[Jenkins-infra] Exploring alternatives to Azure Functions for serverless needs

[R. Tyler Croy]

(replies inline)

On Sat, 18 Aug 2018, Slide wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, what issues have you been running into with Azure
> Functions?


The 1.x runtime for Azure Functions is so old that most tools don't work well
with it, at least for Node.

The 2.x runtime supports Node 8 or 10, but we've experienced _numerous_ issues
thus far which have resulted in availability problems, such as:

* After deploying, and using, a function successfully, a runtime update caused
  the Function to fail all requests without 'Content-Type: application/json'.
  (This required a support ticket to get to the bottom of because App insights
  didn't provide any useful information as to why the functions were simply
  failing with a 400

* After another Functions runtime update, we learned that our Functions had
  defaulted to the 64-bit runtime which was considered by Azure to be not the
  best platform. The way we learned this is that the runtime update broke
  64-bit platform support, and as a result all the functions in that Function
  app returned 500s before even touching our code.

* A recent runtime update appears to have broken the "GitHub Webhook" http
  trigger, causing 401's despite using the correct GitHub Secret. The
  workaround here was to switch back to the "genericJson" webhook trigger type.

* The most recent issue is still an active support request with Azure. The
  incrementals-publisher function is failing, but only in one specific type of
  request corresponding to some PRs from jglick's work. The stacktraces in App
  Insights include none of our code :-/



The opacity of the Functions when they go wrong alone doesn't bother me, it's
that when somemthing goes wrong, I'm in a days-long support-request purgatory.

It sucks :(


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