Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)                               S. Lee
Internet-Draft                                                      ETRI
Intended status: Informational                                   S. Pack
Expires: September 21, 2016                                           KU
                                                               M-K. Shin
                                                                    ETRI
                                                                 E. Paik
                                                                      KT
                                                               R. Browne
                                                                   Intel
                                                          March 20, 2016


                Resource Management in Service Chaining
         draft-irtf-nfvrg-resource-management-service-chain-03

Abstract

   This document specifies problem definition and use cases of NFV
   resource management in service chaining for path optimization,
   traffic optimization, failover, load balancing, etc.  It further
   describes design considerations and relevant framework for the
   resource management capability that dynamically creates and updates
   network forwarding paths (NFPs) considering resource constraints of
   NFV infrastructure.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 21, 2016.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.




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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Resource management in service chain  . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Resource scheduling among network services  . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  Performance guarantee within a service chain  . . . . . .   5
     3.3.  Multiple policies and conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.4.  Dynamic adaptation of service chains  . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  Use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.1.  Fail-over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.2.  Load balancing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.3.  Path optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.4.  Traffic optimization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.5.  Energy efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Evaluation Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.1.  System Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.2.  Objective functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.2.1.  Load balancing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.2.2.  Throughput optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
       5.2.3.  Energy efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   7.  Applicability to SFC  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     7.1.  Related works in IETF SFC WG  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     7.2.  Integration in SFC control-plane architecture . . . . . .  13
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   10. Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   11. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     11.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     11.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17








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1.  Introduction

   Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) [ETSI-NFV-WHITE] offers a new
   way to design, deploy and manage network services.  The network
   service can be composed of one or more network functions and NFV
   relocates the network functions from dedicated hardware appliances to
   generic servers, so they can run in software.  Using these
   virtualized network functions (VNFs), one or more VNF forwarding
   graphs (VNF-FGs; a.k.a. service chains) can be associated to the
   network service, each of which describes a network connectivity
   topology, by referencing VNFs and Virtual Links that connect them.
   One or more network forwarding paths (NFPs) can be built on top of
   such a topology, each defining an ordered sequence of VNFs and
   Virtual Links to be traversed by traffic flows matching certain
   criteria.

   The network service is instantiated by allocating NFVI resources for
   VNFs and VLs which constitute the VNF-FGs.  Thus, the capacity and
   performance of the network service depends on the state and
   attributes of the network resources used for its VNF and VL
   instances.  While this brings a similar problem to the VM placement
   optimization in a cloud computing environment, it differs as one or
   more VNF instances are interconnected for a single network service.
   For example, if one of the VNF instances in the VNF-FG gets failed or
   overloaded, the whole network service also gets affected.  Thus, the
   VNF instances need to be carefully placed during NS instantiation
   considering their connectivity within NFPs.  They also need to be
   monitored and dynamically migrated or scaled at run-time to adapt to
   changes in the resources.

   The resource management problem in VNF-FGs matters not only to the
   performance and capacity of network services but also to the
   optimized use of NFVI resources.  For example, if processing and
   bandwidth burden converges on the VNF instances placed in a specific
   NFVI-PoP, it may result in scalability problem of the NFV
   infrastructure.  Thus care is encouraged to be taken in distributing
   load across local and external VNF instances at run-time.

   This document addresses resource management problem in service
   chaining to optimize the NS performance and NFVI resource usage.  It
   provides the relevant use cases of the resource management such as
   traffic optimization, failover, load balancing and further describes
   design considerations and relevant framework for the resource
   management capability that dynamically creates and updates NFP
   instances considering NFVI resource states for VNF instances and VL
   instances.





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   Note that this document mainly focuses on the resource management
   capability based on the ETSI NFV framework [ETSI-NFV-ARCH] but also
   studies contribution points to the work for control plane of SFC
   architecture [I-D.ietf-sfc-architecture]
   [I-D.ietf-sfc-control-plane].


