IceBreaker: warming serverless functions better with heterogeneity

Serverless computing, an emerging computing model, relies on "warming up" functions prior to its anticipated execution for faster and cost-effective service to users. Unfortunately, warming up functions can be inaccurate and incur prohibitively expensive cost during the warmup period (i.e., keep-alive cost). In this paper, we introduce IceBreaker, a novel technique that reduces the service time and the "keep-alive" cost by composing a system with heterogeneous nodes (costly and cheaper). IceBreaker does so by dynamically determining the cost-effective node type to warm up a function based on the function's time-varying probability of the next invocation. By employing heterogeneity, IceBreaker allows for more number of nodes under the same cost budget and hence, keeps more number of functions warm and reduces the wait time during high load. Our real-system evaluation confirms that IceBreaker reduces the overall keep-alive cost by 45% and execution time by 27% using representative serverless applications and industry-grade workload trace. IceBreaker is the first technique to employ and leverage the idea of mixing expensive and cheaper nodes to improve both service time and keep-alive cost for serverless functions -- opening up a new research avenue of serverless computing on heterogeneous servers for researchers and practitioners.