Optimal Deployment of Fog Nodes, Microservices and SDN Controllers in Time-Sensitive IoT Scenarios

The application of Internet of Things (IoT)-based solutions to intensive domains has enabled the automation of real-world processes. The critical nature of these domains requires for very high Quality of Service (QoS) to work properly. These applications often use computing paradigms such as fog computing and software architectures such as the Microservices Architecture (MSA). Moreover, the need for transparent service discovery in MSAs, combined with the need for network scalability and flexibility, motivates the use of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in these infrastructures. However, optimizing QoS in these scenarios implies an optimal deployment of microservices, fog nodes, and SDN controllers. Moreover, the deployment of each of the different elements affects the optimality of the others, which calls for a joint solution. In this paper, we motivate the joining of these three optimization problems into a single effort and we present Umizatou, a holistic deployment optimization solution that makes use of Mixed Integer Linear Programming. Finally, we evaluate Umizatou over a healthcare case study, showing its scalability in topologies of different sizes.