2.  Terminology

   This document uses the following terms and most of them were
   reproduced from [ETSI-NFV-TERM].

   o  Network Functions (NF): A functional building block within a
      network infrastructure, which has well-defined external interfaces
      and a well-defined functional behavior.

   o  Network service: A composition of network functions and defined by
      its functional and behavioural specification.

   o  NFV Framework: The totality of all entities, reference points,
      information models and other constructs defined by the
      specifications published by the ETSI ISG NFV.

   o  Virtualised Network Function (VNF): An implementation of an NF
      that can be deployed on a Network Function Virtualisation
      Infrastructure (NFVI).

   o  NFV Infrastructure (NFVI): The NFV-Infrastructure is the totality
      of all hardware and software components which build up the
      environment in which VNFs are deployed.

   o  NFVI-PoP: A location or point of presence that hosts NFV
      infrastructure

   o  VNF Forwarding Graph (VNF-FG): A NF forwarding graph where at
      least one node is a VNF.

   o  Network Forwarding Path (NFP): The sequence of hardware/software
      switching ports and operations in the NFV network infrastructure
      as configured by management and orchestration that implements a
      logical VNF forwarding graph "link" connecting VNF "node" logical
      interfaces.

   o  Virtual Link: A set of connection points along with the
      connectivity relationship between them and any associated target
      performance metrics (e.g. bandwidth, latency, QoS).  The Virtual
      Link can interconnect two or more entities (e.g., VNF components,
      VNFs, or PNFs).



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3.  Resource management in service chain

   This section addresses several issues for considerations in NFV
   resource management of service chain.

3.1.  Resource scheduling among network services

   In the NFV framework, network services are realized with NS
   instantiation procedures at which virtualized NFVI resources are
   assigned to the VNFs and VLs which constitute VNF-FGs of the network
   service.  The NFVI resources are placed and located along the VNF-FG
   by NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) dynamically according to:

   o  Resource availability,

   o  Deployment templates which define resource requirements of NS
      instances and VNF instances to support KPIs (e.g., capacity and
      performance) of the network service, and

   o  Resource policies which define how to govern NFVI resources for NS
      instances and VNF instances (e.g., affinity/anti-affinity rules,
      scaling, and fault management) to support an efficient use of NFVI
      resources as well as KPIs of the network service.

   In order to satisfy the deployment templates and resource policies,
   VNF-FGs of the network services need to be built by considering the
   state of NFVI resources for VNF instances (e.g., availability,
   throughput, load, disk usage) and VL instances (e.g., bandwidth,
   delay, delay variation, packet loss).

   However, since the NFVI resources are shared by different network
   services and their deployment constraints are very different from
   each other, it is required to carefully schedule the NFVI resources
   for multiple network services to optimize their KPIs.

3.2.  Performance guarantee within a service chain

   In NFV, a network service is composed of one or more virtualized
   network functions which are connected via virtual links along NFPs
   specified for a traffic flow for the network service.  Thus, the
   performance of a network service is determined by the performance and
   capability of a coupling of VNF instances and VL instances.  For
   example, if one of the VNF instances or VL instances of an NFP gets
   failed or overloaded, the whole network service also gets affected.
   Thus, the VNF instances need to be carefully placed during NS
   instantiation considering their connectivity within NFPs.





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   This performance coupling can be handled by considering deployment
   rules for affinity/anti-affinity, geography, or topological locations
   of VNFs; and QoS of virtual links.

   Another important factor for virtual links is the inter-connectivity
   between different NFVI-PoPs, which is an enabler of resource sharing
   among different NFVI-PoPs.  When the VNF instances of a network
   service are allocated at different NFVI-PoPs, the NFVI-PoP
   interconnect may be a bottleneck point which needs to be monitored to
   support KPIs of the service chain.

3.3.  Multiple policies and conflicts

   The NFVI resources for a network service should be allocated and
   managed according to a NS policy given in the network service
   descriptor (NSD), which describes how to govern NFVI resources for
   VNF instances and VL instances to support KPIs of the network
   service.  The examples of NS policy are affinity/anti-affinity,
   scaling, fault and performance, geography, regulatory rules, NS
   topology, etc.  Since network services may have different NS policies
   for their own deployment and performance, this may cause resource
   management difficult within the shared NFVI resources.

   For network-wide (or NS-wide) resource management, NFVI policy (or
   network policy) can be also provided.  It may describe the resource
   management policy for optimized use of infrastructure resources
   rather than the performance of a single network service.  The
   examples of NFVI policy are NFVI resource access control, reservation
   and/or allocation policies, placement optimization based on affinity
   and/or anti-affinity rules, geography and/or regulatory rules,
   resource usage, etc.

