different concepts may propose slightly different implementations, they all suggest placing small cloud infrastructures at the network edge so that users can have seamless connection to cloud services. In particular, MECs are typically placed only one or a few network hops away from the mobile user, thus the communication latency can be kept very low. The ingress traffic into the backhaul network can also be reduced, because large amounts of data can be processed directly at the edge. It is envisioned that MECs will co-exist and work in unison with the existing centralized cloud that we have today, as shown in Figure \[fig:architecture\].

![Mobile edge cloud (MEC) architecture[]{data-label="fig:architecture"}](architecture){width="0.9\columnwidth"}

To maintain the benefits of running services close to the user, when a mobile user moves away from its original location, its service may need to be *migrated* to a new MEC server that is near the current user location [@FollowMeMagazine]. This article focuses on systems aspects of live service migration in MEC environments. The main challenge is how to maintain relatively low service downtime and overall migration time. We address this challenge with a layered framework which decomposes a cloud application into multiple layers so that only those layers that are 