A Hodge-Based Framework for Service Operational Analysis in Serverless Platforms
This work provides a systematic methodology for analyzing inter-function flows in serverless platforms, offering actionable remediation strategies for service operators.
This paper proposes a topological model for serverless services and uses Hodge decomposition to analyze operational flows, partitioning them into locally correctable and globally persistent harmonic modes. The analysis reveals that harmonic flows are structural properties of serverless systems, not configuration errors, and the approach can uncover latent architectural inefficiencies.
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.