SDN-Based Service Function Chaining Framework for Kubernetes Cluster Using OvS

Abstract

The ongoing demand for deploying Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in cloud environments is driving the motivation to also deploy and enable Service Function Chaining (SFC). However, deploying SFC in a cloud environment includes multiple subproblems such as implementing an SFC-compatible infrastructure, routing design, placement, and scaling. We believe the deployment of SFC-compatible infrastructures and the routing design issues need further attention as they are fundamental constituents of SFC-enabled cloud environments. In this paper, we present a new flexible SFC framework using a multi-nodes Kubernetes cluster, a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller, and an OpenFlow-enabled virtual switch known as Open vSwitch (OvS) to deploy and steer the user traffic to a distributed SFC. We demonstrate the correctness of the proposed SFC framework by monitoring the OvS flow table on Kubernetes worker nodes.