Reducing Service Deployment Cost Through VNF Sharing

Thanks to its computational and forwarding capabilities, the mobile network infrastructure can support several third-party ("vertical") services, each composed of a graph of virtual (network) functions (VNFs). Importantly, one or more VNFs are often common to multiple services, thus the se...

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Published in:	IEEE/ACM transactions on networking Vol. 27; no. 6; pp. 2363 - 2376
Main Authors:	Malandrino, Francesco, Chiasserini, Carla Fabiana, Einziger, Gil, Scalosub, Gabriel
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	New York IEEE 01.12.2019 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:	5G mobile communication Algorithms Decisions Delays IEEE transactions Key performance indicator Network function virtualization Network function virtualization (NFV) Optimization Polynomials resource allocation Transcoding Virtual environments Virtual machining Wireless networks
ISSN:	1063-6692, 1558-2566
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Abstract	Thanks to its computational and forwarding capabilities, the mobile network infrastructure can support several third-party ("vertical") services, each composed of a graph of virtual (network) functions (VNFs). Importantly, one or more VNFs are often common to multiple services, thus the services deployment cost could be reduced by letting the services share the same VNF instance instead of devoting a separate instance to each service. By doing that, however, it is critical that the target KPI (key performance indicators) of all services are met. To this end, we study the VNF sharing problem and make decisions on 1) when sharing VNFs among multiple services is possible, 2) how to adapt the virtual machines running the shared VNFs to the combined load of the assigned services, and 3) how to prioritize the services traffic within shared VNFs. All decisions aim to minimize the cost for the mobile operator, subject to requirements on end-to-end service performance, e.g., total delay. Notably, we show that the aforementioned priorities should be managed dynamically and vary across VNFs. We then propose the FlexShare algorithm to provide near-optimal VNF-sharing and priority assignment decisions in polynomial time. We prove that FlexShare is within a constant factor from the optimum and, using real-world VNF graphs, we show that it consistently outperforms baseline solutions.
AbstractList	Thanks to its computational and forwarding capabilities, the mobile network infrastructure can support several third-party ("vertical") services, each composed of a graph of virtual (network) functions (VNFs). Importantly, one or more VNFs are often common to multiple services, thus the services deployment cost could be reduced by letting the services share the same VNF instance instead of devoting a separate instance to each service. By doing that, however, it is critical that the target KPI (key performance indicators) of all services are met. To this end, we study the VNF sharing problem and make decisions on 1) when sharing VNFs among multiple services is possible, 2) how to adapt the virtual machines running the shared VNFs to the combined load of the assigned services, and 3) how to prioritize the services traffic within shared VNFs. All decisions aim to minimize the cost for the mobile operator, subject to requirements on end-to-end service performance, e.g., total delay. Notably, we show that the aforementioned priorities should be managed dynamically and vary across VNFs. We then propose the FlexShare algorithm to provide near-optimal VNF-sharing and priority assignment decisions in polynomial time. We prove that FlexShare is within a constant factor from the optimum and, using real-world VNF graphs, we show that it consistently outperforms baseline solutions.
Author	Malandrino, Francesco Chiasserini, Carla Fabiana Scalosub, Gabriel Einziger, Gil
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Snippet	Thanks to its computational and forwarding capabilities, the mobile network infrastructure can support several third-party ("vertical") services, each composed... Thanks to its computational and forwarding capabilities, the mobile network infrastructure can support several third-party (“vertical”) services, each composed...
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SubjectTerms	5G mobile communication Algorithms Decisions Delays IEEE transactions Key performance indicator Network function virtualization Network function virtualization (NFV) Optimization Polynomials resource allocation Transcoding Virtual environments Virtual machining Wireless networks
Title	Reducing Service Deployment Cost Through VNF Sharing
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