OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source, distributed serverless computing platform that enables developers to run code in response to events or HTTP requests without managing servers. It provides a runtime-agnostic model built around actions (units of code), triggers (event sources), rules (bindings between triggers and actions), and packages for organizing and reusing components. Actions execute in isolated containers and can be written in multiple languages; new runtimes can be added by users.

The platform is composed of several core components, including a controller that manages metadata and scheduling, invokers that execute actions, and an API gateway that exposes HTTP endpoints. OpenWhisk stores activation records and related metadata in a data store to provide visibility and auditing of executions. It supports multi-tenant isolation through namespaces and access control, enabling secure, isolated usage for different users or teams.

OpenWhisk is designed to run on various infrastructures, including on-premises and cloud environments, and can operate on container platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes. It scales by adding more invokers to handle larger or concurrent workloads. The architecture emphasizes extensibility through packages and actions, allowing integration with external services, event sources, and custom runtimes.

History and governance: OpenWhisk originated within IBM and was released as an open source project. It later joined the Apache Software Foundation as Apache OpenWhisk, supported by a community of contributors. It is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. Use cases typically include building event-driven microservices, data processing pipelines, and automation tasks.