Jul 20, 2016
D2iQ
D2iQ
4 min read
Mainframe, server, virtual machine, cloud instance, container … what comes next? For many, the answer is something like the Lambda "serverless computing" service available from Amazon Web Services. We think serverless computing will definitely play a big role in the future of computing, which is why we're so pleased to announce that DC/OS now has a serverless computing capability of its own, courtesy of the innovative team at Galactic Fog.
This capability is part of Galactic Fog's Gestalt Framework, which is available in the DC/OS Universe marketplace as of today. Much like the AWS product, Gestalt deals in the concept of "lambdas," or pieces of application logic that automatically execute whenever a certain event triggers them. Developers writing lambda-based tasks don't need to think about containers at all, much less virtual machines, because lambdas automatically spin up container behind the scenes, execute the task, and then kill the container.
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Deploying a lambda in Gestalt[/caption]
It's event-driven programming for the modern age, and DC/OS is the perfect platform on which to do it. Thanks to the two-level scheduling system built into Apache Mesos and refined by DC/OS, Gestalt is free to schedule all the lambdas its wants and is constrained only by the amount of cluster resources allocated to it.
Serverless computing aside, there are some other interesting things users can do with Gestalt, including deploying container resources (managed by Marathon with a Gestalt frontend) and setting usage policies. Gestalt also lets users federate their DC/OS environments, allowing users to see resources across multiple clusters while still using the DC/OS CLI to manage them. And the Gestalt package in DC/OS Universe is unique in itself because of how many components it installs, including Postgres and RabbitMQ.
You can read Galactic Fog's blog post on launching Gestalt on DC/OS here, and you can learn more about how to get started with the Gestalt Framework here.
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Installing Gestalt Framework from Universe[/caption]
Apart from the next-generation nature of lambdas and serverless computing, we're excited about what Galactic Fog has done because it chose DC/OS as the inaugural platform on which to deploy Gestalt. That's a testament to technological benefits DC/OS brings to bear for microservices and other distributed systems, but also to the community of partners, contributors and technologies forming around it. Gestalt joins Apache Spark, Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Elasticsearch, NGINX, Avi Networks, Concord, ArangoDB and many other technologies already available on DC/OS.
When it comes to running modern application architectures and systems, there is not a better, more powerful or easier platform than DC/OS. And while Galactic Fog might have provided the first serverless computing capability for DC/OS with the Gestalt Framework, we suspect it won't be the last. It's a movement that's catching fire, and DC/OS is a great foundation for doing it right.
