Multi-objective scheduling and resource allocation of Kubernetes replicas across the compute continuum

Orchestrating microservice applications deployed on a federation of globally distributed Kubernetes clusters is a challenging and multifaceted optimization problem. It is not only computationally hard, but also requires balancing a delicate trade-off between competing performance metrics, such as latency, deployment cost, and service interruption frequency. Classical approaches in the literature merge multiple objectives into a single one via, e.g., linear combinations. However, in practice, it is complex to express a priori a quantitative preference between heterogeneous objectives, let alone with simple linear combinations. This paper adopts a more comprehensive approach leveraging proper Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO), with the goal of producing multiple solutions from the Pareto Front (PF). Therefore, the orchestrator can inspect a posteriori all possible “optimal” trade-offs and decide on the strategy that best fits their operating requirements. To solve the MOO problem, this paper adopts state-of-the-art Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms and shows their effectiveness in solving the MOO problem. Illustrative results highlight the practical benefits of a MOO formulation, providing several tens of nondominated solutions and evenly covering the objectives’ space.