iDynamics: A Configurable Emulation Framework for evaluating Microservice Scheduling Policies under Controllable Cloud–Edge Dynamics

iDynamics is a configurable emulation framework for evaluating microservice scheduling policies on Kubernetes-based cloud–edge clusters under controllable dynamics (call-graph, traffic, and network conditions).

The repository hosts the research prototype used in our iDynamics papers and provides a basis for implementing and testing new scheduling policies against realistic but repeatable conditions.

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Paper and cleaned artifacts

• Manuscript: IEEE_TSC_iDynamics_Revision.pdf
• Cleaned run artifacts: experiments/runs/README.md
• User-facing benchmark packages: benchmarks/

The experiment run directories in this repository are intentionally cleaned for paper readers. Debug logs, local Git status, command logs, local tool metadata, and deprecated claim note files are not included here; the run folders keep configuration, raw evidence, processed metrics, summaries, and figures when present.

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What is “controllable dynamics”?

In iDynamics, controllable dynamics means you can systematically:

• reconstruct and vary microservice call-graph topologies,
• stress specific service chains with different traffic mixes, and
• inject realistic cross-node latency and bandwidth profiles,

while observing the resulting SLA metrics (e.g., tail latency and throughput).

This allows you to ask questions such as:

• How does a given scheduler behave under increasingly skewed traffic?
• Under which delay / bandwidth patterns does it start to violate latency SLOs?
• Which microservice pairs become bottlenecks as the request mix evolves?

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Key capabilities

iDynamics is designed to:

• Run real microservices on a Kubernetes cluster (e.g., DeathStarBench Social Network) instead of pure simulation.
• Observe dynamic call-graphs and traffic via a service mesh (Istio) and build weighted dependency graphs between upstream–downstream microservice pairs.
• Emulate heterogeneous cross-node latency and bandwidth using Linux traffic control primitives (classful qdisc + u32 filters) while preserving non-experimental traffic.
• Measure injected dynamics with lightweight, distributed agents (Kubernetes DaemonSets) for delay and bandwidth.
• Plug in arbitrary scheduling policies through an abstract policy interface and a utility module that exposes nodes, pods, and metrics in a scheduler-friendly way.
• Evaluate policies under repeatable scenarios, including dynamic workloads, changing call-graphs, and evolving network conditions.

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Architecture at a glance

At a high level, iDynamics consists of three main components:

1. Graph Dynamics Analyzer

   • UM–DM Traffic Profiler
   • Call-Graph Builder
     Reconstructs call-graphs from service-mesh telemetry and computes stress (bi-directional traffic) between microservice pairs over a time window.

2. Networking Dynamics Manager

   • Emulator
     Injects configurable delay and bandwidth profiles per node pair using Linux tc (HTB + filters).
   • Measurer
     Distributed agents (DaemonSets) + a central collector to measure and validate cross-node delays and bandwidths.

3. Scheduling Policy Extender

   • Policy Customization Interface
     An abstract AbstractSchedulingPolicy class defining hooks for single-pod and batch scheduling, plus metric updates.
   • Utility Function Module
     Helpers to obtain node/pod state, SLA targets, and metrics from Prometheus / service mesh, and to push scheduling decisions.

Example policies implemented in the papers include:

• Policy 1 – Call-graph–Aware: co-locates heavily communicating microservices or places them on low-latency nodes.
• Policy 4 – Hybrid-dynamics–Aware: minimizes a service–node mapping cost that combines traffic stress and cross-node delay.

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Typical use cases

You can use iDynamics to:

• Prototype and debug new microservice scheduling policies (heuristic or ML-based) before touching production.
• Study SLA compliance under controlled workload and infrastructure dynamics.
• Compare network-aware vs. network-agnostic scheduling strategies.
• Explore trade-offs between communication efficiency and resource balance in cloud–edge clusters.

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Prerequisites

To use iDynamics as in the papers, you will typically need:

• A Kubernetes cluster (tested with 5–15 worker nodes in the papers) with:
  • Linux nodes and tc (traffic control) available.
  • A CNI plugin such as Calico.
  • Istio service mesh enabled for your microservices.
• Python 3.10+ with pip.
• Permission to deploy DaemonSets and custom controllers/plugins on the cluster.
• (Optional, for reproducing case studies)
  • [DeathStarBench] Social Network microservice application and a workload generator (e.g., wrk2).

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Citation:

@misc{chen2025idynamicsnovelframeworkevaluating, title={iDynamics: A Configurable Emulation Framework for evaluating Microservice Scheduling Policies under Controllable Cloud–Edge Dynamics}, author={Ming Chen and Muhammed Tawfiqul Islam and Maria Rodriguez Read and Rajkumar Buyya}, year={2025}, eprint={2503.16029}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.DC}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16029 }, }