Hybrid reconfiguration strategy for optimize service cost in NFV environment

Abstract

When using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technology, the deployment of Virtual Network Function (VNF) is dynamic and fast. The time-varying nature of service requests from users requires the resource allocation of the underlying infrastructure to be flexible in response to changes. If only horizontal scaling is used to dynamically add or delete virtual machine (VM) copies, it will lead to over-provisioning of some unnecessary resources and high reconfiguration costs, so how to effectively use the reconfiguration method to reduce resource consumption and reducing the corresponding reconfiguration cost is challenging. Therefore, this paper adopts a Hybrid Reconfiguration Strategy (HRS) that jointly considers horizontal scaling and vertical scaling to reduce the resource consumption and reconfiguration cost of VNF deployment, and establishes a corresponding integer linear programming model. Experimental results show that compared with existing methods, the total cost can be reduced, while ensuring a higher acceptance rate of service requests.