Efficient resource allocation and dimensioning of media edge clouds infrastructure

Media Edge Cloud Data Centers (MEC-DCs) that are interconnected by a Metro Network were selected as infrastructure to enhance the Quality of Experience (QoE) for end users of multimedia applications. Unlike the traditional Data Centers, MEC-DCs, which are kept closer to the user, have limited availability of resources at a given Data Center. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for Infrastructure service providers to efficiently dimension and use the media resources in an environment where the applications have high resource demand and the infrastructure has limited availability. To perform this task dynamically, we first propose a resource allocation strategy that considers the physical characteristics of the networking layer while minimizing the costs of deploying media applications. Second, we analyze the different configurations of the networking layer in order to enhance the use of MEC-DCs resources and the QoE for the end-users. Simulation results show a clear advantage of this proposed optimization-based approach over the benchmarks in terms of provisioning costs, blocking ratio and resource use.