ESSO: An Energy Smart Service Function Chain Orchestrator

Abstract

The rapid development of technologies such as photo-intensive social networks, on-demand video streaming, online gaming, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is causing a tremendous growth of traffic volume. Such large-scale expansion is leading to higher energy consumption and carbon footprint for the telecommunication industry. Governments are trying to minimize the environmental impact by introducing regulations and taxes; driving companies to use renewable energy. However, renewable energy is still not as cost-effective compared to traditional sources of energy ( i.e. , brown energy), and their availability varies significantly across time and geographic locations. Therefore, it is a challenge for telecommunication companies to comply with regulations and minimize carbon footprint without significantly increasing their operational cost. In this context, we propose an Energy Smart Service Function Chain Orchestrator called ESSO. ESSO reduces the overall carbon footprint of a telecommunication network by opportunistically adapting Service Function Chain (SFC) locations to utilize more energy at locations with surplus renewable energy. ESSO minimizes brown energy consumption by migrating SFCs across different locations. In addition, ESSO provisions SFC components in a manner that allows switches, switch ports, and servers to be put into low-power consumption state. Our trace-driven simulations on real ISP topologies show that considering the availability of renewable energy sources during SFC embedding even for a small-scale network can result in 2- $3\times $ reduction in carbon footprint.