

Instructions for hacking on faasd itself

See here for manual / developer instructions

Getting help

faasd handbook

"Serverless For Everyone Else" is the complete guide and documentation for faasd. If you're looking for how to do something, it's likely that the book covers it.

Find out more on Gumroad

Reference docs for Kubernetes

The OpenFaaS docs provide a wealth of information for OpenFaaS on Kubernetes, and are likely to be useful for you, even using faasd.

Function and template store

For community functions see faas-cli store --help

For templates built by the community see: faas-cli template store list, you can also use the dockerfile template if you just want to migrate an existing service without the benefits of using a template.

Training and courses

LinuxFoundation training course

The founder of faasd and OpenFaaS has written a training course for the LinuxFoundation which also covers how to use OpenFaaS on Kubernetes. Much of the same concepts can be applied to faasd, and the course is free:

Introduction to Serverless on Kubernetes

Community workshop

The OpenFaaS workshop is a set of 12 self-paced labs and provides a great starting point for learning the features of openfaas. Not all features will be available or usable with faasd.

Community support

Commercial users and solo business owners should become OpenFaaS GitHub Sponsors to receive regular email updates on changes, tutorials and new features.

If you are learning faasd, or want to share your use-case, you can join the OpenFaaS Slack community.

Backlog, features and known issues

For completed features, WIP and upcoming roadmap see:

See ROADMAP.md