Communication cost efficient virtualized network function placement for big data processing

摘要

The data explosion in the emerging big data era imposes a big burden on the network infrastructure. This vision has urged the evolution of computer networks. By softwarizing traditional dedicated hardware based functions to virtualized network function (VNF) that can run on standard commodity servers, network function virtualization (NFV) technology promises increased networking efficiency, flexibility and scalability. From the perspective of network service providers, with the consideration of big data traffic volume, one primary concern is on the communication cost, which is highly influenced by the VNF placement strategy. In this paper, we are motivated to investigate the issue on communication cost efficient VNF placement problem for big data processing, with joint consideration of network flow balancing and the predetermined network service semantics. We formulate this problem into a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) form and then propose a low-complexity relaxation-based heuristic algorithm accordingly. The high efficiency of our proposal is validated by extensive simulation studies.