  Network Functions Virtualization, or NFV, enables telecommunications
infrastructure providers to replace special-purpose networking equipment with
commodity servers running virtualized network functions (VNFs). A service
provider utilizing NFV technology faces the SFC provisioning problem of
assigning VNF instances to nodes in the physical infrastructure (e.g., a
datacenter), and routing Service Function Chains (sequences of functions
required by customers, a.k.a. SFCs) in the physical network. In doing so, the
provider must balance between various competing goals of performance and
resource usage. We present an approach for SFC provisioning, consisting of
three elements. The first element is a fast, scalable round-robin heuristic.
The second element is a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) based approach. The
third element is a queueing-theoretic model to estimate the average latency
associated with any SFC provisioning solution. Combined, these elements create
an approach that generates a set of SFC provisioning solutions, reflecting
different tradeoffs between resource usage and performance.
