One document matched: draft-unify-nfvrg-challenges-01.xml


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<rfc category="info" ipr="trust200902" docName="draft-unify-nfvrg-challenges-01">
  <front>
    <title abbrev="UNIFY Challenges">Unifying Carrier and Cloud Networks: Problem Statement and Challenges</title>

    <author fullname="Robert Szabo" initials="R." surname="Szabo">
    <organization abbrev="Ericsson">Ericsson Research, Hungary</organization>
    <address>
		<postal>
			<street>Irinyi Jozsef u. 4-20</street>
			<city>Budapest</city>
			<region></region>
			<code>1117</code>
			<country>Hungary</country>
		</postal>
	<email>robert.szabo@ericsson.com</email>
	<uri>http://www.ericsson.com/</uri>
	</address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Andras Csaszar" initials="A." surname="Csaszar">
    <organization abbrev="Ericsson">Ericsson Research, Hungary</organization>
    <address>
		<postal>
			<street>Irinyi Jozsef u. 4-20</street>
			<city>Budapest</city>
			<region></region>
			<code>1117</code>
			<country>Hungary</country>
		</postal>
	<email>andras.csaszar@ericsson.com</email>
	<uri>http://www.ericsson.com/</uri>
	</address>
    </author>

	<author fullname="Kostas Pentikousis" initials="K.P." surname="Pentikousis">
	<organization abbrev="EICT">EICT GmbH</organization>
	<address>
		<postal>
			<street>EUREF-Campus Haus 13</street>
			<street>Torgauer Strasse 12-15</street>
			<city>10829 Berlin</city>
			<country>Germany</country>
		</postal>
	<email>k.pentikousis@eict.de</email>
	</address>
	</author>

	<author fullname="Mario Kind" initials="M." surname="Kind">
	<organization abbrev="Deutsche Telekom AG">Deutsche Telekom AG</organization>
	<address>
		<postal>
			<street>Winterfeldtstr. 21</street>
			<city>10781 Berlin</city>
			<country>Germany</country>
		</postal>
	<email>mario.kind@telekom.de</email>
	</address>
	</author>

	<author fullname="Diego Daino" initials="D." surname="Daino">
	<organization abbrev="Telecom Italia">Telecom Italia</organization>
	<address>
		<postal>
			<street>Via Guglielmo Reiss Romoli 274</street>
			<city>10148 Turin</city>
			<country>Italy</country>
		</postal>
	<email>diego.daino@telecomitalia.ite</email>
	</address>
	</author>

    <author fullname="Zu Qiang" initials="Z." surname="Qiang">
      <organization abbrev="Ericsson">Ericsson</organization>
      <address>
	<postal>
	  <street>8400, boul. Decarie</street>
	  <city>Ville Mont-Royal</city>
	  <region>QC</region>
	  <code>8400</code>
	  <country>Canada</country>
	</postal>
	<email>zu.qiang@ericsson.com</email>
	<uri>http://www.ericsson.com/</uri>
      </address>
    </author>

    <author fullname="Hagen Woesner" initials="H." surname="Woesner">
      <organization abbrev="BISDN">BISDN</organization>
      <address>
	<postal>
	  <street>Körnerstr. 7-10</street>
	  <city>Berlin</city>
	  <code>10785</code>
	  <country>Germany</country>
	</postal>
	<email>hagen.woesner@bisdn.de</email>
	<uri>http://www.bisdn.de</uri>
      </address>
    </author>

    <date year="2015" />

    <area>IRTF</area>
    <workgroup>NFVRG</workgroup>

    <keyword>Internet-Draft</keyword>

	<abstract>
	<t>The introduction of network and service functionality
	virtualization in carrier-grade networks promises improved
	operations in terms of flexibility, efficiency, and
	manageability. In current practice, virtualization is
	controlled through orchestrator entities that expose
	programmable interfaces according to the underlying resource
	types. Typically this means the adoption of, on the one hand, established data
	center compute/storage and, on the other, network control APIs which were
	originally developed in isolation. Arguably, the possibility
	for innovation highly depends on the capabilities and openness
	of the aforementioned interfaces. This document introduces in
	simple terms the problems arising when one follows this
	approach and motivates the need for a high level of
	programmability beyond policy and service descriptions. This
	document also summarizes the challenges related to
	orchestration programming in this unified cloud and carrier
	network production environment.</t>
    </abstract>
  </front>

