Scalable Architecture for Service Function Chain Orchestration

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) enables to implement network functions in software, high-speed packet processing functions which traditionally are dominated by hardware implementations. Virtualized Network Functions (NFs) may be deployed on generic-purpose servers, e.g., in datacenters. The latter enables flexibility and scalability which previously were only possible for web services deployed on cloud platforms. The merit of NFV is challenged by control challenges related to the selection of NF implementations, discovery and reservation of sufficient network and server resources, and interconnecting both in a way which ful fills SLAs related to reliability and scalability. This paper details the role of a scalable orchestrator in charge of finding and reserving adequate resources. The latter will steer network and cloud control and management platforms to actually reserve and deploy requested services. We highlight the role of involved interfaces, propose elements of algorithmic components, and will identify major blocks in orchestration time in a proof of concept prototype which accounts for most functional parts in the considered architecture. Based on these evaluations, we propose several architectural enhancements in order to implement a highly scalable network orchestrator for carrier and cloud networks.