A High Availability Architecture for Stateful Virtual Network Functions

• Giovanni Venâncio de Souza Federal University of Paraná http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7620-3793
• Elias Procópio Duarte Jr. Federal University of Paraná

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc.2020.12298

Abstract

Virtualization has represented a revolution on the way networks are built and managed. In particular, dedicated hardware can be replaced by Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) which can be even downloaded from Internet marketplaces. However, it is undeniable that VNFs are more susceptible to failures. In this work we propose a high availability architecture for VNFs, which provides fault management and a variety of recovery techniques. As stateful VNFs are executed in virtualized environments, copying the entire state is an attractive strategy that does not require any code modifications to the VNFs. The architecture is based on Checkpoint/Restore and was designed within the NFV-MANO reference architecture. A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented and experimental results are presented.

Keywords: Network Function Virtualization, High Availability, Network Fault Management

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