Cloud-scale runtime verification of serverless applications

Abstract

Serverless platforms aim to simplify the deployment, scaling, and management of cloud applications. Serverless applications are inherently distributed, and are executed using shortlived ephemeral processes. The use of short-lived ephemeral processes simplifies application scaling and management, but also means that existing approaches to monitoring distributed systems and detecting bugs cannot be applied to serverless applications. In this paper we propose Watchtower, a framework that enables runtime monitoring of serverless applications. Watchtower takes program properties as inputs, and can detect cases where applications violate these properties. We design Watchtower to minimize application changes, and to scale at the same rate as the application. We achieve the former by instrumenting libraries rather than application code, and the latter by structuring Watchtower as a serverless application. Once a bug is found, developers can use the Watchtower debugger to identify and address the root cause of the bug.