   Multiple administrative domains or subsystems may have different NFVI
   policies so that it may bring some conflicts when enforcing them in a
   global infrastructure.  There could be a similar problem among NS
   policies and NFVI policies.

   Note that the similar topics are being studied in
   [I-D.irtf-nfvrg-nfv-policy-arch]

3.4.  Dynamic adaptation of service chains

   The performance and capability of NFVI resources may vary in time due
   to different uses and management policies of the resources.  If some
   changes in the resources make the service quality unacceptable, the
   VNF instances can be scaled according to the given auto-scaling
   policies.  But it's only for local quality of the VNF.




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   In order to provide optimized KPIs to network services, the NFP
   instances need to dynamically adapt to the changes of the resource
   state at run-time.  The performance of the whole NFP instance should
   be measured by monitoring the resource state of VNF instances and VL
   instances.  Based on the monitoring results, some VNF instances may
   be determined and relocated at different virtualized resources with
   better performance and capabilities.

4.  Use cases

   In this section, several (but not exhausted) use cases for resource
   management in service chaining are provided: fail-over, load
   balancing, path optimization, traffic optimization, and energy
   efficiency.

4.1.  Fail-over

   For service continuity, failure of a VNF instance needs to be
   detected and the failed one needs to be replaced with the other one
   which is available to use as per redundancy policy.  Figure 1
   presents an example of the fail-over use case.  A network service is
   defined as a chain of VNF-A and VNF-B; and the service chain is
   instantiated with VNF-A1 and VNF-B1 which are instances of VNF-A and
   VNF-B, respectively.  In the meantime, failure of VNF-B1 is detected
   so that VNF-B2 replaces the failed one for fail-over of the NFP.


                   +--------+                        +--------+
                   | VNF-B2 |                       #| VNF-B2 |###
      +--------+   +--------+           +--------+ # +--------+
   ###| VNF-A1 |       _|_           ###| VNF-A1 |#      _|_
      +--------+      (___)             +--------+      (___)
     ___/    #       /     \      \    ___/            /     \
    (___)+---#------+       +   ===}  (___)+----------+       +
             #       \ ___ /      /                    \ ___ /
             #        (___)                             (___)
             #          |                                 |
             #     +--------+                        +--------+
             ######| VNF-B1 |###        (failure)--> | VNF-B1 |
                   +--------+                        +--------+

   ### NFP


                      Figure 1: A fail-over use case

   The above is in the case where there is a 1+1 or 1:N redundancy
   scheme.  In event that VNF instance overloads before NFVO has time to



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   scale out, or when resources do not permit a scale-out then we can
   route the service chain deterministically to a remote VNF instance.
   This adaptation may be revertive or non-revertive dependent on
   service provider policy and resource availability.

4.2.  Load balancing

   A single VNF instance may be a bottleneck point of a service chain
   due to its overload.  It may affect the performance of the whole
   service chain consequently so that an NFP instance needs to be built
   to avoid bottleneck points or maintained to distribute workloads of
   overloaded VNF instances.

   With NFVI-PoP Interconnect, service chains can be balanced between
   NFVI-PoPs in a way that best utilises NFV infrastructure and ensures
   service integrity.  The wide area conditions can be monitored in
   real-time to provide KPIs, such as BW, delay, delay variation and
   packet loss per QoS class to the service chaining application which
   may enable use of external VNF instances when there is an overload or
   failure condition in the local NFVI-PoP.  In this way the service
   chaining application can make a service chain reroute decision (in
   the event of failure and/or overload) that is network and platform-
   aware.  The service chaining application understands the state of
   external VNFs and WAN conditions per QoS class between the local
   NFVI-PoP and remote NFVI-PoP in real-time.

4.3.  Path optimization

   Traffic for a network service traverses all of the VNF instances and
   the connecting VL instances given by a NFP instance to reach a target
   end point.  Thus, quality of the network service depends on the
   resource constraints (e.g., processing power, bandwidth, topological
   locations, latency) of VNF instances, VL instances including NFVI-PoP
   interconnects.  In order to optimize the path of the network service,
   the resource constraints of VNF instances and VLs need to be
   considered at constructing NFPs.  Since the resource state may vary
   in time during the service, NFP instances also need to adapt to the
   changes of resource constraints of the VNF instances and VL instances
   by monitoring and replacing them at run-time.

