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The Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions Stuart Clayman 1 Elisa Maini 2 Alex Galis 1 Antonio Manzalini 3 Nicola Mazzocca 2 1 Dept. of Electronic Engineering, University College London, London 2 Department of Electrical Engineering and

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The Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions

Stuart Clayman1 Elisa Maini2 Alex Galis1 Antonio Manzalini3 Nicola Mazzocca2

  • 1Dept. of Electronic Engineering, University College London, London

2Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples

Federico II, Naples

3Telecom Italia Strategy - Future Centre, Turin

May 2014

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 1 / 20

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Introduction

Overview

Introduction Motivation Architecture Validation Results Conclusions

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 2 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

Address the problem of managing highly dynamic network and service environments, where virtual nodes and virtual links are created and destroyed depending on traffic volumes, service requests, or high-level goals such as reduction in energy consumption.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 3 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

Address the problem of managing highly dynamic network and service environments, where virtual nodes and virtual links are created and destroyed depending on traffic volumes, service requests, or high-level goals such as reduction in energy consumption. Emerging paradigms such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NfV) are concrete steps towards infrastructures where network functions and services will be executed as applications in ensembles of virtual machines hosted in pervasive standard hardware resources located across a network.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 3 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

Address the problem of managing highly dynamic network and service environments, where virtual nodes and virtual links are created and destroyed depending on traffic volumes, service requests, or high-level goals such as reduction in energy consumption. Emerging paradigms such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NfV) are concrete steps towards infrastructures where network functions and services will be executed as applications in ensembles of virtual machines hosted in pervasive standard hardware resources located across a network. The focus here is the dynamic management and orchestration of virtual networks (VNs), with particular attention paid to placement of these virtual resources. The physical resources will be shared by multiple virtual networks which are independent of each other and are allocated to different customers of the network.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 3 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

In order to manage these virtual elements and infrastructures there is a need to introduce high-level systems orchestration.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 4 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

In order to manage these virtual elements and infrastructures there is a need to introduce high-level systems orchestration. Need an architecture for an orchestrater that ensures the automatic placement of the virtual nodes and the allocation of network services

  • n them, supported by a monitoring system that collects and reports
  • n the behaviour of the resources.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 4 / 20

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SLIDE 8

Introduction

Introduction

In order to manage these virtual elements and infrastructures there is a need to introduce high-level systems orchestration. Need an architecture for an orchestrater that ensures the automatic placement of the virtual nodes and the allocation of network services

  • n them, supported by a monitoring system that collects and reports
  • n the behaviour of the resources.

The orchestrater manages the creation and removal of the virtual nodes, as well as configuring, monitoring, running and stopping software on them.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 4 / 20

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Introduction

Introduction

In order to manage these virtual elements and infrastructures there is a need to introduce high-level systems orchestration. Need an architecture for an orchestrater that ensures the automatic placement of the virtual nodes and the allocation of network services

  • n them, supported by a monitoring system that collects and reports
  • n the behaviour of the resources.

The orchestrater manages the creation and removal of the virtual nodes, as well as configuring, monitoring, running and stopping software on them. As a proof of these concepts, a distributed orchestrater prototype has been designed, implemented and tested with the results of different placement algorithms presented.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 4 / 20

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Motivation Evolutionary Edge Networks

Evolutionary Edge Networks

Service Providers and Telecommunication Service Providers will utilize Software Defined Networks and Network Function Virtualisation to improve the quality of the applications for users, to increase business

  • pportunities for both.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 5 / 20

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Motivation Evolutionary Edge Networks

Evolutionary Edge Networks

Service Providers and Telecommunication Service Providers will utilize Software Defined Networks and Network Function Virtualisation to improve the quality of the applications for users, to increase business

  • pportunities for both.

The edges of the networks will be transformed into complex Micro Data Centers consisting of a number of diverse and autonomous, but inter-related nodes, devices, machines: this will create a “complexity” which has to be managed and controlled.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 5 / 20

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Motivation Evolutionary Edge Networks

Evolutionary Edge Networks

Service Providers and Telecommunication Service Providers will utilize Software Defined Networks and Network Function Virtualisation to improve the quality of the applications for users, to increase business

  • pportunities for both.

