A Hodge-Based Framework for Service Operational Analysis in Serverless Platforms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a topological Hodge-based model to analyze and improve service flows in serverless platforms, revealing structural inefficiencies and guiding remediation strategies.

Contribution

It presents a novel topological framework using Hodge decomposition for analyzing complex serverless service interactions.

Findings

Harmonic flows indicate structural properties, not errors.

The methodology uncovers latent architectural inefficiencies.

Remediation strategies improve service performance.

Abstract

In this paper we propose a method for analyzing services deployed in serverless platforms. These services typically consists of orchestrated functions that can exhibit complex and non-conservative information flows due to the interaction of independently deployed functions under coarse-grained control mechanisms. We introduce a topological model of serverless services and make use of the Hodge decomposition to partition observed operational flows into locally correctable components and globally persistent harmonic modes. Our analysis shows that harmonic flows naturally arise from different kind of interactions among functions and should be interpreted as structural properties of serverless systems rather than configuration errors. We present a systematic methodology for analyzing inter-function flows and deriving actionable remediation strategies, including dumping effects to contain the effects of harmonic inefficiencies as an alternative to completely restructure the topological model of the service. Experimental results confirm that the proposed approach can uncover latent architectural structures leading to inefficiencies.