Resource Optimization and Traffic-Aware VNF Placement in NFV-Enabled Networks

Abstract

Although network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising approach for providing elastic network functions, it faces several challenges. A critical but difficult issue for the service and network providers is deciding where to instantiate a list of virtual network functions (VNFs), namely VNF placement problem. In this paper, we investigate the VNF placement, for the purpose of resource and network traffic consumption minimization. Moreover, we consider the arrival rates of users' requests for different types of service function chains (SFCs). This allows the placement scheme to adapt to users' time-varying requests and improve the network resource utilization. Then we formulate the VNF placement problem as a jointly constrained optimization problem. Afterwards, we propose an approach called joint optimization resource and traffic consumption (JORTC) with enhanced biogeography-based (EBBO) optimization algorithm to resolve the VNF placement problem. Finally, the evaluation results show the effectiveness of J-ORTC approach and performance advancement over the benchmarks.