A Survey on Observability of Distributed Edge & Container-based Microservices

Edge computing is proposed as a technical enabler for meeting emerging network technologies (such as 5G and Industrial Internet of Things), stringent application requirements and key performance indicators (KPIs). It aims to alleviate the problems associated with centralized cloud computing systems by placing computational resources to the network’s edge, closer to the users. However, the complexity of distributed edge infrastructures grows when hosting containerized workloads as microservices, resulting in hard to detect and troubleshoot outages on critical use cases such as industrial automation processes. Observability aims to support operators in managing and operating complex distributed infrastructures and microservices architectures by instrumenting end-to-end runtime performance. To the best of our knowledge, no survey article has been recently proposed for distributed edge and containerized microservices observability. Thus, this article surveys and classifies state-of-the-art solutions from various communities. Besides surveying state-of-the-art, this article also discusses the observability concept, requirements, and design considerations. Finally, we discuss open research issues as well as future research directions that will inspire additional research in this area.