FaaS-Oriented Node.js Applications in an RPC Approach Using the Node2FaaS Framework

The Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) service model has aroused great interest since its introduction in the context of cloud computing. Although FaaS can be used to perform isolated tasks, it is in the composition of applications that this service model can promote significant performance improvements. This work presents an evolution in the Node2FaaS framework, whose objective is to assist in the conversion of originally monolithic node.js applications to work with FaaS in the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) communication mechanism. The new implementations in the Node2FaaS framework allowed new experiments to be conducted. Those showed significant gains in runtime for applications with CPU-bound, memory-bound, I/O-bound characteristics, especially for a Bioinformatics application that aims to align genetic sequences.