4.4.  Traffic optimization

   A network operator may provide multiple network services with
   different VNF-FGs and different flows of traffic traverse between
   source and destination end-points along the VNF-FGs.  For efficiency
   of resource usage, the NFP instances need to be built by default to
   localize the traffic flows and to avoid processing and network
   bottlenecks.  It is only in the case of local failure or overload



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   (whereby the NFVO is unable or has not completed a scale-out of on-
   site resources) that NFP instances would be constructed between NFVI-
   PoPs.  In this case, multiple VNF instances of different NFVI-PoPs
   need to be considered together at constructing a new NFP instance or
   adapting one.

4.5.  Energy efficiency

   Energy efficiency in the network is getting important to reduce
   impact on the environment so that energy consumption of VNF instances
   using NFVI resources (e.g., compute, storage, I/O) needs to be
   considered at NFP instantiation or adaptation.  For example, a NFP
   can be instantiated as to make traffic flows aggregated into a
   limited number of VNF instances as much as its performance is
   preserved in a certain level.  Policy may vary between centralized or
   distributed NFV applications, and could include policies for even
   energy distribution between sites, time-of-day etc.

5.  Evaluation Model

   To derive specific algorithms for use cases discussed in Section 4,
   an evaluation model for a service chain (or a NFP) needs to be
   developed, which can address two problems for a given network
   topology and input parameters (e.g., VL/VNF capacity, incoming
   traffic flows, etc.) : 1) how much traffic flows pass on each VL
   instance and 2) how much processing capacity is needed for the
   installed VNF instance.  This section first describes the system
   model and then presents main objectives for the evaluation model.

5.1.  System Model

   The system model considers the following network topology.  The
   network topology under consideration is composed of start/end points
   and multiple NFVI-PoPs where multiple VNF instances locate.  On the
   other hand, VL instances inter-connect VNF instances in NFVI-PoPs.

   Start and end points are incoming and outgoing points of traffic flow
   for a given network service, respectively.  Specifically, the amount
   of incoming traffic flows for a network service (i.e., a VNF-FG) at
   the start point is given as an input parameter in the model.

   Under the network topology, the network traffic is processed by one
   or more VNF instances and delivered via VL instances.  Thus, the VNF
   processing capacity can be defined as the maximum amount of traffic
   flows that a VNF instance can process according to the resource
   allocation policies defined in its deployment template.  The VL
   capacity can be also defined as the maximum amount of traffic flows




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   that can pass on a VL instance according to the resource allocation
   policies defined in the deployment template.

   In NFV, traffic flows for a VNF-FG should be processed according to
   the VNF order described in the given VNF-FG.  Accordingly, traffic
   flows at the start point should not be processed by any VNF.
   Meanwhile, traffic flows at the end point should be processed by all
   VNFs specified in the given VNF-FG.

   In a given VNF-FG, VNFs should be individually placed on multiple
   NFVI-PoPs.  Therefore, a decision variable, VNF placement indicator
   function (VPIF), is defined as:

   o  VNF placement indicator function (VPIF): indicator function (i.e.,
      0 or 1) to represent the location (i.e., a NFVI-PoP) where the VNF
      instance is placed.

   Intuitively, the amount of traffic flows that pass a VL instance
   should not exceed the VL capacity to avoid any overload at the VL
   instance.  Likewise, the amount of incoming traffic flows to a VNF
   instance should not exceed the VNF processing capacity.  (These
   constraints will be covered in the following paragraphs) Therefore,
   traffic flows for a network service (i.e., a VNF-FG) should be
   distributed to multiple NFPs depending on resource and capacity
   constraints for VNF and VL instances.  Moreover, multiple network
   services can be supported by distributing traffic flows for each
   network service.  Therefore, another decision variable, traffic flow
   ratio (TFR), is defined as:

   o  Traffic flow ratio (TFR): the ratio of the traffic flows
      distributed to each NFP.  Therefore, the amount of traffic flows
      that passes on each NFP is the product of TFR and the amount of
      incoming traffic flows for a network service.  Note that TFR and
      the amount of incoming traffic flows can be computed by measuring
      the amount of traffic flows that passes on each VL.

