NFV‐FD: Implementation of a failure detector using network virtualization technology

A failure detector (FD) is a classic distributed systems service that can be used to monitor processes of any network application. Failure detectors provide process state information: A process is reported to be either correct or suspected to have crashed. In this work, we propose the implementation of a process monitoring service using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in an OpenFlow network. The NFV is a technology that uses software virtualization techniques to drastically reduce the cost of deploying and managing network functions that are usually available as middleboxes. We describe NFV‐FD, a network service that provides information about the state of both processes and links. The NFV‐FD relies on an OpenFlow controller from which monitoring information is obtained. We investigate different ways to implement NFV‐FD. We evaluate the performance impact of monitoring by implementing the virtual function both within and on a separate host from the controller. Then we compare an implementation based on a traditional virtual machine with another implementation based on containers. Experimental results are reported not only in terms of performance, ie, the amount of resources required by NFV‐FD, but also for the quality of service provided by the failure detection and notification functions as they are used to deploy a reliable broadcast service.