EdgeRDV: A Framework for Edge Workload Management at Scale

Abstract

Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that moves data-intensive applications and services (e.g., AI) closer to the data source. The rapid growth of edge endpoints connected to the Internet today poses several challenges in scalable application life cycle management. That is, managing data and workloads on several thousand, up to millions of edge endpoints, challenged by limited connectivity, resource constraints, network and edge endpoint failures. In this work, we present EdgeRDV, a new edge abstraction that builds on the idea of rendezvous nodes to manage edge workloads at scale. The EdgeRDV architecture is comprised of a central cloud management endpoint (or cloud hub), a central gateway for each edge site (or edge hub), redundant gateways (or rendezvous nodes), and edge endpoints. Beyond its scalable architecture, EdgeRDV presents new techniques and algorithms that address single points of failures and provide adjustable levels of resilience and cost-effectiveness in edge network deployments. We conducted preliminary experiments to evaluate EdgeRDV, through simulations, and our results show that EdgeRDV requires one to three orders of magnitude fewer intermediate nodes compared to relay structures, can gracefully adapt to failures, and requires a constant number of messages during failure recovery in edge sites with up to 667K+ edge endpoints.