Virtual Network Embedding Satisfying Resiliency of Cooperative Services

Abstract

Various smart services are provided on multiple virtual networks embedded into a common inter-cloud substrate network. Service providers can enhance their smart services in cooperation with other service providers. They specify multiple cooperating virtual nodes with a function that allows cooperation when they request VNE (Virtual Network Embedding). The substrate network operator prepares multiple shared substrate nodes to assist cooperation securely and maps each cooperating virtual node to one of the multiple shared substrate nodes. Even if one of the shared substrate nodes incurs damage, the resiliency of the cooperative services is ensured due to reallocation of the workload and backup of the service data for the cooperative services to the remaining normal shared substrate nodes. However, the uninterrupted connectivity of the virtual networks must be guaranteed after a shared substrate node failure has occurred. This paper formulates the resilient cooperative VNE problem that involves the above connectivity constraints and proposes a lightweight VNE method to solve the problem efficiently. Simulation results reveal that the proposed method can obtain a desirable VNE solution through just a few iterations of solving the mathematical models with a limited scale.