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SCI."],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:p>The advancements in virtualization technologies and distributed computing infrastructures have sparked the development of cloud-native applications. This is grounded in the breakdown of a monolithic application into smaller, loosely connected components, often referred to as microservices, enabling enhancements in the application\u2019s performance, flexibility, and resilience, along with better resource utilization. When optimizing the performance of cloud-native applications, specific demands arise in terms of application latency and communication delays between microservices that are not taken into consideration by generic orchestration algorithms. In this work, we propose mechanisms for automating the allocation of computing resources to optimize the service delivery of cloud-native applications over the edge-cloud continuum. We initially introduce the problem\u2019s Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation. Given the potentially overwhelming execution time for real-sized problems, we propose a greedy algorithm, which allocates resources sequentially in a best-fit manner. To further improve the performance, we introduce a multi-agent rollout mechanism that evaluates the immediate effect of decisions but also leverages the underlying greedy heuristic to simulate the decisions anticipated from other agents, encapsulating this in a Reinforcement Learning framework. This approach allows us to effectively manage the performance\u2013execution time trade-off and enhance performance by controlling the exploration of the Rollout mechanism. This flexibility ensures that the system remains adaptive to varied scenarios, making the most of the available computational resources while still ensuring high-quality decisions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s42979-024-02630-w","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,13]],"date-time":"2024-03-13T20:24:33Z","timestamp":1710361473000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Performance Optimization Across the Edge-Cloud Continuum: A Multi-agent Rollout Approach for Cloud-Native Application Workload Placement"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"5","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0725-5463","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Polyzois","family":"Soumplis","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Georgios","family":"Kontos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Panagiotis","family":"Kokkinos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Aristotelis","family":"Kretsis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Sergio","family":"Barrachina-Mu\u00f1oz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Rasoul","family":"Nikbakht","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Jorge","family":"Baranda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Miquel","family":"Payar\u00f3","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Josep","family":"Mangues-Bafalluy","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Emmanuel","family":"Varvarigos","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,3,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"2630_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Villamizar M, Garc\u00e9s O, Castro H, Verano M, Salamanca L, Casallas R, Gil S. 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Polyzois Soumplis, Georgios Kontos, and Emmanuel Varvarigos received support by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) under the \u201c2nd Call for H.F.R.I. Research Projects to support Faculty Members & Researchers\u201d (Project Number: 04596). The funding bodies had no role in the design of the study, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript. There are no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Conflict of interest"}},{"value":"All authors have agreed to the publication of this work.","order":3,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Consent for publication"}}],"article-number":"318"}}