Understanding the behavior of the components of service function chains (SFCs) in different load situations is important for efficient and automatic management and orches- tration of services. For this purpose and for practical research in network function virtualization in general, there is a great need for benchmarks and experimental data. In this paper, we describe our experiments for characterizing the relationship between resource demands of virtual network functions (VNFs) and the expected performance of the SFC, considering the individual performance of the VNFs as well as the interdependencies among VNFs within the SFC. We have designed our experiments focusing on video streaming, an important application in this context. We present examples of models for predicting the interdependence between resource demands and performance characteristics of SFCs using support vector regression and polynomial regression models. We also show practical evidence from our experiments that VNFs need to be benchmarked in their final chain setup, rather than individually, to capture important interdependencies that affect their performance. The data gathered from our experiments is publicly available.

Supporting the vast variety of network services’ management and orchestration requirements is one of the main challenges that Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is dealing with. While general management requirements such as Virtual Network Function (VNF) resource requirements can be specified by the service developers using service descriptors, specific management operations like VNF-specific configuration cannot be performed by these descriptors. On the other hand, it is inefficient and also very challenging for Management and Orchestration (MANO) frameworks to provide all specific-management operations for every individual network service and their constituent VNFs. To mitigate this issue, we propose the use of service-specific programs called Specific Managers (SMs) that can customize management and orchestration of network services and also extend the capability of MANO frameworks to support per-service management and orchestration. The results of our evaluation show that the higher flexibility and programmability enabled by SMs improve the performance of the service performance and also utilises the service provider resources more efficiently.

Developing cloud applications using a microservice architecture allows their functional blocks to be distributed and deployed on multiple Cloud infrastructures. This enables service providers to mix and match Cloud-based microservices and Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) that are provided by Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Provisioning complex services containing VNFs and Cloud-based microservices across NFV and cloud infrastructures can enhance service quality, reduce latency, and optimise cost. This can be provided by an orchestration system that can handle cross-ecosystem dependencies. To this end, we implemented Pishahang that is a framework for jointly managing and orchestrating virtual network functions and Cloud-based microservices. During the demo, we deploy several complex services to demonstrate features provided by Pishahang to support management and orchestration of complex services.

Recent studies show the increasing popularity of distributed cloud applications, which are composed of multiple microservices. Besides their known benefits, microservice architecture also enables to mix and match cloud applications and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) services (service chains), which are composed of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Provisioning complex services containing VNFs and microservices in a combined NFV/cloud platform can enhance service quality and optimise cost. Such a platform can be based on the multi-cloud concept. However, current multi-cloud solutions do not support NFV requirements, making them inadequate to support complex services. In this paper, we investigate these challenges and propose a solution for jointly managing and orchestrating microservices and virtual network functions.

Remarkable advantages of Containers (CNs) over Virtual Machines (VMs) such as lower overhead and faster startup has gained the attention of Communication Service Providers (CSPs) as using CNs for providing Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) can save costs while increasing the service agility. However, as it is not feasible to realise all types of VNFs in CNs, the coexistence of VMs and CNs is proposed. To put VMs and CNs together, an orchestration framework that can chain services across distributed and heterogeneous domains is required. To this end, we implemented a framework by extending and consolidating state-of-the-art tools and technologies originated from Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN) and cloud computing environments. This framework chains services provisioned across Kubernetes and OpenStack domains. During the demo, we deploy a service consist of CN- and VM-based VNFs to demonstrate different features provided by our framework.

Despite recent progress in orchestration of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and in multi-technology SDN connectivity, the automated provisioning of end-to-end network services composed of virtual functions deployed across distributed compute locations remains an open challenge. This problem is especially relevant to support the deployment of future 5G networks, comprising virtual access and core network functions connected through a potentially multi-domain transport network. In this paper, we present and demonstrate the 5GOS, a lightweight end-to-end orchestration framework that enables the automated provisioning of virtual radio access network services. Using an experimental multi-domain testbed we demonstrate that the 5GOS can provision multi-domain virtual Wi-Fi and LTE services in less than three minutes.