Tier Based Virtual Network Function Chaining Design

摘要

Techniques described herein may be used to condense a large quantity of Virtual Network Function (VNF) chains (that each correspond to a network service) into a much smaller quantity of VNF records; and extract any of the large quantity of VNF chains from the smaller quantity of network service records. This may be accomplished by assigning a Number (No.) of Services attribute and a Tier attribute into each VNF record. The No. of Services attribute and Tier attribute may enable the VNF records to reference one another such that the largeer quantity of VNF chains may, in effect, be entirely represented by the much smaller quantity of VNF records, thereby conserving storage space, streamlining VNF chain management, and reducing the processing and memory capacity required to search, configure, and deploy virtual network services.