Lite-Service: A Framework to Build and Schedule Telecom Applications in Device, Edge and Cloud

Abstract

In cloud, many different service frameworks with new concepts such as Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), Serverless, and Stateless emerge recently. They are essentially certain instantiations of Micro-Service architecture, in which, a software application is implemented as a set of loosely-coupled [32]. From design perspective, these services are considered as the most fine-grained units implementing business logics. Existing frameworks mostly focus on deployment and management of Micro-Services in cloud. However, the internal management within Micro-Service at thread level and function level does not attract enough attention. These missing pieces are critical for telecom applications, in term of programming model, scalability and performance. In this paper, we present Lite-Service, a new framework addressing device, edge and cloud operation environments in telecom industry. It adopts FaaS, Serverless and Stateless programming models to separate telecom logics from runtimes in order to improve development efficiency and reduce operation cost. The Lite-Service framework features 2 additional runtimes: function-level runtime for complex telecom function scheduling; thread-level intra-service runtime for fast response to load change. An autonomous self-adaptive scheduler and decentralized service management schemes are proposed to enhance performance and service adaptability in different telecom deployment scenarios. Empirical results show that the Lite-Service framework is effective for building and scheduling telecom applications in device, edge and cloud.