Efficient service handoff across edge servers via docker container migration

Supporting smooth movement of mobile clients is important when offloading services on an edge computing platform. Interruption-free client mobility demands seamless migration of the offloading service to nearby edge servers. However, fast migration of offloading services across edge servers in a WAN environment poses significant challenges to the handoff service design. In this paper, we present a novel service handoff system which seamlessly migrates offloading services to the nearest edge server, while the mobile client is moving. Service handoff is achieved via container migration. We identify an important performance problem during Docker container migration. Based on our systematic study of container layer management and image stacking, we propose a migration method which leverages the layered storage system to reduce file system synchronization overhead, without dependence on the distributed file system. We implement a prototype system and conduct experiments using real world product applications. Evaluation results reveal that compared to state-of-the-art service handoff systems designed for edge computing platforms, our system reduces the total duration of service handoff time by 80%(56%) with network bandwidth 5Mbps(20Mbps).