Runbox: Serverless interactive computing platform

Abstract

Serverless computing revolutionizes cloud software by eliminating the need to manage the underlying infrastructure, while providing efficient scaling, performance and security isolation as well as usage metering. The goal of Runboxes is to bring the benefits of serverless computing to Interactive Computing, involving ad-hoc, stateful, resource-intensive tasks, whose resource demand is directly affected by the observed user behavior. We evaluate Runboxes in the context of cost-efficient hosting of sandbox programming environments for Computer Science students.