Pogonip: Scheduling Asynchronous Applications on the Edge

Abstract

The microservice architectural style is changing the design of modern applications. Orchestration tools, such as Kubernetes, deploy them on computing nodes assuming that resources are interconnected through fast communication links. However, running microservices in the emerging edge computing environments requires considering the heterogeneity and nonnegligible network delays among edge resources. In this context, although the problem of scheduling synchronous microservice-based applications has been widely explored, scheduling asynchronous applications, where microservices interact using a queue system, has only recently started to be investigated. In this paper, we present Pogonip, an edge-aware scheduler for Kubernetes, designed for asynchronous microservices. We formulate an optimization problem and a heuristic for determining the placement of microservices, which is tailored for edge environments. We integrate them in Kubernetes by building custom scheduler plugins. Using a benchmark application, we show the advantages of the proposed network-aware solutions over other state-of-the-art solutions.