Single and Multi-Domain Adaptive Allocation Algorithms for VNF Forwarding Graph Embedding
Pham Tran Anh Quang, Abbas Bradai, Kamal Singh, Gauthier Picard, Roberto Riggio · IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management · 2018
Network function virtualization (NFV) will simplify deployment and management of network and telecommunication services. NFV provides flexibility by virtualizing the network functions and moving them to a virtualization platform. In order to achieve its full potential, NFV is being extended to mobile or wireless networks by considering virtualization of radio functions. A typical network service setup requires the allocation of a virtual network function-forwarding graph (VNF-FG). A VNF-FG is allocated considering the resource constraints of the lower infrastructure. This topic has been well-studied in existing literature, however, the effects of variations of networks over time have not been addressed yet. In this paper, we provide a model of the adaptive and dynamic VNF allocation problem considering also VNF migration. Then we formulate the optimization problem as an integer linear programming (ILP) and provide a heuristic algorithm for allocating multiple VNF-FGs. The idea is that VNF-FGs can be reallocated dynamically to obtain the optimal solution over time. First, a centralized optimization approach is proposed to cope with the ILP-resource allocation problem. Next, a decentralized optimization approach is proposed to deal with cooperative multi-operator scenarios. We adopt AD3, an alternating direction method of multipliers-based algorithm, to solve this problem in a distributed way. The results confirm that the proposed algorithms are able to optimize the network utilization, while limiting the number of reallocations of VNFs which could interrupt network services.