NFV Appliance Migration with Traffic Redirection and Rollback
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Solution Overview
Problem
The transition from legacy network appliances to network function virtualization (NFV) appliances often results in downtime and service disruption, making the migration difficult, especially at scale.
Innovation Solution
A migration management compute device coordinates the migration of network functions from proprietary hardware to software-based virtual machines or containers on commodity hardware, ensuring minimal service interruption through automated traffic redirection and health verification.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If migration from legacy network appliances to NFV appliances is performed, then network function virtualization and service flexibility are improved, but service disruption and downtime occur
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by deploying the NFV appliance before the legacy appliance is decommissioned. The migration management compute device coordinates the deployment of the VNF instance on the NFV appliance prior to traffic redirection, ensuring the new system is ready to handle traffic without interruption.
Solution Approach 2:
The migration management compute device acts as an intermediary that coordinates between the legacy network appliance and the NFV appliance. It manages the migration process by orchestrating traffic redirection and health verification, ensuring seamless transition without service disruption.
2Reliability
If automated traffic redirection is implemented during migration, then service disruption is minimized, but complexity of migration coordination increases
Solution Approach 1:
The migration management compute device performs self-service by automatically managing the migration process without requiring manual intervention. It autonomously coordinates traffic redirection, deploys VNF instances, and performs health verification, reducing the need for complex manual coordination.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where the migration management compute device continuously monitors the health of the NFV appliance and adjusts traffic redirection accordingly. Health verification feedback ensures that traffic is only redirected when the new appliance is ready and functioning correctly.
3Reliability
If health verification of NFV appliance is performed, then migration reliability is improved, but migration time is extended
Solution Approach 1:
The migration management compute device performs health verification continuously rather than sequentially, allowing multiple health checks to overlap with other migration operations. This ensures migration reliability is improved without proportionally extending the total migration time.
Data Source
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AI summary
A computing device includes an appliance status table to store at least one of reliability and performance data for one or more network functions virtualization (NFV) appliances and one or more legacy network appliances. The computing device includes a load controller to configure an Internet Protocol (IP) filter rule to select a packet for which processing of the packet is to be migrated from a selected one of the one or more legacy network appliances to a selected one of the one or more NFV appliances, and to update the appliance status table with received at least one of reliability and performance data for the one or more legacy network appliances and the one or more NFV appliances. The computing device includes a packet distributor to receive the packet, to select one of the one or more NFV appliances based at least in part on the appliance status table, and to send the packet to the selected NFV appliance. Other embodiments are described herein.