Application Component Placement in NFV-based Hybrid Cloud/Fog Systems

Abstract

Applications are sets of interacting components that can be executed in sequence, in parallel, or by using more complex constructs such as selections and loops. They can, therefore, be modeled as structured graphs with substructures consisting of these constructs. Fog computing can reduce the latency induced by distant clouds by enabling the deployment of some components at the edge of the network (i.e., closer to end-devices) while keeping others in the cloud. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) decouples software from hardware and enables an agile deployment of network services and applications as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). In NFV settings, efficient placement algorithms are required to map the structured graphs representing the VNF Forwarding Graphs (VNF-FGs) onto the infrastructure of the hybrid cloud/fog system. Only deterministic graphs with sequence and parallel substructures have been considered thus to date. However, several real-life applications do require non-deterministic graphs with sub-structures as selections and loops. This paper focuses on application component placement in NFVbased hybrid cloud/fog systems, with the assumption that the graph representing the application is non-deterministic. The objective is to minimize an aggregated weighted function of makespan and cost. The problem is modeled as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and evaluated over small-scale scenarios using the CPLEX optimization tool.

Delay-Aware SFC Provisioning in Hybrid Fog-Cloud Computing Architectures

“…Additionally, an application component placement in NFV-based HFC architecture is presented in [20] and [21]. Placement decisions are determined from an ILP solver to achieve cost minimization.…”

Computation Offloading Optimization Based on Probabilistic SFC for Mobile Online Gaming in Heterogeneous Network

“…Node cost is the sum of CPU/GPU cost and instantiation cost. The instantiation cost depends on the number of instances [15].…”

“…In order to reduce CAPEX and OPEX of the fog computing system for operators, network function virtualization (NFV) is regarded as a promising solution which makes flexible utilization of network and computation resources [8], [13]- [15]. NFV reduces OPEX and CAPEX by migrating Network Functions (NFs) from dedicated hardware appliances to software instances running on general purpose servers [14].…”

“…The undeterminate SFCs are for uncertain requests, i.e. for the current function, the next function requested is uncertain [15].…”

“…As a case of the undeterministic structure, the IoT application for autonomous driving is considered whose SFC depends on the component execution [15]. The application is executed in sequence, in parallel, or by using more complex substructures such as selections and loops which introduce uncertainty in the execution.…”