Joint VNF Scheduling and Deployment: A Dynamic Scenario

Abstract

This paper introduces heuristic approaches to solve the joint VNF deployment and scheduling problem in a dynamic scenario. We formulate the problem with an integer linear programming model, and introduce three heuristic approaches to solve the problem. We define an objective to maximize the ratio of delay-satisfied requests while minimize the average resource cost for a dynamic scenario. Our introduced two greedy approaches are named finish time greedy and computational resource greedy, respectively. In the finish time greedy approach, we make each request be finished as soon as possible despite of its resource cost; in the computational resource greedy approach, we make each request occupy as few resources as possible despite of its finish time. Our introduced simulated annealing approach generates feasible solutions randomly and converges to an approximate solution. We use a simulated environment to evaluate the performances of our introduced approaches. The numerical results show that the introduced simulated annealing approach has the best performance in terms of benefit in our examined case.