A Comparative Evaluation of Edge Cloud Virtualization Technologies

Edge cloud computing is a crucial enabler for applications or network services with stringent communication requirements in the 5G networks and beyond era. Although edge compute resources contribute to a significant portion of end-to-end performance (e.g., delay), the involved performance trade-offs in relation to the utilized virtualization technologies and application functions are not yet thoroughly investigated. In this context, we study the performance dynamics of alternative edge cloud technologies, including different unikernel flavors, container builds, and implementations of exemplary Web services. Our experiments do not target identifying a single best option, rather than the involved performance trade-offs with respect to both service and infrastructure viewpoints as well as realistic edge cloud tasks, including on service operation, cloud resource or service elasticity, dynamic resource allocation and removal. We provide insights gained from a relevant extensive comparative evaluation based on a novel edge cloud experimentation infrastructure. Our experimental results inspired a conceptual edge cloud orchestration platform and its basic design guidelines, i.e., mixing and matching heterogeneous edge cloud virtual entities with particular operational or performance requirements.