Energy-Efficient Provisioning for Service Function Chains to Support Delay-Sensitive Applications in Network Function Virtualization

• The efficient deployment of virtual network functions (VNFs) for network service provisioning is key for achieving network function virtualization (NFV); however, most existing studies address only offline or one-off deployments of service function chains (SFCs) while neglecting the dynamic (i.e., online) deployment and expansion requirements. In particular, many methods of energy/resource cost reduction are achieved by merging VNFs. However, the energy waste and device wear for large-scale collections of servers (e.g., cloud networks and data centers) caused by sporadic request updating are ignored. To solve these problems, we propose an energy-aware routing and adaptive delayed shutdown (EAR-ADS) algorithm for dynamic SFC deployment, which includes the following features. 1) Energy-aware routing (EAR): By considering a practical deployment environment, a flexible solution is developed based on reusing open servers and selecting paths with the aims of balancing energy and resources and minimizing the total cost. 2) Adaptive delayed shutdown (ADS): The delayed shutdown time of the servers can be flexibly adjusted in accordance with the usage of each device in each time slot, thus eliminating the no-load wait time of the servers and frequent on/off switching. Therefore, EAR-ADS can achieve dual energy savings by both decreasing the number of open servers and reducing the idle/switching energy consumption of these servers. Simulation results show that EAR-ADS not only minimizes the cost of energy and resources but also achieves an excellent success rate and stability. Moreover, EAR-ADS is efficient compared with an improved Markov algorithm (SAMA), reducing the average deployment time by more than a factor of 40.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Medieteknik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Media and Communication Technology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Energy efficient

Service function chain

Network function virtualization

Dynamic deployment

Pervasive Mobile Computing

Distribuerade datorsystem

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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