Techniques for mobility-aware dynamic service placement in mobile clouds

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10231102-B2
Application number	US-201615142206-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 29, 2016
Priority date	Feb 24, 2014
Publication date	Mar 12, 2019
Grant date	Mar 12, 2019

Abstract

Techniques to adaptively launch/replace applications and services on edge devices in a cellular infrastructure and/or adaptively place content and computation at the edge devices based on logic at the network core are provided. In one aspect, a method for dynamic placement of applications in a cellular network mobile cloud is provided which includes the steps of: (a) obtaining: (i) a model of the cellular network, (ii) a model of user mobility patterns in the cellular network, and (iii) a model of a profile of the applications; (b) upon receipt of requests from users for the applications, obtaining runtime states at edge servers in the mobile cloud; and (c) upon obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers, placing the requests among the edge servers and a core server in the mobile cloud based on the models obtained in step (a) and the runtime states obtained in step (b).

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for dynamic placement of applications in a cellular network mobile cloud, the method comprising the steps of:
(a) obtaining: (i) a model of the cellular network, (ii) a model of user mobility patterns in the cellular network, and (iii) a model of a profile of the applications;
(b) upon receipt of requests from users for the applications, obtaining runtime states at edge servers in the mobile cloud, wherein the requests are received wirelessly from mobile devices of the users via the cellular network;
(c) upon obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers, placing the requests among the edge servers and a core server in the mobile cloud based on the models obtained in step (a) and the runtime states obtained in step (b),
wherein the placement of the requests among the edge servers and the core server is optimized using a cost function to compare, for a given one of the requests, a cost of serving the given request at the edge servers and a cost of serving the given request at the core server,
wherein the applications comprise at least an application A and an application B, one of which is active at a given one of the edge servers and one of which is inactive, and
wherein the method further comprising the steps of:
determining a suitability of running the application A and the application B at the given edge server, wherein the suitability is based on (1) a comparison of costs of serving requests for the application A and the application B at the given edge server versus at the core server and (2) a volume of the requests that can be served by the given edge server;
determining an overhead of replacing the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive; and
replacing the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive only if doing so results in an increase in the suitability, and the increase in the suitability is greater than the overhead.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the model of the cellular network is obtained from a network administrator.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein one or more of the models are programmatically imported from third parties.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein one or more of the models are obtained using request history of the edge servers.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising the step of:
determining from the request history of the edge servers one or more of: which of the applications were requested by which of the users, to which of the edge servers the requests were submitted and when, and a resource consumption of serving the requests.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers comprises the step of:
determining whether a requested application is active or inactive at the edge servers.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers comprises the step of:
determining a state of a request queue for the edge servers, wherein the state of the request queue comprises how many, and for which of the applications the requests are being made.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers comprises the step of:
determining a total resource consumption of the edge servers based on one or more of CPU resource consumption, memory resource consumption, and network bandwidth consumption.

9. An apparatus for dynamic placement of applications in a cellular network mobile cloud, the apparatus comprising:
a memory; and
at least one processor device, coupled to the memory, operative to:
(a) obtain: (i) a model of the cellular network, (ii) a model of user mobility patterns in the cellular network, and (iii) a model of a profile of the applications;
(b) upon receipt of requests from users for the applications, obtain runtime states at edge servers in the mobile cloud, wherein the requests are received wirelessly from mobile devices of the users via the cellular network;
(c) upon obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers, place the requests among the edge servers and a core server in the mobile cloud based on the models obtained in step (a) and the runtime states obtained in step (b),

wherein the placement of the requests among the edge servers and the core server is optimized using a cost function to compare, for a given one of the requests, a cost of serving the given request at the edge servers and a cost of serving the given request at the core server, and
wherein the applications comprise at least an application A and an application B, one of which is active at a given one of the edge servers and one of which is inactive, and wherein the at least one processor device is further operative to:
determine a suitability of running the application A and the application B at the given edge server, wherein the suitability is based on (1) a comparison of costs of serving requests for the application A and the application B at the given edge server versus at the core server and (2) a volume of the requests that can be served by the given edge server;
determine an overhead of replacing the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive; and
replace the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive only if doing so results in an increase in the suitability, and the increase in the suitability is greater than the overhead.

10. A computer program product for dynamic placement of applications in a cellular network mobile cloud, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to:
(a) obtain: (i) a model of the cellular network, (ii) a model of user mobility patterns in the cellular network, and (iii) a model of a profile of the applications;
(b) upon receipt of requests from users for the applications, obtain runtime states at edge servers in the mobile cloud, wherein the requests are received wirelessly from mobile devices of the users via the cellular network;
(c) upon obtaining the runtime states at the edge servers, place the requests among the edge servers and a core server in the mobile cloud based on the models obtained in step (a) and the runtime states obtained in step (b),
wherein the placement of the requests among the edge servers and the core server is optimized using a cost function to compare, for a given one of the requests, a cost of serving the given request at the edge servers and a cost of serving the given request at the core server, and
wherein the applications comprise at least an application A and an application B, one of which is active at a given one of the edge servers and one of which is inactive, and wherein the program instructions further cause the computer to:
determine a suitability of running the application A and the application B at the given edge server, wherein the suitability is based on (1) a comparison of costs of serving requests for the application A and the application B at the given edge server versus at the core server and (2) a volume of the requests that can be served by the given edge server;
determine an overhead of replacing the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive; and
replace the application A or the application B at the given edge server which is active with the one that is inactive only if doing so results in an increase in the suitability, and the increase in the suita

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Agrawal Dakshi
• He Ting
• Raghavendra Ramya
• Song Yang

Classifications

• H04M15/8044

  Least cost routing · CPC title

• H04W4/50 Primary

  Service provisioning or reconfiguring · CPC title

• H04L41/145

  involving simulating, designing, planning or modelling of a network · CPC title

• H04L67/1004

  Server selection for load balancing · CPC title