Supervision : Olivier FOURMAUX

Co-supervision : FRIEDMAN Timur

Orchestration de conteneurs pour l'edge cloud

The pendulum again swings away from centralized IT infrastructure back towards decentralization, with the rise of edge computing. Besides resource-constrained devices that can only run tiny tasks, edge computing infrastructure consists of server-class compute nodes that are collocated with wireless base stations, complemented by servers in regional data centers. These compute nodes have cloud-like capabilities, and are thus able to run cloud-like workloads. Furthermore, many smart devices that support containerization and virtualization can also handle cloud-like workloads. The «containers as a service» (CaaS) service model, with its minimal overhead on compute nodes, is particularly well adapted to the less scalable cloud environment that is found at the edge, but cloud container orchestration systems have yet to catch up to the new edge cloud environment.

This thesis shows a way forward for edge cloud container orchestration. We make our contributions in two primary ways: the reasoned conception of a set of empirically tested features to simplify and improve container orchestration at the edge, and the deployment of these features to provide EdgeNet, a sustainable container-based edge cloud testbed for the internet research community.

We have built EdgeNet on Kubernetes, as it is open-source software that has become today’s de facto industry standard cloud container orchestration tool. The edge cloud requires multitenancy for the sharing of limited resources. However, this is not a Kubernetes-native feature, and a specific framework must be integrated into the tool to enable this functionality. Surveying the scientific literature on cloud multitenancy and existing frameworks to extend Kubernetes to offer multitenancy, we have identified three main approaches: (1) multi-instance through multiple clusters, (2) multi-instance through multiple control planes, and (3) single-instance native. Considering the resource constraints at the edge, we argue for and provide empirical evidence in favor of a single-instance multitenancy framework.

Our design includes a lightweight mechanism for the federation of edge cloud compute clusters in which each local cluster implements our multitenancy framework, and a user gains access to federated resources through the local cluster that her local cloud operator provides. We further introduce several features and methods that adapt container orchestration for the edge cloud, such as a means to allow users to deploy workloads according to node location, and an in-cluster VPN that allows nodes to operate from behind NATs.

We put these features into production through the EdgeNet testbed, a globally distributed compute cluster that is inherently less costly to deploy and maintain, and easier to document and to program than previous such testbeds.

2021-2023 Publications

• 2023
  • B. Senel : “Orchestration de conteneurs pour l’edge cloud”, thesis, phd defence 06/23/2023, supervision Fourmaux, Olivier, co-supervision : Friedman, Timur (2023)
  • B. Şenel, M. Mouchet, J. Cappos, T. Friedman, O. Fourmaux, R. McGeer : “Multitenant Containers as a Service (CaaS) for Clouds and Edge Clouds”, IEEE Access, vol. 11 (1), pp. 144574-144601, (IEEE) (2023)
• 2022
  • B. Can Şenel, M. Mouchet, J. Cappos, T. Friedman, O. Fourmaux, R. McGeer : “Federating EdgeNet with Fed4FIRE+ and Deploying its Nodes Behind NATs”, SLICES Workshop at International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Networking 2022 Conference, Catania, Italy, pp. 1-5, (IEEE) (2022)
• 2021
  • B. Şenel, M. Mouchet, J. Cappos, O. Fourmaux, T. Friedman, R. McGeer : “EdgeNet: the Global Kubernetes Cluster Testbed”, IEEE INFOCOM International Workshop on Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT), Vancouver, Canada, pp. 1-2, (IEEE) (2021)
  • B. Şenel, M. Mouchet, J. Cappos, O. Fourmaux, T. Friedman, R. McGeer : “EdgeNet: A Multi-Tenant and Multi-Provider Edge Cloud”, EdgeSys'21 - 4^th International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking, workshop held in conjunction with the 16^th ACM European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys 2021), Best Paper Award, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, pp. 49-54, (ACM) (2021)
  • B. Can Şenel, M. Mouchet, J. Cappos, O. Fourmaux, T. Friedman, R. McGeer : “Shared internet-scale measurement platforms”, NSF Workshop on Overcoming Measurement Barriers to Internet Research (WOMBIR 2021), extended abstract, Online, United States (2021)