The Effects of High-Performance Cloud System for Network Function Virtualization

Since ETSI introduced the architectural framework of network function virtualization (NFV), telecom operators have paid more attention to the synergy of NFV and cloud computing. With the integration of the NFV cloud platform, telecom operators decouple network functions from the dedicated hardware and run virtualized network functions (VNFs) on the cloud. However, virtualization degrades the performance of VNF, resulting in violating the performance requirements of the telecom industry. Most of the existing works were not conducted in a cloud computing environment, and fewer studies focused on the usage of enhanced platform awareness (EPA) features. Furthermore, few works analyze the performance of the service function chain on a practical cloud. This paper facilitates the OpenStack cloud with different EPA features to investigate the performance effects of VNFs on the cloud. A comprehensive test framework is proposed to evaluate the verification of functionality, performance, and application testing. Empirical results show that the cloud system under test fulfills the requirements of service level agreement in Rally Sanity testcases. The throughput of OVS-DPDK is up to 8.2 times as high as that of OVS in the performance test. Meanwhile, the hardware-assisted solution, SR-IOV, achieves the throughput at near the line rate in the end-to-end scenario. For the application test, the successful call rate for the vIMS service is improved by up to 14% while applying the EPA features on the cloud.