Joint Container Placement and Task Provisioning in Dynamic Fog Computing

Fog computing has emerged as a promising technology that can bring cloud applications closer to the devices at the network edge. The fog infrastructure contains mainly distributed and heterogeneous fog devices such as in the context of the Internet of Things. Unlike traditional data centers, those devices are characterized by sporadic resources availability, mobility, and increased flexibility. However, resource allocation mechanisms proposed currently for fog computing still lack the support of dynamic behavior. In this article, we propose novel resource management algorithms capable of flexible service provisioning in a dynamic fog computing environment. Specifically, the joint problem of container placement and task provisioning is formulated with integer linear programming. Due to its NP-hardness, we propose a low-complex particle-swarm-optimization-based metaheuristic and a greedy heuristic. Our solutions aim to optimize the number of served end-users with a predefined delay-threshold while considering dynamic fog nodes behavior/mobility and resources availability of fog nodes. Using real-world mobility data sets and different resources’ availability models, conducted simulations demonstrate that the PSO-based algorithm achieves near-optimal results. Whereas, the greedy algorithm realizes only 10%–30% less success ratio than the optimal solution with negligible execution time.