Container placement and migration strategies for cloud, fog, and edge data centers: A survey

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed important development of network softwarization that has revolutionized the practice of networks. Virtualized networks bring novel and specific requirements for the control and orchestration of containerized network functions that are scattered across the network. In this regard, the migration of virtualized network functions plays a pivotal role to best meet the requirements of optimal resource utilization, load balancing and fault tolerance. The purpose of this survey is to offer a detailed overview of the progress on container migration so as to provide a better understanding of the trade-off between the benefits associated with the migration and the practical challenges. The paper includes a classification of the placement algorithms that map the containerized network functions on the virtualized infrastructure. Following, a taxonomy of the migration techniques that perform the transfer of the containerized microservices is proposed.

Dynamic migration of microservices for end-to-end latency control in 5G/6G networks

“…Numerous research works (refer to, e.g., [9] for a survey) have addressed the problem of placing Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) represented as Service Function Chains (SFCs) on data centers geographically distant. Several optimization criteria can be envisaged (e.g., load balancing, latency control).…”

“…Compared to many works on SFC placement [9], we consider in this paper VNFs, which comprise virtual Radio Access Network (RAN) functions, which shall be placed near a predefined geographical area. SFCs are hence rooted in the sense that microservices are placed near to the virtual end user, which is static, contrary to [2] that allows end user to move.…”

“…Beyond placement of SFCs, the decomposition of NFs into microservices, which can easily be migrated [9], introduces an additional degree of freedom in the placement of SFCs. While classical placement algorithms place the different components of a SFC on data centers for the whole lifetime of the SFC, migration makes it possible to continually modify the placement of microservices in order to improve some performance criteria or remedy an impairment.…”

A Service Migration Strategy for Resilient Multi-Domain Networks in Outage Scenarios

“…Existing work on this scenario mostly involves the migration of monolithic applications [2]. An interesting concept can be found in web migration, where a web service can be migrated according to the requested or preferred resources that the service requests.…”

A Microservice Migration Approach to Controlling Latency in 5G/6G Networks

“…The growing use of microservices for 5G/6G based services is driving the telecom industry to find efficient ways of exploiting new communication and computing technology. In particular, various placement strategies [3], [4] have been proposed to initially allocate VNFs and allow efficient usage of computing resources while inducing reduced load or latency. However, the initial placement of services is sometimes not able to continuously meet the Service Level Agreement (SLA), resulting in degradation of communication network performance across time.…”