Coupling VNF Orchestration and SDN Virtual Network Reconfiguration

Abstract

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) promises an efficient way of managing and orchestrating Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), where VNFs can be dynamically instantiated or migrated based on current service requirements. For instance, in order to improve the performance of mission critical services, VNFs can be instantiated closer to users or even be migrated over time to follow mobile users. However, this orchestration leads to changes, e.g, of the traffic requirements of the data and control plane of virtual network interconnecting VNFs. Particularly in virtualized Software-Defined Networking (vSDN) environments, these traffic changes require fast adaptations of the data and control plane isolation and abstraction policies, which guarantee predictable network operation and control. More in detail, the entity managing the virtualization (i.e., the SDN hypervisor) has to quickly reconfigure the policies of affected Virtual Networks (VNs) interconnecting VNFs. In this demo, we present i) the benefits of migrating a firewall VNF to a server, which is closer to its user, at runtime and show ii) how the migration is supported in a virtualized SDN environment.

MIGRATE: Mobile Device Virtualisation Through State Transfer

“…However, our previous work in [1] does focuses on this, although with evident differences in the testbed, using a real deployment as compared with the simulations of [17]. When considering the work in [20], our results in [1] obtains greater differences when moving capabilities to the edge of the network, given the more realistic deployment used. In [21], the results are mainly addressed to check the number of SDN flow updates needed under migration conditions.…”

“…In [17], [20], the authors are especially interested in the endto-end delay when using edge resources instead of cloud services. MIGRATE is not focused on this, but on the migration procedure.…”

“…However, a limited testbed is used to particularly evaluate the performance of the migration procedure using SDN, without involving the management of virtualisation resources with MANO capabilities. In [20] the migration of VNFs is dealt by using SDN to offer a better service of pure network functions, such as the case of a firewall, but this solution does not consider the issue of state transfer and the usage of general-purpose virtual functions (VxFs). The assurance of network capabilities and the seamless transference of data flows during migration is studied in [21], also through the extensive use of SDN and both simulating and presenting an experimental study case.…”

Efficient Placement of Service Function Chains in Cloud Computing Environments

“…Hence, this approach can achieve a lower OPEX. The approach in [48] studied VNF orchestration in virtualized SDN environments. However, it considered a limited number of use cases where user movement could be predictable.…”

FAST: Flexible and Low-Latency State Transfer in Mobile Edge Computing

“…A strategy to replicate virtual network functions in multiple servers to reduce the need for migrations has been explored in [45], while [46] examined the load threshold that should trigger a migration. An optimized multi-cluster overlay network for the transfer of software instances has been designed in [47], while related hypervisor configuration for the reconfiguration of virtual networks are examined in [48].…”