  <middle>
    <section title="Introduction" anchor="intro">

    <t>To a large degree there is agreement in the network research,
	practitioner, and standardization communities that rigid
	network control limits the flexibility and manageability of
	speedy service creation, as discussed in <xref target="NSC" /> and the
	references therein. For instance, it is not
	unusual that today an average service creation time cycle exceeds 90
	hours, whereas given the recent advances in virtualization and
	cloudification one would be interested in service creation
	times in the order of minutes <xref target="EU-5GPPP-Contract" />
	if not seconds.</t>

	<t>Flexible service definition and creation start by
	formalizing the service into the concept of network function
	forwarding graphs, such as the ETSI VNF Forwarding Graph
	<xref target="ETSI-NFV-Arch"/> or the ongoing work in IETF
	<xref target="I-D.ietf-sfc-problem-statement" />. These graphs
	represent the way in which service end-points (e.g.,
	customer access) are interconnected with a set of selected network
	functionalities such as firewalls, load balancers, and so on,
	to deliver a network service. Service graph representations
	form the input for the management and orchestration to
	instantiate and configure the requested service. For example, ETSI defined
	a Management and Orchestration (MANO) framework in
	<xref target="ETSI-NFV-MANO"/>. We note that throughout such a
	management and orchestration framework different abstractions
	may appear for separation of concerns, roles or functionality,
	or for information hiding.</t>

    <t>Compute virtualization is central to the concept of Network Function Virtualization (NFV).
	However, carrier-grade services demand that all components of
	the data path, such as Network Functions (NFs), virtual NFs (VNFs) and virtual links, meet key performance
	requirements.  In this context, the inclusion of Data Center
	(DC) platforms, such as OpenStack <xref target="OpenStack"/>,
	into the SDN infrastructure is far from trivial.</t>

	<t>In this document we examine the problems arising as one
	combines these two formerly isolated environments in an effort
	to create a unified production environment and discuss the
	associated emerging challenges. Our goal is the definition of
	a production environment that allows multi-vendor and
	multi-domain operation based on open and interoperable
	implementations of the key entities described in the remainder
	of this document.</t>

	</section>

    <section title="Terms and Definitions" anchor="terms">

    <t>We use the term compute and "compute and storage"
      interchangeably throughout the document. Moreover, we use the
      following definitions, as established in
      <xref target="ETSI-NFV-Arch"/>:</t>

	<t><list style="hanging">
	    <t hangText="NFV:">Network Function Virtualization - The
	      principle of separating network functions from the
	      hardware they run on by using virtual hardware
	      abstraction.</t>

	    <t hangText="NFVI PoP:">NFV Infrastructure Point of
	      Presence - Any combination of virtualized compute,
	      storage and network resources.</t>

	    <t hangText="NFVI:">NFV Infrastructure - Collection of
	      NFVI PoPs under one orchestrator.</t>


	    <t hangText="VNF:">Virtualized Network Function -
	    a software-based network function.</t>

	    <t hangText="VNF FG:">Virtualized Network Function
	    Forwarding Graph - an ordered list of VNFs creating a
	    service chain.</t>

	    <t hangText="MANO:">Management and Orchestration - In the
	      ETSI NFV framework <xref target="ETSI-NFV-MANO"/>, this
	      is the global entity responsible for management and
	      orchestration of NFV lifecycle.</t>
		</list></t>

	<t>Further, we make use of the following terms:</t>
	<t><list style="hanging">
	    <t hangText="NF:">a network function, either software-based
	      (VNF) or appliance-based.</t>

