Parcel-Fit: Low Network-Overhead Service-Chain Deployment for Better Datacenter Performance

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is emerging for service deployment in datacenters and how to efficiently deploying virtual network functions (VNFs) on VMs under SLA requirements is an key topic. Previous studies often overlook the network factor that deteriorates the datacenter performance due to unnecessary network occupation and inter-VM communication in a service function chain over the datacenter network, thus motivating us to develop Parcel-Fit. The concept of Parcel-Fit considers server capacities (i.e., CPU and memory) and network status (i.e. network occupation and server distance) to avoids unnecessary inter-VM communication in the datacenter network and thus minimize total latencies of the service function chain. In addition, Parcel-Fit is also incorporated into prior latency-minimized schemes for deploying service function chains (i.e. Multi-layer Bin Structure and SOVWin) and fulfill more SLA requirements. According to our experimental results, Parcel-Fit outperforms two conventional VM placement strategies (Best-Fit and First-Fit) on the basis of SOVWin/Multilayer Bin Structure by 28.50% less average latency, 24.54% less network occupation, 25.16% more acceptance rate and 72.04% less violation count, achieving better performance for deploying service function chains in datacenters.