OpenFaaS Pro and CE in Slicer¶

Boot up a pre-configured microVM with OpenFaaS Pro or CE setup along with faas-cli, helm, and stern for log tailing.

For either edition, the URL for the gateway is set up for you for in the default user's .bashrc file:

export OPENFAAS_URL=http://127.0.0.1:31112

You can use that address directly on the VM during an SSH session, but you'll also be able to access the gateway from other machines by using the VM's IP i.e. http://192.168.137.2:31112.

Get instructions to fetch the password via arkade info openfaas.

A multi-node setup is possible, but in that case, it's better to set up K3s using K3sup Pro from outside the VMs, and to follow the HA K3s example followed by the OpenFaaS for Kubernetes instructions.

OpenFaaS Pro¶

Create a slicer secret for your OpenFaaS Pro license key. This let's you securely pass the license to the slicer VM.

Any secrets the VM or user data script need access to should be added to the .secrets folder.

sudo mkdir .secrets
# Ensure only root can read/write to the secrets folder.
sudo chmod 700 .secrets

sudo -E cp ~/.openfaas/LICENSE .secrets/openfaas-license

Create a user data file, openfaas-pro.sh, to setup an OpenFaaS Pro cluster.

#!/bin/bash

export HOME=/home/ubuntu
export USER=ubuntu

cd /home/ubuntu/

(
arkade get kubectl kubectx helm faas-cli k3sup stern --path /usr/local/bin
chown $USER /usr/local/bin/*

mkdir -p .kube
)

(
k3sup install --local
mv ./kubeconfig ./.kube/config
chown $USER .kube/config
)

(
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faas-netes/master/namespaces.yml

kubectl create secret generic \
  -n openfaas \
  openfaas-license \
  --from-file license=/run/slicer/secrets/openfaas-license

helm repo add openfaas https://openfaas.github.io/faas-netes/
helm repo update && \
  helm upgrade --install openfaas \
  --install openfaas/openfaas \
  --namespace openfaas \
  -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faas-netes/refs/heads/master/chart/openfaas/values-pro.yaml

chown -R $USER $HOME

echo "export OPENFAAS_URL=http://127.0.0.1:31112" >> $HOME/.bashrc

)

Use slicer new to generate a configuration file:

slicer new openfaas-pro \
  --userdata-file openfaas-pro.sh \
  >  openfaas-pro.yaml

For SSH access, use the --github flag to specify a GitHub username to import SSH keys from or set the --ssh-key flag to add publis SSH keys to the VM . Learn more about SSH in Slicer.

Then start up slicer with the generated config:

sudo -E slicer up -f openfaas-pro.yaml

Connect to the slicer VM over SSH:

ssh ubuntu@192.168.137.2

Run the follwing commands to deploy and invoke a function.

Login to OpenFaaS:

PASSWORD=$(kubectl get secret -n openfaas basic-auth -o jsonpath="{.data.basic-auth-password}" | base64 --decode; echo)
echo -n $PASSWORD | faas-cli login --username admin --password-stdin

Deploy a function:

faas-cli store deploy figlet

Describe, then invoke the function:

faas-cli describe figlet
faas-cli invoke <<< "SlicerVM.com"

OpenFaaS CE¶

OpenFaaS CE is licensed for personal, non-commercial use or a single 60 day commercial trial per company.

The above userdata script can be re-used, with a few options removed. Create the openfaas-ce.sh userdata script:

export HOME=/home/ubuntu
export USER=ubuntu

cd /home/ubuntu/

(
arkade get kubectl kubectx helm faas-cli k3sup stern --path /usr/local/bin
chown $USER /usr/local/bin/*

mkdir -p .kube
mkdir -p .openfaas
)

(
k3sup install --local
mv ./kubeconfig ./.kube/config
chown $USER .kube/config
)

(
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openfaas/faas-netes/master/namespaces.yml

helm repo add openfaas https://openfaas.github.io/faas-netes/
helm repo update && \
  helm upgrade --install openfaas \
  --install openfaas/openfaas \
  --namespace openfaas \

chown -R $USER $HOME

echo "export OPENFAAS_URL=http://127.0.0.1:31112" >> $HOME/.bashrc

)

Create openfaas-ce.yaml clicer configuration file:

slicer new openfaas-ce \
  --userdata-file openfaas-ce.sh \
  >  openfaas-ce.yaml