	    <t hangText="SW:">a (routing/switching) network element
	      with a programmable control plane interface.</t>

	    <t hangText="DC:"> a data center network element which in
	      addition to a programmable control plane interface
	      offers a DC control interface</t>

	    <t hangText="LSI:">Logical Switch Instance - a software
	      switch instance.</t>
	  </list></t>

      </section>

    <section anchor="motivation" title="Motivations">

    <t><xref target="fig_service_graph"/> illustrates a simple service
    graph comprising three network functions (NFs).  For the sake of
    simplicity, we will assume only two types of infrastructure
    resources, namely SWs and DCs as per the terminology introduced
    above, and ignore appliance-based NFs for the time being.  The
    goal is to implement the given service based on the available
    infrastructure resources.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_service_graph" align="center" title="Service graph">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[

            fr2  +---+ fr3
            +->o-|NF2|-o-+
            |  4 +---+ 5 |
      +---+ |            V +---+
1-->o-|NF1|-o----------->o-|NF3|-o-->8
    2 +---+ 3     fr1    6 +---+ 7
	
]]></artwork>
	</figure>

	<t>The service graph definition contains NF types (NF1, NF2, NF3) along with the

	<list style="symbols">
		<t>corresponding ports (NF1:{2,3}; NF2:{4,5}; NF3:{6,7})</t>
		<t>service access points {1,8} corresponding to infrastructure resources,</t>
		<t>definition of forwarding behavior (fr1, fr2, fr3)</t>
	</list>

	The forwarding behavior contains classifications for matching
	of traffic flows and corresponding outbound forwarding
	actions.</t>

	<t>Assume now that we would like to use the infrastructure
	(topology, network and software resources) depicted in
	<xref target="fig_infrastructure"/> and
	<xref target="fig_pop-dc"/> to implement the aforementioned
	service graph. That is, we have three SWs and two Points of
	Presence (PoPs) with DC software resources at our
	disposal.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_infrastructure" align="center" title="Infrastructure resources">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[

                   +---+
                +--|SW3|--+
                |  +---+  |
    +---+       |         |      +---+
 1  |PoP|    +---+      +---+    |PoP|  8
 o--|DC1|----|SW2|------|SW4 |---|DC2|--o
    +---+    +---+      +---+    +---+

[---SP1---][--------SP2-------][---SP3----]
]]></artwork>
</figure>

<figure anchor="fig_pop-dc" align="center" title="A
	virtualized Point of Presence (PoP) with software resources
	(Compute Node - CN)">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[

   +----------+
   |  +----+  |PoP DC (== NFVI PoP)
   |  | CN |  |
   |  +----+  |
   |   |  |   |
   |  +----+  |
 o-+--| SW |--+-o
   |  +----+  |
   +----------+
   
]]></artwork>
</figure>

	<t>In the simplest case, all resources would be part of the
	same service provider (SP) domain. We need to ensure that each
	entity in <xref target="fig_infrastructure"/> can be procured
	from a different vendor and therefore interoperability is key
	for multi-vendor NFVI deployment. Without such
	interoperability different technologies for data center and
	network operation result in distinct technology domains within
	a single carrier. Multi-technology barriers start to emerge
	hindering the full programmability of the NFVI and limiting
	the potential for rapid service deployment.</t>

	<t>We are also interested in a
	multi-operation environment, where the roles and
	responsibilities are distributed according to some
	organizational structure within the organization. Finally,
	we are interested in multi-provider environment, where
	different infrastructure resources are available from
	different service providers (SPs). <xref target="fig_infrastructure"/> indicates a
	multi-provider environment in the lower part of the figure as
	an example.  We expect that this type of deployments will
	become more common in the future as they are well suited with
	the elasticity and flexibility requirements <xref target="NSC"
	/>.</t>

