Virtual Network Protection Strategy to Ensure the Reliability of SFC in NFV

Under the environment1 of network function virtualization (NFV), the response to the network request is realized by the service function chain (SFC) mapping which is connected with the required virtual network function (VNF), so it is particularly important to ensure high reliability in processing the service request. In this paper, the problem of VNF fault in NFV environment is studied. Firstly, we propose the virtual network function node fault protection problem (Function Node Protection Problem, FNPP) and establish the model. Secondly, IR-SFC algorithm is designed to solve the problem and two algorithms are proposed respectively according to the number of VNF fault node to search and redundant the key VNFs, so that even if non-protected nodes fail, it can be guaranteed the virtual network connectivity is not less than the threshold. Simulation results show that the IR-SFC algorithm can improve the reliability of SFC and reduce the resource consumption compared with the existing methods.