Subject: [vnfpool] Network Function instances pool and its reliability

From: Linda Dunbar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2013 17:37:00 +0000

Walter,

At Berlin IETF, you presented the use cases for NFV in Carrier Wireless network. Your presentation has a nice picture showing all the network functions applied to user flows. In the NfV environment, there will be many instances for each network function.
For efficiency purpose, it might be desired for user flows to traverse all the instances directly, as shown below:

There are potentially more factors that cause VNF instance transition (e.g. scaling, migration) or even failure, such as resource contention, hardware status change, and hardware/software failure at various levels. Therefore, a major challenge is how to achieve the reliability and high availability capabilities of the VNF during VNF instance transition or failure in the model of VNF instances direct connection.

What do you think?

Regards, Linda