AuctionWhisk: Using an Auction-Inspired Approach for Function Placement in Serverless Fog Platforms

The Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) paradigm has a lot of potential as a computing model for fog environments comprising both cloud and edge nodes. When the request rate exceeds capacity limits at the edge, some functions need to be offloaded from the edge towards the cloud. In this paper, we present an auction-inspired approach in which application developers bid on resources while fog nodes decide locally which functions to execute and which to offload in order to maximize revenue. We evaluate our approach through a number of simulations, our proof-of-concept prototype AuctionWhisk, and a number of experiments with AuctionWhisk.