Need for a transport aPI in 5G for global orchestration of cloud and networks through a virtualized infrastructure manager and planner [invited]

The new 5G paradigm seeks for a scalable architecture that is able to efficiently manage the increasing volume of traffic generated by smart devices to be processed in a distributed cloud infrastructure. To this end, coordinated management of the network and the cloud resources forming an end-to-end system is of great importance. Software defined networking and network function virtualization architectures are the key enablers for integrating network and cloud resources, enabling cross optimization on both sides. This optimization requires efficient resource allocation algorithms, which take into account computing and network resources. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end orchestration architecture for distributed cloud and network resources aligned with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute management and orchestration architecture. The proposed architecture includes the virtual infrastructure manager and planner (VIMaP) component to enable dynamic resource allocation for interconnected virtual instances in distributed cloud locations. A heuristic algorithm for dynamic virtual machine graphs resource allocation is included to validate the VIMaP architecture and exploit its functionalities. Moreover, the control orchestration protocol is included between the architecture components to offer end-to-end transport services. Finally, the proposed architecture is experimentally validated, and the heuristic algorithm performance is evaluated.