A review on Virtualized Infrastructure Managers with management and orchestration features in NFV architecture

Abstract

Nowadays, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a growing and powerful technology in the research community and IT world. Traditional computer networks consist of hardware appliances such as firewalls and load balancers, called middleboxes. The implementation of these hardware devices is a difficult task due to their proprietary nature. NFV proposes an alternative way to design and deploy network functions called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) on top of the commercial hardware by leveraging virtualization technology. NFV offers many advantages such as flexibility, agility, reduced capital and operational expenditure over the traditional network architecture. With the emergence of VNF, NFV needs to add new features regarding life-cycle management and end-to-end orchestration of VNFs. To fulfill this demand, NFV introduced the NFV-MANO framework for the management and orchestration of VNFs and provide network services to users. The NFV-MANO consists of NFV Orchestrator (NFVO), VNF Manager (VNFM), and Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM). This paper provides a comprehensive overview of Virtualized Infrastructure Managers with NFV orchestration and VNF Management for implementing Service Function Chain (SFC) in NFV architecture. Further, this study critically analyzes relevant research articles and proposes a taxonomy to select an appropriate VIM based on Emulation, Virtualization, Containerization, and Hybrid environment for reliable SFC provisioning. Finally, various use cases have been identified for selecting particular VIM according to the requirements of the application.