Deployment¶
OpenFaaS can be deployed to a variety of container orchestrators such as Kubernetes, K3s, OpenShift, or to a single host with faasd.
OpenFaaS Pro - Standard or for Enterprises (production, commercial use)¶
OpenFaaS Pro is a commercially supported version of OpenFaaS which is designed and licensed for production use. The two variants are:
- OpenFaaS Standard - intended for single teams, single-tenanted environments
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OpenFaaS for Enterprises - intended for larger organisations or SaaS vendors wanting to integrate functions into their product
See also:
OpenFaaS Community Edition (CE) for Kubernetes¶
The Community Edition of OpenFaaS is intended for personal use only, and has a 60-day limit for commercial use.
A foreword on security
Authentication is enabled by default with OpenFaaS, however you will also need to obtain a TLS certificate for your cluster if you are using OpenFaaS on the public Internet. Free certificates are available from LetsEncrypt.org.
There are three recommended ways to install OpenFaaS to a Kubernetes cluster:
- Using our CLI installer arkade - (recommended)
- With the Helm chart, Flux or ArgoCD (GitOps workflow)
- Or using the statically generated YAML files (not recommended)
Find out more about each option and how to deploy OpenFaaS to Kubernetes:
OpenFaaS Edge (faasd-pro) / faasd CE - Serverless for everyone else¶
The term faasd is short for FaaS Daemon, a single binary that runs on a host to manage both stateful services, and functions.
faasd is OpenFaaS, reimagined without the complexity and cost of Kubernetes. It runs well on a single host with very modest requirements, and is API-compatible with OpenFaaS on Kubernetes. Under the hood it uses containerd and Container Networking Interface (CNI), along with the same core components from OpenFaaS.
If you ever outgrow faasd, you can upgrade to OpenFaaS on Kubernetes and bring your existing functions with you.
When should you use faasd over OpenFaaS on Kubernetes?
For internal business use:
- You're building automation/glue-code, web portals, cron jobs, bots, or webhook receivers.
- You need a reliable, durable system for asynchronous tasks and ETL jobs.
- You want a way to do remote deployments over a REST API / CLI.
- You don't have the bandwidth to learn and/or manage Kubernetes.
- You don't need to handle large spikes in traffic, or can tolerate some queueing.
For resale to end-clients; or for edge locations, or IoT devices:
- You are deploying to edge locations or IoT devices, where physical access is limited.
- You want a stable, low-maintenance system that is easy to deploy and manage.
- You have to deploy to an airgapped environment, or where the network is unstable.
- You need to deploy to a resource constrained device, such as a Dell Edge Gateway or Raspberry Pi.
faasd CE is available for personal (non-commercial) use: read the EULA here.
The CE version is limited to a single namespace, with a limit of 15 functions, which should be sufficient for most personal projects. OpenFaaS Edge is a commercial distribution of faasd with additional features and higher limits.
OpenFaaS Edge¶
OpenFaaS Edge is a commercial distribution of faasd, with enhancements and additional features from OpenFaaS Pro. The OpenFaaS Pro EULA applies.
- Upgraded Cron Connector, JetStream Queue Worker and Classic Scale to Zero from OpenFaaS Pro
- Deploy up to 250 functions
- Configure private DNS servers
- Airgap-friendly with installation bundled in an OCI image
- Multiple namespace support
This version is intended for resale as part of a wider solution, and to be deployed both into industrial and on-premises environments.
Individual GitHub Sponsors of OpenFaaS (25 USD / mo and higher) can use OpenFaaS Edge for personal, non-commercial use.
OpenShift - 3.x / 4.x¶
OpenShift is a variant of Kubernetes produced by Red Hat.
You can deploy to OpenShift using the standard Helm chart as per the Kubernetes instructions. Typically OpenShift assigns random user IDs to each namespace, you can set these in the values.yaml file for the Helm chart once you have created the openfaas and openfaas-fn namespaces.