	<t><xref target="fig_infrastructure"/> also shows the service
	access points corresponding to the overarching domain view,
	i.e., {1,8}. In order to deploy the service graph of
	<xref target="fig_service_graph"/> on the infrastructure
	resources of <xref target="fig_infrastructure"/>, we will need
	an appropriate mapping which can be implemented in
	practice. In <xref target="fig_ro-mapping"/> we illustrate a
	resource orchestrator (RO) as a functional entity whose task
	is to map the service graph to the infrastructure resources
	under some service constraints and taking into account the NF
	resource descriptions.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_ro-mapping" align="center" title="Resource Orchestrator: information base, inputs and output">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[

            fr2  +---+  fr3
            +->o-|NF2|-o-+
            |  4 +---+ 5 |
      +---+ |            V +---+
1-->o-|NF1|-o----------->o-|NF3|-o-->8
    2 +---+ 3     fr1    6 +---+ 7

                     ||
                     ||
 +--------+          \/        SP0
 |   NF   |   +---------------------+
 |Resource|==>|Resource Orchestrator|==> MAPPING
 | Descr. |   |      (RO)           |
 +--------+   +---------------------+
                     /\
                     ||
                     ||

                   +---+
                +--|SW3|--+
                |  +---+  |
    +---+       |         |      +---+
 1  |PoP|     +---+     +---+    |PoP|  8
 o--|DC1|-----|SW2|-----|SW4|----|DC2|--o
    +---+     +---+     +---+    +---+

[---SP1---][--------SP2-------][---SP3----]
[-------------------SP0-------------------]
]]></artwork>
	</figure>

	<t>NF resource descriptions are assumed to contain information
	necessary to map NF types to a choice of instantiable VNF
	flavor or a selection of an already deployed NF appliance and
	networking demands for different operational policies. For
	example, if energy efficiency is to be considered during the
	decision process then information related to energy
	consumption of different NF flavors under different conditions
	(e.g., network load) should be included in the resource
	description.</t>

	<t>Note that we also introduce a new service provider (SP0)
	which effectively operates on top of the virtualized
	infrastructure offered by SP1, SP2 and SP3.</t>

	<t>In order for the RO to execute the resource mapping (which
	in general is a hard problem) it needs to operate on the
	combined control plane illustrated in
	<xref target="fig_ro-ctrls"/>. In this figure we mark clearly
	that the interfaces to the compute (DC) control plane and the
	SDN (SW) control plane are distinct and implemented through
	different interfaces/APIs. For example, Ic1 could be the
	Apache CloudStack API, while Ic2 could be a control plane
	protocol such as ForCES or OpenFlow
	<xref target="I-D.irtf-sdnrg-layer-terminology" />. In this
	case, the orchestrator at SP0 (top part of the figure) needs
	to maintain a tight coordination across this range of
	interfaces.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_ro-ctrls" align="center" title="The RO Control Plane view. Control plane interfaces are indicated with (line) arrows. Data plane connections are indicated with simple lines.">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[
                 +---------+
                 |Orchestr.|
                 |   SP0   |
            _____+---------+_____
           /          |          \
          /           V Ic2       \
         |       +---------+       |
     Ic1 V       |SDN Ctrl |       V  Ic3
+---------+      |   SP2   |      +---------+
|Comp Ctrl|      +---------+      |Comp Ctrl|
|  SP1    |        /  |  \        |   SP3   |
+---------+    +---   V   ----+   +---------+
     |         |    +----+    |         |
     |         |    |SW3 |    |         |
     V         |    +----+    |         V
    +----+     V   /      \   V     +----+
 1  |PoP |    +----+      +----+    |PoP |  8
 o--|DC1 |----|SW2 |------|SW4 |----|DC2 |--o
    +----+    +----+      +----+    +----+

[----SP1---][---------SP2--------][---SP3----]
[---------------------SP0--------------------]
]]></artwork>
	</figure>

