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Autonomic Decentralized Microservices: The Gru Approach and Its Evaluation

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Microservices

Abstract

Cloud applications are more and more featuring microservices as a design pattern, using related technologies (containerization, orchestration, continuous deployment, integration, and more) to speed up design, development, and operation. However, microservices are not bullet-proof: they increase design and management issues in the cloud adding to the mix all the intrinsic complexities of highly distributed systems. This addition can render ineffective all centralized management technologies like Docker or clustering systems like Swarm and Kubernetes. Conversely, autonomic and decentralized microservices management is still largely unexplored. We address this problem with Gru, an approach based on multiagent systems that adds an autonomic adaptation layer for microservice applications focusing on Docker, the de facto market leader in container technology. Gru is designed to support fully decentralized microservices management, and can be integrated with ease in dockerized applications, managing them with autonomic actions to satisfy application quality requirements. We evaluate Gru with a concrete case study showing autoscaling dockerized microservices matching variating and bursty workloads. Evaluation shows encouraging results for Gru autonomic management.

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Acknowledgements

The research reported in this chapter is partially supported by the European Commission grant no. FP7-ICT-2011-8-318484 (MODAClouds). Also, Damian and Elisabetta’s work is partially supported by the European Commission grant no. 644869 (H2020 - Call 1), DICE, and grant no. 779656 (H2020), SODALITE.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Elisabetta Di Nitto & Luca Florio

  2. Technical University of Eindhoven, Eindhoven, Netherlands

    Damian A. Tamburri

  3. The Jheronimus Academy of Data Science, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands

    Damian A. Tamburri

Authors
  1. Elisabetta Di Nitto
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  2. Luca Florio
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  3. Damian A. Tamburri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Damian A. Tamburri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Distributed Adaptive Systems (DAS) Research Unit, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

    Antonio Bucchiarone

  2. Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Nicola Dragoni

  3. Distributed Systems Group, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Schahram Dustdar

  4. Dept of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Patricia Lago

  5. Institute of Technologies and Software Development, Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Manuel Mazzara

  6. Institute of Technologies and Software Development, Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Victor Rivera

  7. Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Andrey Sadovykh

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Nitto, E.D., Florio, L., Tamburri, D.A. (2020). Autonomic Decentralized Microservices: The Gru Approach and Its Evaluation. In: Bucchiarone, A., et al. Microservices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31646-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31646-4_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31645-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31646-4

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