Monitoring Platform Evolution towards Serverless Computing for 5G and
Beyond Systems
Abstract
Fifth generation (5G) and beyond systems require flexible and efficient
monitoring platforms to guarantee optimal key performance indicators
(KPIs) in various scenarios. Their applicability in Edge computing
environments requires lightweight monitoring solutions. This work
evaluates different candidate technologies to implement a monitoring
platform for 5G and beyond systems in these environments. For monitoring
data plane technologies, we evaluate different virtualization
technologies, including bare metal servers, virtual machines, and
orchestrated containers. We show that containers not only offer superior
flexibility and deployment agility, but also allow obtaining better
throughput and latency. In addition, we explore the suitability of the
Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) serverless paradigm for deploying the
functions used to manage the monitoring platform. This is motivated by
the event oriented nature of those functions, designed to set up the
monitoring infrastructure for newly created services. When the FaaS warm
start mode is used, the platform gives users the perception of resources
that are always available. When a cold start mode is used, containers
running the application’s modules are automatically destroyed when the
application is not in use. Our analysis compares both of them with the
standard deployment of microservices. The experimental results show that
the cold start mode produces a significant latency increase, along with
potential instabilities. For this reason, its usage is not recommended
despite the potential savings of computing resources. Conversely, when
the warm start mode is used for executing configuration tasks of
monitoring infrastructure, it can provide similar execution times to a
microservice-based deployment. In addition, the FaaS approach
significantly simplifies the code logic in comparison with
microservices, reducing lines of code to less than 38%, thus reducing
development time. Thus, FaaS in warm start mode represents the best
candidate technology to implements such management functions.