FaaSter Troubleshooting -- Evaluating Distributed Tracing Approaches for Serverless Applications

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Borges, Maria C., Werner, Sebastian, Kilic, Ahmet
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2021
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author Borges, Maria C.
Werner, Sebastian
Kilic, Ahmet
author_facet Borges, Maria C.
Werner, Sebastian
Kilic, Ahmet
contents Serverless applications can be particularly difficult to troubleshoot, as these applications are often composed of various managed and partly managed services. Faults are often unpredictable and can occur at multiple points, even in simple compositions. Each additional function or service in a serverless composition introduces a new possible fault source and a new layer to obfuscate faults. Currently, serverless platforms offer only limited support for identifying runtime faults. Developers looking to observe their serverless compositions often have to rely on scattered logs and ambiguous error messages to pinpoint root causes. In this paper, we investigate the use of distributed tracing for improving the observability of faults in serverless applications. To this end, we first introduce a model for characterizing fault observability, then provide a prototypical tracing implementation - specifically, a developer-driven and a platform-supported tracing approach. We compare both approaches with our model, measure associated trade-offs (execution latency, resource utilization), and contribute new insights for troubleshooting serverless compositions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2110_03471
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FaaSter Troubleshooting -- Evaluating Distributed Tracing Approaches for Serverless Applications
Borges, Maria C.
Werner, Sebastian
Kilic, Ahmet
Software Engineering
Performance
Serverless applications can be particularly difficult to troubleshoot, as these applications are often composed of various managed and partly managed services. Faults are often unpredictable and can occur at multiple points, even in simple compositions. Each additional function or service in a serverless composition introduces a new possible fault source and a new layer to obfuscate faults. Currently, serverless platforms offer only limited support for identifying runtime faults. Developers looking to observe their serverless compositions often have to rely on scattered logs and ambiguous error messages to pinpoint root causes. In this paper, we investigate the use of distributed tracing for improving the observability of faults in serverless applications. To this end, we first introduce a model for characterizing fault observability, then provide a prototypical tracing implementation - specifically, a developer-driven and a platform-supported tracing approach. We compare both approaches with our model, measure associated trade-offs (execution latency, resource utilization), and contribute new insights for troubleshooting serverless compositions.
title FaaSter Troubleshooting -- Evaluating Distributed Tracing Approaches for Serverless Applications
topic Software Engineering
Performance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.03471