FogFS: A Fog File System For Hyper-Responsive Mobile Applications
Andreas Pamboris, Panayiotis Andreou, Irene Polycarpou, George Samaras · 2019
Hyper-responsive mobile applications, such as augmented reality and online games, require ultra-low latency access to back-end services and data at runtime. While fog computing tries to meet such latency requirements by placing corresponding back-end services and data closer to clients, for e.g., within an access network, assuming a fixed back-end server throughout execution is problematic due to user mobility. A more flexible approach is thus required to allow for adapting to changes in network conditions when users roam, by relocating back-end services and data to closer available infrastructure. Support for real-time migration of software services exists, however, migrating associated disk state remains a bottleneck. This paper presents FOGFS, a fog file system that employs intelligent snapshotting, migration and synchronization mechanisms to speed up the migration of an application`s disk state between different edge locations at runtime. The experimental evaluation of our prototype implementation reveals that the attainable speed-up is as much as 3. 3 × compared to conventional migration approaches.