Investigation of Container Network Function Deployment Costs in the Edge Cloud
Kien Nguyen, Filip Simonovski, Frank Loh, Tobias Hoßfeld, Nguyen Huu Thanh · 2024
Service Function Chains (SFCs) can be used with containerization to efficiently enable the ever-increasing Internet of Things (IoT) deployments in heterogeneous edge-cloud environments. In this context, SFC schedulers often employ mechanisms such as migration and consolidation of Containerized Network Functions (CNF) to adapt to dynamic environments. However, the costs of the CNF lifecycle are often not investigated, especially deep into its states and state transitions, have created a gap between theoretical research and practical implementation. To this end, this paper comprehensively examines the capability of the edge-cloud in accommodating CNF-based IoT deployments with a key focus on the CNF lifecycle invocation cost, including latency, resource, and energy consumption. Our findings show the actual cost of using and reconfiguring CNFs, which is a common SFC optimization technique. We then provide a comprehensive profiling that could be used to develop realistic SFC placement strategies and algorithms.