Cloudlet network design optimization

Major interest is currently given to the integration of clusters of virtualization servers, also referred to as `cloudlets´, into the access network to allow higher performance and reliability in the access to mobile cloud services. We tackle the cloudlet network design problem for mobile access networks. The model is such that virtual machines are associated with mobile users and are allocated to cloudlets. Designing a cloudlet network implies first determining where to install cloudlet facilities among the available sites, then assigning sets of access points such as base-stations to cloudlets, while supporting virtual machine migrations and taking into account partial user mobility information, as well as the satisfaction of service-level agreements. We present link-path formulations supported by heuristics to compute solutions in reasonable time. We qualify the advantage in considering mobility for both users and virtual machines as up to 40% less cloudlet facilities to install and 40% less virtual machine migrations to execute. We compare two migration modes, bulk and live migration, as a function of mobile cloud service requirements, determining that a high preference should be given to bulk migrations for delay-stringent services such as augmented reality support, while for applications with less stringent delay requirements, live migration appears as largely preferable.