Proactive–reactive microservice architecture global scaling

We develop a novel approach for run-time global adaptation of microservice applications, based on synthesis of architecture-level reconfigurations. More precisely, we devise an algorithm for proactive–reactive automatic scaling that reaches a target system’s Maximum Computational Load by performing optimal deployment orchestrations. We evaluate our approach by developing a platform for the modeling and simulation of microservice architectures, and we use such a platform to compare local/global and reactive/proactive scaling. Empirical benchmarks, obtained through our platform, show that proactive global scaling consistently outperforms the reactive approach, but the best performances can be obtained by our original approach for mixing proactivity and reactivity. In particular, our approach surpasses the state-of-the-art when both performance and resource consumption are considered. Editor’s note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board. •Novel microservice architectures scaling approach improving the state-of-the-art.•New algorithm for proactive–reactive global scaling.•Novel integrated timed architectural modeling/execution language.•Benchmarks evaluating the effectiveness of the novel scaling approach.