Finedge: A Dynamic Cost-Efficient Edge Resource Management Platform for NFV Network

Abstract

With the evolution of network function virtualization (NFV) and edge computing, software-based network functions (NFs) can be deployed on closer-to-end-user edge servers to support a broad range of new services with high bandwidth and low latency. However, due to the resource limitation, strict QoS requirements and real-time flow fluctuations in edge network, existing cloud-based resource management strategy in NFV platforms is inefficient to be applied to the edge. Thus, we propose Finedge, $a$ dynamic, fine-grained and cost-efficient edge resource management platform for NFV network. First, we conduct empirical experiments to find out the effect of NFs' resource allocation and their flow-level characteristics on performance. Then, by jointly considering these factors and QoS requirements (e.g., latency and packet loss rate), Finedge can automatically assign the most suitable CPU core and tune the most cost-efficient CPU quota to each NF. Finedge is also implemented with some key strategies including real-time flow monitoring, elastic resource scaling up and down, and also flexible NF migration among cores. Through extensive evaluations, we validate that Finedge can efficiently handle heterogeneous flows with the lowest CPU quota and the highest SLA satisfaction rate as compared with the default OS scheduler and other state-of-the-art resource management schemes.