   The constraints regarding the amount of network traffic and capacity
   of VNF and VL instances can be specified as follows.

   o  Network traffic conservation constraints: In the VNF-FG system
      model, the amount of network traffic should be conserved within a
      VNF-FG.  That is, 1) the amount of incoming network traffic to a
      VNF instance should be equal (more or less in case of packet
      manipulation) to the amount of outgoing network traffic from the
      VNF instance; and 2) the amount of incoming network traffic to a
      VNF instance should not exceed the flow rate of the corresponding
      NFP which can be determined by TFR.




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   o  Network traffic processing order constraints: As defined in the
      VNF-FG, the network traffic can be processed by a VNF instance
      only after being processed by the preceding VNF instances along
      the NFP.  Similarly, the incoming network traffic to a NFP should
      be firstly processed by the VNF instance which is located at the
      ingress point of the NFP; and the outgoing network traffic from a
      NFP should be the result of processing by every VNF instance in
      the order defined by the NFP.

   o  Link and processing capacity constraints: The amount of incoming
      network traffic to a VL instance should not exceed the given link
      capacity of the VL to avoid any congestion at the link.  Likewise,
      the amount of incoming network traffic to a VNF instance should
      not exceed the processing capacity of the VNF.

   This system model can be exploited to obtain the optimal solutions of
   network resource (i.e., VNF and VL instances) placement for network
   resource usage, network service throughput, and so on.  This
   optimization problem can be solved, for example with linear
   programming (LP), by defining different objective functions.

5.2.  Objective functions

   In the evaluation model, three objectives are considered including,
   but not limited to, 1) load balancing, 2) flow throughput
   maximization, and 3) energy efficiency.

5.2.1.  Load balancing

   For load balancing for a network service, the remaining capacity for
   VNF instances and VL instances should be balanced to avoid any
   bottlenecks.  To this end, the minimum remaining processing capacity
   for VNF instances and the minimum remaining link capacity for VL
   instances should be maximized.

5.2.2.  Throughput optimization

   On the other hand, the flow throughput considers both throughputs for
   VNF processing and for VL instance.  Then, the throughput of an NFP
   can be calculated as the product of TFR and the sum of capacities,
   and the total throughput is the sum of computed throughputs for all
   NFPs.  By maximizing the total flow throughput, it is possible to
   reduce the network service time.








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5.2.3.  Energy efficiency

   Since each VNF instance consumes an amount of energy for processing
   its function and transmitting/receiving traffic flows across VL
   instances, the energy consumption for each VNF instance should be
   minimized for energy efficiency of network services.  Detailed model
   is under construction.

6.  Framework

   To support the aforementioned use cases, it is required to support
   resource management capability which provides service chain (or NFP)
   construction and adaptation by considering resource state or
   constraints of VNF instances and VL instances which connect them.
   The resource management operations for service chain construction and
   adaptation can be divided into several sub-actions:

   o  Locate VNF instances

   o  Evaluate the performance of VNF instances and VL instances

   o  Relocate (or scale) VNF instances to update a NFP instance

   o  Monitor state or resource constraints of a VNF instance, VL
      instances including NFVI-PoP interconnects

   As listed above, VNF instances are relocated according to monitoring
   or evaluation results of performance metrics of the VNF instances and
   VL instances.  Studies about evaluation methodologies and performance
   metrics for VNF instances and NFVI resources can be found at
   [ETSI-NFV-PER001] [I-D.liu-bmwg-virtual-network-benchmark]
   [I-D.ietf-bmwg-virtual-net].  The performance metrics of VNF
   instances and VL instances specific to service chain construction and
   adaptation can be defined as follows:

   o  availability (or failure) of a VNF instance and a VL instance

   o  a topological location of a VNF instance

   o  CPU and memory utilization rate of a VNF instance

   o  a throughput of a VNF instance

   o  energy consumption of a VNF instance

   o  bandwidth of a VL instance

   o  packet loss of a VL instance



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   o  latency of a VL instance

   o  delay variation of a VL instance

   The resource management functionality for dynamic service chain
   adaptation takes role of NFV orchestration with support of VNF
   manager (VNFM) and Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM) in the
   NFV framework [ETSI-NFV-ARCH].  Detailed functional building block
   and interfaces are still under study.

