Decentralization and networking of independent “things” is a current trend to counter the complexity of heterogeneous value chains. It can be observed in contexts like Industry 4.0, Smart Cities, Forestry 4.0, or (most recently) the European Gaia-X initiative.
A decentralized networking needs an infrastructure that provides basic services for authentication, a catalog of existing “things” and means for secure communication. The Smart Systems Service Infrastructure (S³I) – developed at MMI – provides such an infrastructure for multi-domain applications. An important property of such an infrastructure is scalability, i.e., its ability to adapt to varying demands or system loads.
In this work, an approach for automatic (i.e., load-dependent) scaling of the S³I services (Directory, Broker and IdentityProvider etc.) shall be conceptualized and prototypically implemented using Microsoft Azure. As a first step, this includes a formal description of the setup of the S³I services (with Ansible or similar) and porting the S³I services to the Azure cloud. The developed approach shall be put to test by defining meaningful key performance indicators (KPI) that shall be evaluated in emulated load scenarios in the context of Forestry 4.0 to validate the approach (with scenarios comprising a suitable set of different “things”).
References
- Gebhard, M., Schluse, M., Hoppen, M., Roßmann, J. (2020). A multi-domain networking infrastructure enabling the situation-specific choreography of decentralized things. In: Schüppstuhl, T., Tracht, K., Henrich, D. (eds) Annals of Scientific Society for Assembly, Handling and Industrial Robotics. Springer Vieweg, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-61755-7_12
- M. Hoppen (2022). Smart Systems Service Infrastructure (S³I) – Design and deployment of the Smart Systems Service Infrastructure (S³I) for decentralized networking in Forestry 4.0 – A KWH4.0 Position Paper. https://www.kwh40.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/KWH40-Standpunkt-S3I-EN.pdf (2022-06-02)
- https://git.rwth-aachen.de/kwh40/s3i (2022-06-02)
