In this preliminary study, we consider the server allocation problem for edge computing system deployment. Our goal is to minimize the average turnaround time of application requests/tasks, generated by all mobile devices/users in a geographical region. We consider two approaches for edge cloud deployment: the flat deployment, where all edge clouds co-locate with the base stations, and the hierarchical deployment, where edge clouds can also co-locate with other system components besides the base stations. In the flat deployment, we demonstrate that the allocation of edge cloud servers should be balanced across all the base stations, if the application request arrival rates at the base stations are equal to each other. We also show that the hierarchical deployment approach has great potentials in minimizing the system's average turnaround time. We conduct various simulation studies using the CloudSim Plus platform to verify our theoretical results. The collective findings trough theoretical analysis and simulation results will provide useful guidance in practical edge computing system deployment.
