Serverless computing has emerged as an attractive paradigm due to the efficiency of development and the ease of deployment without managing any underlying infrastructure. Nevertheless, serverless computing approaches face numerous challenges to unlock their full potential in hybrid environments. To gain a deeper understanding and firsthand knowledge of serverless computing in edge-cloud deployments, we review the current state of open-source serverless platforms and compare them based on predefined requirements. We then design and implement a serverless computing platform with a novel edge orchestration technique that seamlessly deploys serverless functions across the edge and cloud environments on top of the Knative serverless platform. Moreover, we propose an offloading strategy for edge environments and four different functions for experimentation and showcase the performance benefits of our solution. Our results demonstrate that such an approach can efficiently utilize both cloud and edge resources by dynamically offloading functions from the edge to the cloud during high activity, while reducing the overall application latency and increasing request throughput compared to an edge-only deployment.

翻译：无服务器计算因其开发效率和无需管理底层基础设施的易部署性而成为一种有吸引力的范式。然而，无服务器计算方法在混合环境中充分发挥其潜力面临诸多挑战。为了更深入地理解并掌握边缘-云部署中的无服务器计算第一手知识，我们回顾了当前开源无服务器平台的现状，并根据预定义需求进行了比较。随后，我们设计并实现了一种具有新型边缘编排技术的无服务器计算平台，该平台在Knative无服务器平台之上，能够无缝地在边缘和云端环境部署无服务器函数。此外，我们提出了一种针对边缘环境的卸载策略，以及四种用于实验的函数，以展示我们解决方案的性能优势。结果表明，与纯边缘部署相比，这种方法能够通过在高活动期间将函数动态地从边缘卸载到云端，高效利用云端和边缘资源，同时降低整体应用程序延迟并提高请求吞吐量。