	<t>In the real-world, however, orchestration operations do not
	stop, for example, at the DC1 level as depicted in
	<xref target="fig_ro-ctrls"/>. If we (so-to-speak) "zoom into"
	DC1 we will see a similar pattern and the need to coordinate
	SW and DC resources within DC1 as illustrated in
	<xref target="fig_dc"/>. As depicted, this edge PoP includes
	compute nodes (CNs) and SWs which in most of the cases will
	also contain an internal topology.</t>

	<t>In <xref target="fig_dc"/>, IcA is an interface similar to
	Ic2 in <xref target="fig_ro-ctrls"/>, while IcB could be, for
	example, OpenStack Nova or similar. The Northbound Interface
	(NBI) to the Compute Controller can use Ic1 or Ic3 as shown in
	<xref target="fig_ro-ctrls"/>.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_dc" align="center" title="PoP DC Network with Compute Nodes (CN)">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[
             NBI
              |
         +---------+
         |Comp Ctrl|
         +---------+
       +----+     |
   IcA V          | IcB:to CNs
+---------+       V
|SDN Ctrl |    |          |  ext port
+---------+  +---+      +---+
  to|SW      |SW |      |SW |
    +->     ,+--++.._  _+-+-+
    V    ,-"   _|,,`.""-..+
       _,,,--"" |    `.   |""-.._
  +---+      +--++     `+-+-+    ""+---+
  |SW |      |SW |      |SW |      |SW |
  +---+    ,'+---+    ,'+---+    ,'+---+
  |   | ,-"  |   | ,-"  |   | ,-"  |   |
+--+ +--+  +--+ +--+  +--+ +--+  +--+ +--+
|CN| |CN|  |CN| |CN|  |CN| |CN|  |CN| |CN|
+--+ +--+  +--+ +--+  +--+ +--+  +--+ +--+

]]></artwork>
	</figure>

  <t>In turn, each single Compute Node (CN) may also have
  internal switching resources (see <xref target="fig_cn"/>). In a
  carrier environment, in order to meet data path requirements,
  allocation of compute node internal distributed resources (blades,
  CPU cores, etc.) may become equivalently important.</t>

	<figure anchor="fig_cn" align="center" title="Compute Node with internal switching resource">
	<artwork align="center"><![CDATA[
+-+  +-+ +-+  +-+
|V|  |V| |V|  |V|
|N|  |N| |N|  |N|
|F|  |F| |F|  |F|
+-+  +-+ +-+  +-+
|   /   /       |
+---+ +---+ +---+
|LSI| |LSI| |LSI|
+---+ +---+ +---+
  |  /        |
+---+       +---+
|NIC|       |NIC|
+---+       +---+
  |           |

]]></artwork>
  </figure>
    </section>

<section anchor="problem" title="Problem Statement">

  <t>The motivational examples of <xref target="motivation" />
    illustrate that compute virtualization implicitly involves network
    virtualization. On the other hand, if one starts with an SDN
    network and adds compute resources to network elements, then
    compute resources must be assigned to some virtualized network
    resources if offered to clients.  That is, we observe that compute
    virtualization is implicitly associated with network
    virtualization. Furthermore, virtualization leads to recursions
    with clients (redefining and) reselling resources and services
    <xref target="I-D.huang-sfc-use-case-recursive-service"/>. </t>

  <t>We argue that given the multi-level virtualization of compute,
    storage and network domains, automation of the corresponding
    resource provisioning needs a recursive programmatic
    interface. The current separated compute and network programming
    interfaces cannot provide such recursions and cannot satisfy key
    requirements for multi-vendor, multi-technology and multi-provider
    interoperability environments.  Therefore we foresee the necessity
    of a recursive programmatic interface for joint compute, storage
    and network provisioning.</t>


</section>

<section anchor="sec-challenges" title="Challenges">

  <t>We summarize in this section the key questions and challenges,
   which we hope will initiate further discussions in the NFVRG
   community.</t>


