An intelligent model for supporting edge migration for virtual function chains in next generation internet of things

Abstract

The developments on next generation IoT sensing devices, with the advances on their low power computational capabilities and high speed networking has led to the introduction of the edge computing paradigm. Within an edge cloud environment, services may generate and consume data locally, without involving cloud computing infrastructures. Aiming to tackle the low computational resources of the IoT nodes, Virtual-Function-Chain has been proposed as an intelligent distribution model for exploiting the maximum of the computational power at the edge, thus enabling the support of demanding services. An intelligent migration model with the capacity to support Virtual-Function-Chains is introduced in this work. According to this model, migration at the edge can support individual features of a Virtual-Function-Chain. First, auto-healing can be implemented with cold migrations, if a Virtual Function fails unexpectedly. Second, a Quality of Service monitoring model can trigger live migrations, aiming to avoid edge devices overload. The evaluation studies of the proposed model revealed that it has the capacity to increase the robustness of an edge-based service on low-powered IoT devices. Finally, comparison with similar frameworks, like Kubernetes, showed that the migration model can effectively react on edge network fluctuations.