Intent Lifecycle Management over Programmable Infrastructure in the Computing Continuum

The development of modern distributed applications has been widely based on microservices-based paradigms, where distributed application graphs with strict Quality of Service requirements are deployed over programmable infrastructure. In such deployments, a set of objectives and constraints for the efficient provision of the distributed application has to be considered. A high-level description of these objectives and constraints is mentioned with the term intent. To satisfy the intent of a distributed application, intent-driven orchestration approaches emerge where high-level goals have to be translated to deployment and operational policies. In the current manuscript, we detail an approach that supports the intent lifecycle management from the intent generation towards its validation, translation into deployment plans, management through policies enforcement, and reporting regarding its fulfillment. Evaluation results are provided based on the development of a simulation environment and the examination of the performance impact of the activation of the various phases of the intent lifecycle.