  <section anchor="sec:chal-orch" title="Orchestration">
    <t>Firstly, as motivated in <xref target="motivation"/>,
      orchestrating networking resources appears to have a recursive
      nature at different levels of the hierarchy.  Would a
      programmatic interface at the combined compute and network
      abstraction better support this recursive and constraint-based
      resource allocation?
    </t>

    <t>Secondly, can such a joint compute, storage and network
      programmatic interface allow an automated resource orchestration
      similar to the recursive SDN architecture
      <xref target="ONF-SDN-ARCH"/>?
    </t>
  </section>


  <section anchor="sec:chal-res-descr" title="Resource description">
   <t>Prerequisite for joint placement decisions of compute, storage
   and network is the adequate description of available
   resources. This means that the interfaces (IcA, IcB etc. in
   <xref target="fig_ro-ctrls"/> and <xref target="fig_dc"/>) are of
   bidirectional nature, exposing resources as well as reserving.
   There have been manifold attempts to create frameworks for resource
   description, most prominently RDF of W3C, NDL, the GENI RPC and its
   concept of Aggregate Managers, ONF's TTP and many more.</t>

   <t>Quite naturally, all attempts to standardize "arbitrary" resource 
   descriptions lead to creating ontologies, complex graphs describing 
   relations of terms to each other.</t>
   
   <t>Practical descriptions of compute resources are currently focusing on
   number of logical CPU cores, available RAM and storage, allowing, 
   e.g., the OpenStack Nova scheduler to meet placement decisions. 
   In heterogeneous network and compute environments, hardware may have 
   different acceleration capabilities (e.g., AES-NI or hardware random 
   number generators), so the notion of logical compute cores is not 
   expressive enough. In addition, the network interfaces (and link load)
   provide important information on how fast a certain VNF can be 
   executed in one node.</t>

   <t>This may lead to a description of resources as VNF-FGs themselves.
   Networking resource (SW) may expose the capability to forward and 
   process frames in, e.g., OpenFlow TableFeatures reply. Compute nodes 
   in the VNF-FG would expose lists of capabilities like the presence of 
   AES  hardware acceleration, Intel DPDK support, or complex functions 
   like a running web server. An essential part of the compute node's 
   capability would be the ability to run a certain VNF of type X within 
   a certain QoS spec. As the QoS is service specific, it can only be 
   exposed by a control function within the instantiated VNF-FG.</t>

  </section> <!-- resource description  -->

  <section anchor="sec:chal-dependencies" title="Dependencies (de-composition)">
   <t>Salt <xref target="SALT"/>, Puppet <xref target="PUPPET"/>, Chef
   <xref target="CHEF"/> and Ansible <xref target="ANSIBLE"/> are
   tools to manage large scale installations of virtual machines in DC
   environments. Essentially, the decomposition of a complex function
   into its dependencies is encoded in "recipes" (Chef).</t>
   
   <t>OASIS TOSCA <xref target="TOSCA"/> specification aims at
   describing application layer services to automate interoperable
   deployment in alternative cloud environments. The TOSCA
   specification "provides a language to describe service components
   and their relationships using a service topology".</t>

   <t>Is there a dependency (decomposition) abstraction suitable to
   drive resource orchestration between application layer descriptions
   (like TOSCA) and cloud specific installations (like Chef
   recipes)?</t>

  </section>

  <section anchor="sec:chal-elastic-VNF" title="Elastic VNF">
    <t>In many use cases, a VNF may not be designed for scaling
      up/down, as scaling up/down may require a restart of the VNF
      which the state data may be lost. Normally a VNF may be capable
      for scaling in/out only. Such VNF is designed running on top of
      a small VM and grouped as a pool of one VNF function. VNF
      scaling may crossing multiple NFVI PoPs (or data center)s in
      order to avoid limitation of the NVFI capability. At cross DC
      scaling, the result is that the new VNF instance may be placed
      at a remote cloud location. At VNF scaling, it is a must
      requirement to provide the same level of Service Level Agreement
      (SLA) including performance, reliability and security.</t>