7.  Applicability to SFC

7.1.  Related works in IETF SFC WG

   IETF SFC WG provides a new service deployment model that delivers the
   traffic along the predefined logical paths of service functions
   (SFs), called service function chains (SFCs) with no regard of
   network topologies or transport mechanisms.  Basic concept of the
   service function chaining is similar to VNF-FG where a network
   service is composed of SFs and deployed by making traffic flows
   traversed instances of the SFs in a pre-defined order.

   There are several works in progress in IETF SFC WG for resource
   management of service chaining.  [I-D.ietf-sfc-architecture] defines
   SFC control plane that selects specific SFs for a requested SFC,
   either statically or dynamically but details are currently outside
   the scope of the document.  There are other works
   [I-D.ietf-sfc-control-plane] [I-D.lee-sfc-dynamic-instantiation]
   [I-D.krishnan-sfc-oam-req-framework] [I-D.ietf-sfc-oam-framework]
   which define the control plane functionality for service function
   chain construction and adaptation but details are still under study.
   While [I-D.dunbar-sfc-fun-instances-restoration] and
   [I-D.meng-sfc-chain-redundancy] provide detailed mechanisms of
   service chain adaptation, they focus only on resilience or fail-over
   of service function chains.

7.2.  Integration in SFC control-plane architecture

   In SFC WG, [I-D.ietf-sfc-control-plane] describes requirements for
   conveying information between Service Function Chaining (SFC) control
   elements (including management components) and SFC functional
   elements.  It also identifies a set of control interfaces to interact
   with SFC-aware elements to establish, maintain or recover service
   function chains.







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                   +----------------------------------------------+
                   |                                              |
                   |       SFC  Control & Management Planes       |
           +-------|                                              |
           |       |                                              |
           C1      +------^-----------^-------------^-------------+
    +---------------------|C3---------|-------------|-------------+
    |      |            +----+        |             |             |
    |      |            | SF |        |C2           |C2           |
    |      |            +----+        |             |             |
    | +----V--- --+       |           |             |             |
    | |   SFC     |     +----+      +-|--+        +----+          |
    | |Classifier |---->|SFF |----->|SFF |------->|SFF |          |
    | |   Node    |<----|    |<-----|    |<-------|    |          |
    | +-----------+     +----+      +----+        +----+          |
    |                     |           |              |            |
    |                     |C2      -------           |            |
    |                     |       |       |     +-----------+ C4  |
    |                     V     +----+ +----+   | SFC Proxy |-->  |
    |                           | SF | |SF  |   +-----------+     |
    |                           +----+ +----+                     |
    |                             |C3    |C3                      |
    |  SFC Data Plane Components  V      V                        |
    +-------------------------------------------------------------+


                   Figure 2: SFC control plane overview

   The service chain adaptation addressed in this document may be
   integrated into the SFC Control & Management Planes and may use the
   C2 and C4 interfaces for monitoring or collecting the resource
   constraints of VNF instances, NFVI-PoP interconnects and VL
   instances.

   To prevent constant integration between the application and probing
   functions we would propose a 3-tier architecture per NFVI-PoP.

   o  Top level application control at the SFC Control & Management
      Planes

   o  An abstraction layer between the application layer and the probing
      layer.  This would decouple NFVI and link monitoring methods from
      the application layer

   o  A probing layer that monitors VNF, physical and virtual link
      resources





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   Note that SFC does not assume that Service Functions are virtualized.
   Thus, the parameters of resource constraints may differ, and it needs
   further study for integration.

8.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

9.  IANA Considerations

   TBD.

10.  Contributors

   In addition to the authors, the following individuals contributed to
   the content.

   Insun Jang
   Korea University
   zerantoss@korea.ac.kr

11.  References

11.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

11.2.  Informative References

   [ETSI-NFV-ARCH]
              ETSI, "ETSI NFV Architectural Framework v1.1.1", October
              2013.

   [ETSI-NFV-MANO]
              ETSI, "Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management
              and Orchestration V0.6.3", October 2014.

   [ETSI-NFV-PER001]
              ETSI, "Network Function Virtualization: Performance and
              Portability Best Practices v1.1.1", June 2014.

   [ETSI-NFV-TERM]
              ETSI, "NFV Terminology for Main Concepts in NFV", October
              2013.




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   [ETSI-NFV-WHITE]
              ETSI, "NFV Whitepaper 2", October 2013.

