Reliable and efficient deployment for virtual network functions

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising technique aimed at reducing capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenditures (OPEX), and improving the flexibility and scalability of an entire network. However, this emerging technique has some challenges. A major problem is reliability, which involves ensuring the availability of deployed SFCs, namely, the probability of successfully chaining a series of big-data-based virtual network functions (VNFs) while considering both the feasibility and the specific requirements of clients, because the substrate network remains vulnerable to earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters. Based on the premise of users’ demands for SFC requirements, we present an Ensure Reliability Cost Saving (ER_CS) algorithm to reduce the CAPEX and OPEX of telecommunication service providers (TSPs) by reducing the reliability of the SFC deployments. We employ big-data-based arbitrary topologies as the substrate network. The results of extensive experiments indicate that the proposed algorithms perform efficiently in terms of the blocking ratio, resource consumption and time consumption.