Towards a dynamic adaptive placement of virtual network functions under ONAP

In the context of the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), we develop in this paper a resource allocation strategy for deploying Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) on distributed data centers. For this purpose, we rely on a three-level data center hierarchy exploiting co-location facilities available within Main and Core Central Offices. We precisely propose an active VNFs' placement strategy, which dynamically offload requests on the basis of the load observed within a data center. We compare via simulations the performance of the proposed solution against mechanisms so far proposed in the literature, notably the centralized approach of the multi-site project within OpenStack, currently adopted by ONAP. It turns out that the proposed algorithm yields better performance in terms of both data center occupancy and overhead. Furthermore, it allows extending the applicability of ONAP in the context of distributed cloud, without requiring any modification.