Power of random choices made efficient for fog computing

In this paper, we consider a load balancing protocol based on the power of random choices that is adapted to a fog deploy in which several independent fog nodes equipped with a set of servers or VM are serving the same geographical area. The protocol is based on a simple but effective mechanism based on a threshold of T . When a fog node receives a unit of computation or a job, it immediately executes the job if the number of its occupied servers is lower than T , otherwise the node executes a randomized algorithm by probing F other fog nodes in the area, and delegates the execution of the job to the least loaded one, provided the workload is lower than the probing node. Through a mathematical analysis we show that probing just one node ( F=1 ) when there are less than two VM free provides the same performance of the well known power-of-two random choices centralized algorithm, but at a much lower delay and control overhead costs. Also, simulations are used to address the node heterogeneity and, with a real testbed, we offer results that prove the effective benefit of the proposed solution in practical applications.

Beraldi, R., & Proietti Mattia, G. (2020). Power of random choices made efficient for fog computing. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCC.2020.2968443