A Decentralized Microservice Scheduling Approach Using Service Mesh in Cloud-Edge Systems

Abstract: As microservice-based systems scale across the cloud-edge continuum, traditional centralized scheduling mechanisms increasingly struggle with latency, coordination overhead, and fault tolerance. This paper presents a new architectural direction: leveraging service mesh sidecar proxies as decentralized, in-situ schedulers to enable scalable, low-latency coordination in large-scale, cloud-native environments. We propose embedding lightweight, autonomous scheduling logic into each sidecar, allowing scheduling decisions to be made locally without centralized control. This approach leverages the growing maturity of service mesh infrastructures, which support programmable distributed traffic management. We describe the design of such an architecture and present initial results demonstrating its scalability potential in terms of response time and latency under varying request rates. Rather than delivering a finalized scheduling algorithm, this paper presents a system-level architectural direction and preliminary evidence to support its scalability potential.