The edges of the networks will be transformed into complex Micro Data Centers consisting of a number of diverse and autonomous, but inter-related nodes, devices, machines: this will create a “complexity” which has to be managed and controlled. Each deployed virtual network is viewed as a managed network service by the management software. All managed network services are mapped to the available resources which allows users of the network service to access it, just like they would access a physical network service.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 5 / 20

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Motivation Evolutionary Edge Networks

Evolutionary Edge Networks

Evolutionary view of the network.

Dynamic(alloca+on( and(orchestra+on(of( network(func+ons

Data$Center Data$Center

Core Router Core Router Core Router Core Router Micro Data Center Core(Network CPE Fixed(and(Radio( Access(Nodes Edge Networks Micro Data Center Micro Data Center Micro Data Center

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 6 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

From an architectural viewpoint, network functions and services can be defined as a number of software components with their accompanying context, together with configuration parameters.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 7 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

From an architectural viewpoint, network functions and services can be defined as a number of software components with their accompanying context, together with configuration parameters. In general, the provisioning of a service involves the creation of an infrastructure, followed by the installation of all necessary software components into the infrastructure, and finally to configure and start those components.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 7 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

From an architectural viewpoint, network functions and services can be defined as a number of software components with their accompanying context, together with configuration parameters. In general, the provisioning of a service involves the creation of an infrastructure, followed by the installation of all necessary software components into the infrastructure, and finally to configure and start those components. With SDN and NfV these processes can be simplified as the infrastructure provides a platform from which virtual machines can be

  • run. SDNs can be directly manifested as virtual network topologies

which need to be setup, have a managed lifecycle, and need to be shutdown - all under software control.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 7 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

The architecture for the Management and Orchestration has 4 main layers:

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 8 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

The architecture for the Management and Orchestration has 4 main layers: an Application Layer which executes Management Applications that define the software components and network functions of a network service together with their configuration parameters.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 8 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

The architecture for the Management and Orchestration has 4 main layers: an Application Layer which executes Management Applications that define the software components and network functions of a network service together with their configuration parameters. an Orchestration Layer which does most of the management and

  • rchestration and is in charge of managing the full lifecycle of the

virtual routers in the network and the allocation of the applications running on the virtual nodes.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 8 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

The architecture for the Management and Orchestration has 4 main layers: an Application Layer which executes Management Applications that define the software components and network functions of a network service together with their configuration parameters. an Orchestration Layer which does most of the management and

  • rchestration and is in charge of managing the full lifecycle of the

virtual routers in the network and the allocation of the applications running on the virtual nodes. an Abstraction Layer contains a software element which presents an abstraction for starting, stopping, and configurating virtual elements.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 8 / 20

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Architecture

Architecture

The architecture for the Management and Orchestration has 4 main layers: an Application Layer which executes Management Applications that define the software components and network functions of a network service together with their configuration parameters. an Orchestration Layer which does most of the management and

  • rchestration and is in charge of managing the full lifecycle of the

virtual routers in the network and the allocation of the applications running on the virtual nodes. an Abstraction Layer contains a software element which presents an abstraction for starting, stopping, and configurating virtual elements. the Infrastructure Layer contains both the Virtual Infrastructure which represents the virtual resources (i.e. the virtual routers) that make up the virtual networks, and the Data Center Infrastructure which are the physical resources that are the hosts running the VMs.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 8 / 20

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Architecture

Overall System Architecture and Components

Orchestra)on Layer Abstrac)on Layer Infrastructure Layer

Virtual Router Virtual Router Virtual Router

…

Virtual8Infrastructure

Host Host Host Host

…

Monitoring8 Manager Placement Engine Service8 Orchestrator Management Applica)on Management Applica)on Management Applica)on …

Applica)on Layer

Local8Controller8/8Network8Hypervisor Global8Controller

Data8Center8and8Network8Infrastructure Monitoring Data Monitoring Data

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 9 / 20

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Architecture Placement Engine

Placement Engine

The Service Orchestrator is the component in charge of performing the automatic deployment of the function/service as application running on the virtual routers.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 10 / 20

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Architecture Placement Engine

