
Characterizing and Optimizing the Serverless Workload at a Large Cloud Provider - ingve
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03423
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mistrial9
this paper reads well, and shows publicly some parts of "Function as a
Service" on the Microsoft Azure FaaS platform, measured during two weeks of
summer and subsequently analyzed. The stated purpose of the paper is to
understand and discuss the actual use and performance of the platform, with
the intention of optimizing power-vs-responsiveness tradeoffs. The paper
carefully does not disclose some raw aggregate numbers, for competitive
reasons.

The authors show a complex environment in a disciplined way, and take the time
to work out a few tricky statistical measures to support the discussion.
Efficiency is always a concern, so it is useful and productive to make studies
like this to further the art. It appears Microsoft continues to renew their
relationship with academic-like research on business implementations, and this
is to be applauded IMHO.

No breath-taking revelations here, but rather a complete treatment of a
somewhat tedious collection of stats that can refine the implementation of the
FaaS platform.

