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.

Background: Patient-derived xenografts (PDX) mice models play an important role in preclinical trials and personalized medicine. Sharing data on the models is highly valuable for numerous reasons – ethical, economical, research cross validation etc. The EurOPDX Consortium was established 8 years ago to share such information and avoid duplicating efforts in developing new PDX mice models and unify approaches to support preclinical research. EurOPDX Data Portal is the unified data sharing platform adopted by the Consortium. Main body: In this paper we describe the main features of the EurOPDX Data Portal (https://dataportal.europdx.eu/), its architecture and possible utilization by researchers who look for PDX mice models for their research. The Portal offers a catalogue of European models accessible on a cooperative basis. The models are searchable by metadata, and a detailed view provides molecular profiles (gene expression, mutation, copy number alteration) and treatment studies. The Portal displays the data in multiple tools (PDX Finder, cBioPortal, and GenomeCruzer in future), which are populated from a common database displaying strictly mutually consistent views. (Short) Conclusion: EurOPDX Data Portal is an entry point to the EurOPDX Research Infrastructure offering PDX mice models for collaborative research, (meta)data describing their features and deep molecular data analysis according to users’ interests.

The ICT infrastructure transformations for integrating cloud, software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are emerging extensively to satisfy dynamic user requirements on diversified functionalities over large-scale resource pools. These infrastructure transformations are causing new sets of operational problems for operators, as a consequence of inadequate end-to-end visibility and visualization support about underlay infrastructure. Particularly, for multi-tenant/multisite underlay infrastructure, resource monitoring and associated flow identification are major challenges. To address these operational challenges, precise visibility monitoring and interactive visualizations are essential. Therefore, in this paper, by realizing an interactive visualization of multi-layer (i.e. resource-layer and flow-layer) visibility, we address the real-world operational issues of experimental SDN-enabled distributed clouds, denoted as OF@TEIN and OF@KOREN Playgrounds. By leveraging ‘SmartX MultiView Visibility Framework’, we first strive to enable visibility collection and validation. We then link it with subsequent visibility integration capability empowered by DataLake-based visibility storage. Additionally, by taking the example of OF@TEIN and OF@KOREN Playgrounds, we present verification results on prototype implementations. The results justify the proposed approach for timely unveiling critical operational issues by efficaciously leveraging the multi-layer visibility.

After its launch in 2012, OF@TEIN project has faced several changes in both resource configuration and usage procedure for OF@TEIN infrastructure. In order to maintain and verify the functionality of this open/shared virtual playground, there were many difficulties for managing multi-national distributed infrastructure as a collaborative community effort. In this paper, we discuss the past and on-going experience on OF@TEIN collaborative operation and enhancements. Based on this collaborative experience on OF@TEIN virtual playground, we could build our understanding on the emerging SDN-Cloud paradigm.

In this paper, we present our proposals and efforts for building an affordable playground (i.e., miniaturized testbed) for Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-Cloud experiments by using hyper-converged SmartX Boxes that are distributed across multiple sites. Each SmartX Box consists of several virtualized functions that are categorized into SDN and cloud functions. Multiple SmartX Boxes are deployed and inter-connected through SDN to build multi-site distributed cloud playground resources. The resulting deployment integrates both cloud multi-tenancy and SDN-based slicing, which allow developers to run experiments and operators to monitor resources in a distributed SDN-cloud playground. It also describes how the hyper-converged SmartX Box can increase the affordability of the playground deployment. Thus, the analysis result shows the efficiency of SmartX Box for building a distributed playground by providing semi-automated DevOps-style resource provisioning.