Service Function Chaining Across OpenStack and Kubernetes Domains

Remarkable advantages of Containers (CNs) over Virtual Machines (VMs) such as lower overhead and faster startup has gained the attention of Communication Service Providers (CSPs) as using CNs for providing Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) can save costs while increasing the service agility. However, as it is not feasible to realise all types of VNFs in CNs, the coexistence of VMs and CNs is proposed. To put VMs and CNs together, an orchestration framework that can chain services across distributed and heterogeneous domains is required. To this end, we implemented a framework by extending and consolidating state-of-the-art tools and technologies originated from Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software-defined Networking (SDN) and cloud computing environments. This framework chains services provisioned across Kubernetes and OpenStack domains. During the demo, we deploy a service consist of CN- and VM-based VNFs to demonstrate different features provided by our framework.