Managing resources continuity from the edge to the cloud: Architecture and performance

Abstract

The wide spread deployment of smart edge devices and applications that require real-time data processing, have with no doubt created the need to extend the reach of cloud computing to the edge, recently also referred to as Fog or Edge Computing. Fog computing implements the idea of extending the cloud where the ”things” are, or in other words, improving application performance and resource efficiency by removing the need to processing all the information in the cloud, thus also reducing bandwidth consumption in the network. Fog computing is designed to complement cloud computing, paving the way for a novel, enriched architecture that can benefit from and include both edge(fog) and cloud resources. From a resources perspective, this combined scenario requires resource continuity when executing a service, whereby the assumption is that the selection of resources for service execution remains independent of their physical location. This new resources model, i.e., resource continuity, has gained recently significant attention, as it carries potential to seamlessly providing a computing infrastructure from the edge to the cloud, with an improved performance and resource efficiency. In this paper, we study the main architectural features of the managed resource continuity, proposing the foundation of a coordinated management plane responsible for resource continuity provisioning. We study an illustrative example on the performance benefits in relationship to the size of databases with regard to the proposed architectural model.