Abstract
Network function virtualization enables the 'softwarization' of network functions, which are implemented on virtual machines hosted on commercial off-the-shelf servers. Both the composition of the virtual network functions into a forwarding graph (FG) at the logical layer and the embedding of the FG on the servers need to consider the less-than-carrier-grade reliability of COTS components. This letter investigates the tradeoff between end-to-end reliability and computational load per server via the joint design of VNF chain composition (CC) and FG embedding (FGE) under the assumption of a bipartite FG that consists of a controller and regular VNFs. Evaluating the reliability criterion within a probabilistic model, analytical insights are first provided for a simplified disconnected FG. Then, a block coordinate descent method based on mixed-integer linear programming is proposed to tackle the joint optimization of CC and FGE. Via simulation results, it is observed that a joint design of CC and FGE leads to substantial performance gains compared with separate optimization approaches.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7911307 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1767-1770 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | IEEE Communications Letters |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2017 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Modeling and Simulation
- Computer Science Applications
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Keywords
- Network function virtualization (NFV)
- reliability
- resource allocation
- virtual network function (VNF)