Joint Dynamical VNF Placement and SFC Routing in NFV-Enabled SDNs

Abstract

Due to that Service Function Chain (SFC) permits the forwarding of flows along a predetermined sequence chain of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), it has become a common service in Network Function Virtualization (NFV)-enabled Software Defined Networks (SDNs). Generally, since there are multiple same VNF-instances in NFV-Enabled SDNs, this brings a great challenge for selecting or placing the required VNF-instances to satisfy the routing of SFC Request flows (SRs). In this paper, we study the routing problem for SRs by jointly considering dynamical VNF placement and multiple Resources and Quality of Service (QoS) constraints in NFV-Enabled SDNs. Specifically, we first define two optimization problems: one is the Dynamical VNF Placement and Routing Problem for SRs (DVPRP) and the other is the Delay, packet Loss and Jitter Aware Dynamical VNF Placement and Routing Problem for SRs (DLJA-DVPRP). We then formulate the two problems as Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problems. Next, we creatively devise an auxiliary edge-weight graph and propose two efficient algorithms to solve the problems with the aim of minimizing the resource consumption costs as well as ensuring multiple QoS constraints. Especially, we utilize the shortest path algorithm based on Lagrange relaxation method to solve the DLJA-DVPRP with multiple QoS constraints. Compared with existing algorithms, simulation results demonstrate our proposed algorithms have better performance in terms of throughput, traffic acceptance rate and load balance.