Placement Engine

The Service Orchestrator is the component in charge of performing the automatic deployment of the function/service as application running on the virtual routers. The Placement Engine is the component in charge of performing the actual placement of the virtual routers according to the initial topology and the usage of the virtual network elements.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 10 / 20

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Architecture Placement Engine

Placement Engine

The Service Orchestrator is the component in charge of performing the automatic deployment of the function/service as application running on the virtual routers. The Placement Engine is the component in charge of performing the actual placement of the virtual routers according to the initial topology and the usage of the virtual network elements. It is an important feature because when we configure a network, some

  • f these parameters may change during the course of the system’s
  • peration and a reconfiguration may be required to maintain
  • ptimized collection of information.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 10 / 20

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Architecture Placement Engine

Placement Engine

The Service Orchestrator is the component in charge of performing the automatic deployment of the function/service as application running on the virtual routers. The Placement Engine is the component in charge of performing the actual placement of the virtual routers according to the initial topology and the usage of the virtual network elements. It is an important feature because when we configure a network, some

  • f these parameters may change during the course of the system’s
  • peration and a reconfiguration may be required to maintain
  • ptimized collection of information.

The decision on the Placement Engine is encoded in an algorithm which can be rather simple, such as counting the number of virtual routers on a host, or it can be based on a set of constraints and policies that represent the network properties.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 10 / 20

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Architecture Monitoring Manager

Monitoring Manager

The Monitoring Manager is an important component of the architecture and its monitoring function is a vital part of a full control loop that goes from the Orchestrator, through a control path, to monitoring probes which collect and send data, back to the Orchestrator which makes decisions based on the data. Each virtual router has a probe to monitor the usage of the network resources (e.g. the state congestion of the links). The data provided by the probes is collected by the Monitoring Manager and used by the Orchestrator to create or remove the virtual routers according to the current state of the network.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 11 / 20

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Validation

Validation

A working implementation of the architecture has been created. The experiments used the Very Lightweight Service Platform (VLSP) which has been implemented by UCL for the purpose of testing and evaluating various aspects of SDN and highly dynamic virtual environments. The VLSP testbed consists of a large number of software routers, each running inside JVMs. These virtual routers execute on a smaller number of physical machines. The virtual routers are logically independent software entities which cannot communicate with each

  • ther except via network interfaces.

The testbed has been validated in previous work we have undertaken

  • n virtual networks and highly dynamic networks

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 12 / 20

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Validation

Validation

The testbed set up has three components: i) the main component is the Router itself, which runs inside a JVM; ii) a per-host controller, and iii) a supervisor and experimental controller.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 13 / 20

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Validation

Validation

The testbed set up has three components: i) the main component is the Router itself, which runs inside a JVM; ii) a per-host controller, and iii) a supervisor and experimental controller. The routers are complemented by a lightweight per-host controller called the Local Controller which has the role of sending instructions to start up

  • r shut down routers on the local machine and to inform routers to initiate
  • r tear down connections with other routers.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 13 / 20

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Validation

Validation

Mapping and allocation of elements to hosts

Host Host

Local Controller Local Controller Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Local Controller

Host

Router

Host

Global Controller Placement Engine Monitoring Manager Service Orchestrator

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 14 / 20

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Validation

Validation

Control path to virtual routers and virtual links

Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Router Router

Local Controllers Global Controller Routers

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 15 / 20

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Results

Results

A Placement Engine is the component that encapsulates an algorithm for choosing the best destination to place a new virtual router.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 16 / 20

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Results

Results

A Placement Engine is the component that encapsulates an algorithm for choosing the best destination to place a new virtual router. Placement Engine algorithms can be based on infrastructure metrics

  • r on virtual network metrics. It is possible to write many different

Placement Engines which rely on different metrics and algorithms.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 16 / 20

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Results

Results

A Placement Engine is the component that encapsulates an algorithm for choosing the best destination to place a new virtual router. Placement Engine algorithms can be based on infrastructure metrics

  • r on virtual network metrics. It is possible to write many different

Placement Engines which rely on different metrics and algorithms. The Placement Engine is a configurable module that can be changed as needed according to different placement strategies.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 16 / 20

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Results

Results

A Placement Engine is the component that encapsulates an algorithm for choosing the best destination to place a new virtual router. Placement Engine algorithms can be based on infrastructure metrics

