Enabling Edge Computing Using Container Orchestration and Software Defined Wide Area Networks

Abstract

With SD-WAN being increasingly adopted by corporations, and Kubernetes becoming the defacto container orchestration tool, the opportunities for deploying edge-computing applications running over SD-WAN are vast. Unfortunately, service orchestration in SD-WAN has not been provided with enough attention, resulting in the lack of research focused on service discovery in these scenarios. In this document, an in-house service discovery solution that works alongside Kubernetes’ master node for allowing an improved traffic handling and better user experience is developed. The service discovery solution was conceived following a design science research approach. Our research includes the implementation of a proof-of-concept SD-WAN topology alongside a Kubernetes cluster that allows us to deploy custom services and delimit the necessary characteristics of our in-house solution. Also, the implementation's performance is tested based on the required times for updating the discovery solution according to service updates. Finally, some conclusions and modifications are pointed out based on the results, while also discussing possible enhancements.