A Minicloud Specification Enabling the Federation of Heterogeneous Edge Resources for Latency Sensitive Applications' Requirements

Abstract

We assume a computing infrastructure that implements a cloud-to-edge continuum by federating heterogeneous resources. This infrastructure enables next generation (nextgen) QoE-intensive applications, by facilitating one of their critical requirements: latency. As such each node is identified primarily in terms of latency and secondarily in terms of, more traditional, computational capacity and availability characteristics. Since this infrastructure is dependent on the existing, local, and potentially third-party owned resources, we must address the pertinent problem of resource heterogeneity. This paper delineates the technical specifications of the solution that was designed to tackle the problem, creating a software stack that comprises a complete environment for the orchestration of containerized and VM-based workflows. The solution, dubbed "Minicloud", allows the underlying resource to be federated from a higher-level continuum management layer and be used for the deployment of nextgen apps based on latency requirements. Based on lightweight Kubernetes-oriented technologies and tools, it maintains minimum dependencies allowing a wide range of underlying OSs and system architectures to be supported.