  • r on virtual network metrics. It is possible to write many different

Placement Engines which rely on different metrics and algorithms. The Placement Engine is a configurable module that can be changed as needed according to different placement strategies. The choice as to which Placement Engine to run is dependent on the high-level goals and policies that are set for the whole of the networked system.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 16 / 20

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Results

Results

A Placement Engine is the component that encapsulates an algorithm for choosing the best destination to place a new virtual router. Placement Engine algorithms can be based on infrastructure metrics

  • r on virtual network metrics. It is possible to write many different

Placement Engines which rely on different metrics and algorithms. The Placement Engine is a configurable module that can be changed as needed according to different placement strategies. The choice as to which Placement Engine to run is dependent on the high-level goals and policies that are set for the whole of the networked system. There may be a high-level goal which is “reduce energy consumption”. To satisfy such a goal, the placement engine needs to have an algorithm which places virtual routers ensuring that the least number of physical resources are used. Conversely, a goal could be “balance the load across all physical nodes”.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 16 / 20

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Results

Placement Engine: Least Used

This collects the number of virtual routers allocated to each physical host and chooses the host that has the least number of virtual routers. If more than one host is at the minimum level, then a random host is chosen. This algorithm is a kind of load balancing algorithm as it tries to get a similar number of routers on each host.

5 10 15 20 00:00:00 01:40:22 03:06:34 04:43:21 06:23:03 07:55:24 09:32:34

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 17 / 20

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Results

Placement Engine: N at a time: N = 5

Allocates N routers at a time into a single host. In this run, N = 5. If the number of routers is a factor of N, then the algorithm chooses are different

  • host. When all the hosts are packed with a factor of N, then a random

host is chosen.

5 10 15 20 00:00:00 01:35:26 03:10:21 04:45:45 06:24:24 07:53:57 09:23:49

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 18 / 20

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Results

Placement Engine: Least Busy

It tries to determine the host that is least busy in terms of virtual network

  • traffic. It collects monitoring data from all the the virtual routers in the

virtual network and calculates how much virtual traffic has been sent on each of the hosts. The host that has the lowest amount of traffic since the last placement decision is chosen as the host for the current placement.

5 10 15 20 00:00:00 01:33:25 02:59:18 04:33:14 06:09:27 07:36:37 09:11:00

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 19 / 20

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Conclusions

Conclusions

As a proof of concept, architectural elements have been designed and implemented and some experimental results using the VLSP testbed

  • presented. We have shown how Placement Engines can start different

virtual routers on different physical hosts depending on different factors, such as infrastructure metrics or virtual network metrics.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 20 / 20

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Conclusions

Conclusions

As a proof of concept, architectural elements have been designed and implemented and some experimental results using the VLSP testbed

  • presented. We have shown how Placement Engines can start different

virtual routers on different physical hosts depending on different factors, such as infrastructure metrics or virtual network metrics. The results presented demonstrate that the different embedded algorithms in each of the Placement Engines give very different placement strategies for the virtual routers.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 20 / 20

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Conclusions

Conclusions

As a proof of concept, architectural elements have been designed and implemented and some experimental results using the VLSP testbed

  • presented. We have shown how Placement Engines can start different

virtual routers on different physical hosts depending on different factors, such as infrastructure metrics or virtual network metrics. The results presented demonstrate that the different embedded algorithms in each of the Placement Engines give very different placement strategies for the virtual routers. These placement engines may be able to utilize or share some algorithmic elements from compute cloud placement algorithms.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 20 / 20

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Conclusions

Conclusions

As a proof of concept, architectural elements have been designed and implemented and some experimental results using the VLSP testbed

  • presented. We have shown how Placement Engines can start different

virtual routers on different physical hosts depending on different factors, such as infrastructure metrics or virtual network metrics. The results presented demonstrate that the different embedded algorithms in each of the Placement Engines give very different placement strategies for the virtual routers. These placement engines may be able to utilize or share some algorithmic elements from compute cloud placement algorithms. It is expected that over time the placement algorithms for virtual routers will become more complex and factor-in metrics from both infrastructure and virtual resources, and also to consider placement across multiple data centers.

Stuart Clayman (UCL) Dynamic Placement of Virtual Network Functions May 2014 20 / 20