With the increasing acceptance of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies, a radical transformation is currently occurring inside network providers infrastructures. The trend of Software-based networks foreseen with the 5th Generation of Mobile Network (5G) is drastically changing requirements in terms of how networks are deployed and managed. One of the major changes requires the transaction towards a distributed infrastructure, in which nodes are built with standard commodity hardware. This rapid deployment of datacenters is paving the way towards a different type of environment in which the computational resources are deployed up to the edge of the network, referred to as Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes. However, MEC nodes do not usually provide enough resources for executing standard virtualization technologies typically used in large datacenters. For this reason, software containerization represents a lightweight and viable virtualization alternative for such scenarios. This paper presents an architecture based on the Open Baton Management and Orchestration (MANO) framework combining different infrastructural technologies supporting the deployment of container-based network services even at the edge of the network.

With the rapid migration towards Software-based Networks, Telco Operators are modifying their traditional network infrastructures in order to reduce the complexity in managing Network Services (NS). Being able to cope with on-demand traffic increase is one of the key principles taken from the Cloud Computing domain and extended to the Telco one by the ETSI Network Function Virtualization (NFV) initiative. However, due to the novelty of this paradigm in the Telco domain, the landscape of fully-interoperable frameworks is rather limited and even more complex is their extensibility for supporting new functionalities. None of the existing solutions nowadays provide mechanisms for dynamically adapt the NS topology based on their Runtime Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), supporting the requirements requested by the ETSI NFV specification. Therefore, this article presents an Autoscaling Engine (AE) capable of dynamically adapting a NS based on policies provided by the Operator and integrated in the ETSI NFV information model. Its design has been realized considering the NFV requirements, and has been integrated in the ETSI NFV Architecture as additional functional element. Its implementation is part of an existing NFV-compliant framework, Open Baton, and made available to the community as open source. An evaluation of the implemented concept shows that the proposed solution increases the reliability, stability and resource efficiency of NSs

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Service Function Chaining (SFC) serves the traffic of a specific service along an ordered set of Service Functions (SFs). SFC uses Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies to reach the deployment and removal of SFC in an appropriate time with minimal costs. However, during the life time of deployed SFCs, the SFs are exposed to the risk of overloading, which results in an end-to-end packets drop and high delay at the application level. This paper presents the concept of a Scalable SFC Orchestrator capable of deploying SF Chains following the ETSI NFV architectural model, as well as orchestrating the runtime phase by rerouting the traffic to a different path in case of overload of certain SF instances. Moreover, a selection algorithm is presented to build the updated paths after scaling. The Scalable Orchestration feature is implemented and added as a main feature to an SFC Orchestrator. Furthermore, it is integrated into a current NFV architecture and evaluated in an NFV environment making use of the Fraunhofer FOKUS Open Baton toolkit in an OpenStack and Open Daylight based environment

Service Function Chaining (SFC) defines the concept of linking ordered Service Functions (SFs) through network technologies to support specific application requirements. SFC exploits Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies to achieve the creation, modification and deletion of SFC in a cost efficient and rapid way. However, during the runtime phase, SFs are exposed to the risk of failures, which results in an end-to-end failure at the application level. For this reason, this paper introduces the concept of a resilient SFC Orchestrator capable of deploying SF Chains following the ETSI NFV architectural model, as well as controlling the runtime phase rerouting the traffic to a different path in case of appearing faults. Furthermore, the concept is exemplified as an addition to the current NFV architecture and evaluated in a NFV environment making use of the Fraunhofer FOKUS Open Baton toolkit in an OpenStack and OpenDayLight based environment. Finally, the measured results show that the Service Function Path (SFP), and therefore their provided services, can be recovered in a few seconds