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faasd - a lightweight & portable faas engine

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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.

faasd logo

Use-cases and tutorials

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

Videos and overviews:

Use-cases and tutorials:

Additional resources:

About faasd

Most importantly, it's easy to manage so you can set it up and leave it alone to run your functions.

demo

Demo of faasd running asynchronous functions

Watch the video: faasd walk-through with cloud-init and Multipass

What does faasd deploy?

Licensing & EULA for OpenFaaS (faasd)

faasd (which is a distribution of OpenFaaS) is licensed under the OpenFaaS Community Edition (CE) EULA, additional clauses apply to enable faasd to be used for Personal Use and within Small Business Environments.

A separate OpenFaaS Standard license is available for commercial use-cases, which is required for certain commercial use.

When should you use faasd over OpenFaaS on Kubernetes?

faasd relies on industry-standard tools for running containers:

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

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.

You can learn more about supported OpenFaaS features in the ROADMAP.md

Learning faasd

You can find various resources to learn about faasd for free, however the official handbook is the most comprehensive guide to getting started with faasd and OpenFaaS.

"Serverless For Everyone Else" is the official handbook and was written to contribute funds towards the upkeep and maintenance of the project.

The official handbook and docs for faasd

<a href="https://openfaas.gumroad.com/l/serverless-for-everyone-else"> <img src="https://www.alexellis.io/serverless.png" width="40%"></a>

You'll learn how to deploy code in any language, lift and shift Dockerfiles, run requests in queues, write background jobs and to integrate with databases. faasd packages the same code as OpenFaaS, so you get built-in metrics for your HTTP endpoints, a user-friendly CLI, pre-packaged functions and templates from the store and a UI.

Topics include:

View sample pages, reviews and testimonials on Gumroad:

"Serverless For Everyone Else"

Deploy OpenFaaS Edge (commercial distribution of faasd)

OpenFaaS Edge is a commercial distribution of faasd, with enhancements and additional features from OpenFaaS Pro. The OpenFaaS Pro EULA applies.

This version is intended for resale as part of a wider solution, and to be deployed both into industrial and on-premises environments.

Individual GitHub Sponsors of OpenFaaS (25 USD / mo and higher) can use OpenFaaS Edge for personal use.

You can install OpenFaaS Edge with the following script:

curl -sLSf \
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faasd/refs/heads/master/hack/install-edge.sh \
    -o install-edge.sh && \
chmod +x install-edge.sh
sudo -E ./install-edge.sh

For an offline installation

Copy the OCI bundle and the install-edge.sh script to the remote server.

Then mirror the various images from docker-compose.yaml into your private registry, and update the references from i.e. image: ghcr.io/openfaasltd/gateway to the equivalents in your registry.

If your system is unable to install apt, yum, or pacman packages, due to limited network access, then set the SKIP_OS environment to 1. The list of packages is available in the install_required_packages section of the script.

Deploy faasd CE

faasd-ce supports 15 functions and needs a computer with a stable Internet connection to run. There are some restrictions on commercial use, but individuals and certain small businesses can use it for free.

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 it out on MacOS or Windows, we recommend using multipass to run faasd in a VM.

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 --depth=1
cd faasd

./hack/install.sh

This approach also works for Raspberry Pi when using the 64-bit OS or Ubuntu 22.04 or higher.

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.

Deployment tutorials

Terraform scripts:

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.

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, design limitations and any known issues

For open backlog items, shipped features, design limitations and any known issues, see ROADMAP.md

Want to build a patch without setting up a complete development environment? See docs/PATCHES.md

Are you looking to hack on faasd? Follow the developer instructions for a manual installation, or use the hack/install.sh script and pick up from there.