    <t>In general, a VNF is part of a VNF Forwarding Graph (VNF FG),
      meaning the data traffic may traverse multiple stateful and
      stateless VNF functions in sequence. When some VNF instances of
      a given service function chain are placed / scaled out in a
      distant cloud execution, the service traffic may have to
      traverse multiple VNF instances which are located in multiple
      physical locations. In the worst case, the data traffic may
      ping-pong between multiple physical locations.  Therefore it is
      important to take the whole service function chain’s performance
      into consideration when placing and scaling one of its VNF
      instance. Network and cloud resources need mutual
      considerations, see
      <xref target="I-D.zu-nfvrg-elasticity-vnf"/>.</t>

    </section> <!-- Elastic VNF -->
    
    <section anchor="sec:chal-measurement" title="Measurement and analytics">
    <t>Programmable, dynamic, and elastic VNF deployment requires that
    the Resource Orchestrator (RO) entities obtain timely information
    about the actual operational conditions between different
    locations where VNFs can be placed. Scaling VNFs in/out/up/down,
    VNF execution migration and VNF mobility, as well as right-sizing
    the VNFI resource allocations is a research area that is expected
    to grow in the coming years as mechanisms, heuristics, and
    measurement and analytics frameworks are developed.</t>

    <t>For example, Veitch et al. <xref target="IAF"/> point out that NFV deployment
    will "present network operators with significant implementation
    challenges". They look into the problems arising from the lack of
    proper tools for testing and diagnostics and explore the use of
    embedded instrumentation. They find that in certain scenarios
    fine-tuning resource allocation based on instrumentation can lead
    to at least 50% reduction in compute provisioning. In this
    context, three categories emerge where more research is
    needed.</t>

    <t>First, in the compute domain, performance analysis will need to
    evolve significantly from the current "safety factor" mentality
    which has served well carriers in the dedicated, hardware-based
    appliances era. In the emerging softwarized deployments, VNFI will
    require new tools for planning, testing, and reliability
    assurance.</t>

    <t>Second, in the network domain, performance measurement and
    analysis will play a key role in determining the scope and range
    of VNF distribution across the resources available. For example,
    IETF has worked on the standardization of IP performance metrics
    for years. The Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) could
    be employed, for instance, to capture the actual operational state
    of the network prior to making RO decisions. TWAMP management,
    however, still lacks a standardized and programmable management
    and configuration data model. We expect that as VNFI
    programmability gathers interest from network carriers several
    IETF protocols will be revisited in order to bring them up to date
    with respect to the current operational requirements. To this end,
    NFVRG can play an active role in identifying future IETF
    standardization directions.</t>

    <t>Third, non-technical considerations which relate to business
    aspects or priorities need to be modeled and codified so that ROs
    can take intelligent decisions. Energy efficiency and cost, for
    example, can steer NFV placement. In NFVI deployments operational
    practices such as follow-the-sun will be considered as earlier
    research in the data center context implies.</t>

    </section> <!-- Meaurement -->

</section> <!-- Challenges -->


    <section anchor="IANA" title="IANA Considerations">
      <t>This memo includes no request to IANA.</t>

    </section>

    <section anchor="Security" title="Security Considerations">
		<t>TBD</t>
    </section>
	<section title="Acknowledgement" anchor="acknowledgement">

	  <t>The authors would like to thank the UNIFY team for inspiring discussions and in particular Fritz-Joachim Westphal for his comments and suggestions on how to refine this draft.</t>

	  <t>This work is supported by FP7 UNIFY, a research
	    project partially funded by the European Community
	    under the Seventh Framework Program (grant agreement
	    no. 619609).  The views expressed here are those of
	    the authors only.  The European Commission is not
	    liable for any use that may be made of the information
	    in this document.</t>
	</section>



</middle>

<back>

  <references title="Informative References">

    <reference anchor="ETSI-NFV-Arch" target="http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/NFV/001_099/002/01.01.01_60/gs_NFV002v010101p.pdf">
      <front>
        <title>Architectural Framework v1.1.1</title>
          <author>
            <organization>ETSI</organization>
          </author>
          <date month="Oct" year="2013" />
      </front>
    </reference>