   [I-D.dunbar-sfc-fun-instances-restoration]
              Dunbar, L. and A. Malis, "Framework for Service Function
              Instances Restoration", draft-dunbar-sfc-fun-instances-
              restoration-00 (work in progress), April 2014.

   [I-D.ietf-bmwg-virtual-net]
              Morton, A., "Considerations for Benchmarking Virtual
              Network Functions and Their Infrastructure", draft-ietf-
              bmwg-virtual-net-01 (work in progress), September 2015.

   [I-D.ietf-sfc-architecture]
              Halpern, J. and C. Pignataro, "Service Function Chaining
              (SFC) Architecture", draft-ietf-sfc-architecture-11 (work
              in progress), July 2015.

   [I-D.ietf-sfc-control-plane]
              Li, H., Wu, Q., Huang, O., Boucadair, M., Jacquenet, C.,
              Haeffner, W., Lee, S., Parker, R., Dunbar, L., Malis, A.,
              Halpern, J., Reddy, T., and P. Patil, "Service Function
              Chaining (SFC) Control Plane Components & Requirements",
              draft-ietf-sfc-control-plane-03 (work in progress),
              January 2016.

   [I-D.ietf-sfc-oam-framework]
              Aldrin, S., Krishnan, R., Akiya, N., Pignataro, C., and A.
              Ghanwani, "Service Function Chaining Operation,
              Administration and Maintenance Framework", draft-ietf-sfc-
              oam-framework-01 (work in progress), February 2016.

   [I-D.irtf-nfvrg-nfv-policy-arch]
              Figueira, N., Krishnan, R., Lopez, D., Wright, S., and D.
              Krishnaswamy, "Policy Architecture and Framework for NFV
              Infrastructures", draft-irtf-nfvrg-nfv-policy-arch-03
              (work in progress), March 2016.

   [I-D.krishnan-sfc-oam-req-framework]
              Krishnan, R., Ghanwani, A., Gutierrez, P., Lopez, D.,
              Halpern, J., Kini, S., and A. Reid, "SFC OAM Requirements
              and Framework", draft-krishnan-sfc-oam-req-framework-00
              (work in progress), July 2014.

   [I-D.lee-sfc-dynamic-instantiation]
              Lee, S., Pack, S., Shin, M., and E. Paik, "SFC dynamic
              instantiation", draft-lee-sfc-dynamic-instantiation-01
              (work in progress), October 2014.



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   [I-D.liu-bmwg-virtual-network-benchmark]
              Liu, V., Liu, D., Mandeville, B., Hickman, B., and G.
              Zhang, "Benchmarking Methodology for Virtualization
              Network Performance", draft-liu-bmwg-virtual-network-
              benchmark-00 (work in progress), July 2014.

   [I-D.meng-sfc-chain-redundancy]
              Meng, W. and C. Wang, "Redundancy Mechanism for Service
              Function Chains", draft-meng-sfc-chain-redundancy-02 (work
              in progress), October 2015.

   [Jang-2016]
              Jang, I., Choo, S., Kim, M., Pack, S., and M. Shin,
              "Optimal Network Resource Utilization in Service Function
              Chaining", IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization
              (NetSoft) (To be publushed), June 2016.

Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Sukjin Choo and Myeongsu Kim for the
   review and comments.

Authors' Addresses

   Seungik Lee
   ETRI
   218 Gajeong-ro Yuseung-Gu
   Daejeon  305-700
   Korea

   Phone: +82 42 860 1483
   Email: seungiklee@etri.re.kr


   Sangheon Pack
   Korea University
   145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu
   Seoul  136-701
   Korea

   Phone: +82 2 3290 4825
   Email: shpack@korea.ac.kr









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   Myung-Ki Shin
   ETRI
   218 Gajeong-ro Yuseung-Gu
   Daejeon  305-700
   Korea

   Phone: +82 42 860 4847
   Email: mkshin@etri.re.kr


   EunKyoung Paik
   KT
   17 Woomyeon-dong, Seocho-gu
   Seoul  137-792
   Korea

   Phone: +82 2 526 5233
   Email: eun.paik@kt.com


   Rory Browne
   Intel
   Dromore House, East Park
   Shannon, Co. Clare
   Ireland

   Phone: +353 61 477400
   Email: rory.browne@intel.com























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