A blockchain-based framework for automatic SLA management in fog computing environments

Fog computing has become a prominent paradigm in providing shared resources to serve different applications near the edge. Similar to other computing paradigms such as cloud and grid, in fog computing, service-level agreements (SLAs) are essential between fog providers and end-users to guarantee the quality of service (QoS). However, due to the unique characteristics of fog resources, such as being highly distributed and heterogeneous, with their dynamic nature having nonrestrictive provider participation, SLA management techniques and frameworks, which are available for Clouds and Grids, are not directly applicable. The availability of the resources in the cloud is much more controllable and predictable compared to fog. Moreover, due to the multiple ownership of fog infrastructure and unrestricted environment, autonomous end-devices are allowed to participate with different SLAs to serve the applications near the edge as a result is a lack of trust exists between the entities and managing and enforcing SLAs according to the application QoS in this environment is a complex task. Thus, the SLA management must be undertaken in a more trustworthy manner to ensure that agreement. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an automated SLA management framework for fog computing that utilizes Smart contracts and blockchain technology to monitor and enforce SLAs in a more trustworthy manner. The results obtained from the experiments, which were conducted in the blockchain private network, show that the framework can ensure precise and efficient SLAs enforcement in the fog. The performance of the proposed framework is better than existing work in terms of transaction cost and time.