    <reference anchor="ETSI-NFV-MANO" target="http://docbox.etsi.org/ISG/NFV/Open/Latest_Drafts/NFV-MAN001v061-%20management%20and%20orchestration.pdf">
      <front>
        <title>Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management and
Orchestration V0.6.1 (draft)</title>
          <author>
            <organization>ETSI</organization>
          </author>
          <date month="Jul." year="2014" />
      </front>
    </reference>


    <reference anchor="ONF-SDN-ARCH"
	       target="https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/sdn-resources/technical-reports/TR_SDN_ARCH_1.0_06062014.pdf">
      <front>
        <title>SDN architecture</title>
          <author>
            <organization>ONF</organization>
          </author>
          <date month="Jun." year="2014" />
      </front>
    </reference>


    <reference anchor="EU-5GPPP-Contract" target="http://5g-ppp.eu/contract/">
      <front>
        <title>Contractual Arrangement: Setting up a Public- Private
Partnership in the Area of Advance 5G Network Infrastructure for the
Future Internet between the European Union and the 5G Infrastructure
Association</title>
          <author>
            <organization>5G-PPP Association</organization>
          </author>
          <date month="Dec" year="2013" />
      </front>
    </reference>

    <reference anchor="OpenStack" target="http://openstack.org">
      <front>
        <title>Openstack cloud software</title>
        <author><organization>The OpenStack project</organization></author>
        <date year="2014" />
      </front>
    </reference>


    <reference anchor="NSC">
        <front>
          <title>Research directions in network service chaining</title>
          <author><organization>John, W., Pentikousis, K., et al.</organization></author>
          <date month="November" year="2013" />
        </front>
		<seriesInfo name="Proc. SDN for Future Networks and Services (SDN4FNS), Trento, Italy" value="IEEE"></seriesInfo>
	</reference>

    <reference anchor="IAF">
        <front>
          <title>An Instrumentation and Analytics Framework for Optimal and Robust NFV Deployment</title>
          <author><organization>Veitch, P., McGrath, M. J., and Bayon, V.</organization></author>
          <date month="February" year="2015" />
        </front>
		<seriesInfo name="Communications Magazine, vol. 53, no. 2" value="IEEE"></seriesInfo>
	</reference>


    <reference anchor="CHEF" target="https://docs.chef.io/chef_overview.html">
      <front>
        <title>An Overview of Chef</title>
        <author><organization>Chef Software Inc.</organization></author>
        <date year="2015" />
       </front>
    </reference>

    <reference anchor="PUPPET" target="http://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/3.7/reference/">
      <front>
        <title>Puppet 3.7 Reference Manual</title>
        <author><organization>Puppet Labs.</organization></author>
        <date year="2015" />
       </front>
    </reference>

    <reference anchor="ANSIBLE" target="http://docs.ansible.com/index.html">
      <front>
        <title>Ansible Documentation</title>
        <author><organization>Ansible Inc.</organization></author>
        <date year="2015" />
       </front>
    </reference>

    <reference anchor="SALT" target="http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/contents.html">
      <front>
        <title>Salt (Documentation)</title>
        <author><organization>SaltStack</organization></author>
        <date year="2015" />
       </front>
    </reference>

    <reference anchor="TOSCA" target="http://docs.oasis-open.org/tosca/TOSCA/v1.0/os/TOSCA-v1.0-os.html">
      <front>
        <title>Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications Version 1.0</title>
        <author><organization>OASIS Standard</organization></author>
        <date year="2013" month="November" day="25" />
       </front>
    </reference>
 
    &SFCProb;
    &SDNT;
    &I-D.huang-sfc-use-case-recursive-service;
    &I-D.zu-nfvrg-elasticity-vnf;
  </references>



</back>
</rfc>

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