WO2022188150A1

WO2022188150A1 - Automatic scaling up method, automatic scaling down method, and device

Info

Publication number: WO2022188150A1
Application number: PCT/CN2021/080458
Authority: WO
Inventors: 吴涛
Original assignee: 华为技术有限公司
Priority date: 2021-03-12
Filing date: 2021-03-12
Publication date: 2022-09-15
Also published as: CN116964999A

Abstract

Embodiments of the present application disclose an automatic scaling up method, an automatic scaling down method, and a device. The method is used in a network function virtualization (NFV) system having a virtual network functions manager (VNFM) and comprises: the VNFM acquires a target scaling up policy from a virtual network function descriptor (VNFD); the VNFM determines a first-type container group to be scaled up on a target virtual network function (VNF) according to the target scaling up policy; the VNFM sends first scaling up information to a virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) according to the target scaling up policy, wherein the first scaling up information instructs a first-type virtual machine to be created at the target VNF; and the VNFM sends second scaling up information which instructs the first-type container group to be created in the first-type virtual machine. According to the embodiment of the present disclosure, the container group and the virtual machine are scaled up in a linked manner, and resource utilization can be improved.

Description

Automatic capacity expansion method, automatic capacity reduction method and device

technical field

The present application relates to the field of virtualization technologies, and in particular, to an automatic capacity expansion method, an automatic capacity reduction method, and an apparatus.

Background technique

Network functions virtualization (NFV) provides a new way to design, deploy and manage network services, and realize the realization and deployment of network functions based on virtualization.

In the NFV architecture, services no longer rely on proprietary hardware to carry services, and virtual machines (VMs) can be used to carry services on general-purpose hardware through virtualization technology. This makes it possible to automatically scale the VM. When the services carried by the virtualized network function (VNF) continue to grow and the load continues to increase, the automatic expansion of the VM can reduce the overall load of the VNF and prevent the service from being damaged due to the overload of the VNF. When the services carried by the VNFs continue to decrease and the load continues to decrease, the overall load of the VNFs can be increased by automatically shrinking the VM, realizing the rational use of resources, and achieving energy saving and emission reduction. In the same way, by automatically expanding the container, the overall load of the VNF can be reduced. By automatically shrinking the container, the overall load of the VNF can be increased, the rational use of resources can be realized, and energy saving and emission reduction can be achieved.

At present, public cloud usually adopts the central processing unit (CPU), memory usage and other indicators to formulate expansion and contraction strategies, and then expand and contract by changing the number of VMs and the number of containers. Since the public cloud can approximate that virtual hardware resources are infinite, when scaling up a VM, it is not necessary to consider whether there are business containers running on the VM. The public cloud sets the expansion threshold to a lower value, and expands multiple VMs in advance, which can be used directly when the subsequent service containers need to be expanded. The main difference between telecom cloud and public cloud is that telecom cloud cannot deploy massive hardware resources like public cloud due to limited virtual hardware resources. When expanding or shrinking the capacity of the telecom cloud, it is necessary to fully consider the issue of resource utilization. When the business needs to expand, it is necessary not only to have available VM resources, but also to make full use of VM resources to prevent resource waste. The public cloud automatic expansion and contraction scheme obviously does not meet the above requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to study the automatic expansion and contraction scheme with high resource utilization suitable for telecom cloud.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The embodiments of the present application disclose an automatic capacity expansion method, an automatic capacity reduction method and a device, which can improve resource utilization.

In a first aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides an automatic capacity expansion method, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM. The method includes: the VNFM obtains from a virtualized network function description VNFD a target capacity expansion strategy, where the target capacity expansion strategy includes: expanding a first type of virtual machine before expanding a first type of container group, where the first type of container group is hosted on the first type of virtual machine; the VNFM According to the target expansion strategy, determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target expansion strategy; the VNFM is based on the target expansion strategy , send the first capacity expansion information to the virtualized infrastructure manager VIM, where the first capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the virtual machine of the first type on the target VNF; the VNFM sends the second capacity expansion information, so the The second capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the container group of the first type is created in the virtual machine of the first type.

In the embodiment of the present application, after determining the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the target expansion strategy, the VNFM first expands the virtual machine of the first type, so that the expanded virtual machine of the first type is used as the container running the first type. Set of vectors. Then, a container group of the first type is created in the virtual machine of the first type. The first type of virtual machine will be expanded only after the container group of the first type to be expanded is determined, and the first type of virtual machine does not need to be expanded in advance, which can improve resource utilization.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the VNFM according to the target A capacity expansion strategy, determining that the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF includes: the VNFM determining, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, F pieces of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF The VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy, including: the VNFM does not satisfy the capacity expansion of F container groups of the first type in the target VNF In the case of the required virtual machine resources, according to the target expansion policy, the first expansion information is sent to the VIM; the container group of the first type is affinity, and the first expansion information is used. In order to instruct the expansion of K virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF, the second expansion information is used to instruct the expansion of F virtual machines of the first type in the F virtual machines of the first type. In the container group, the F and the K are integers greater than 0, and the F virtual machines of the first type include the K virtual machines of the first type.

The container group of the first type is affinity, that is, the container group of the first type and the container group of other types can be deployed on the same virtual machine.

In this implementation manner, the VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM when the VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required for capacity expansion of F first-type container groups; the virtual machine of the first type that needs to be expanded can be accurately determined The number of machines can make full use of virtual machine resources.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the VNFM according to the target A capacity expansion strategy, determining that the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF includes: the VNFM determining, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, F pieces of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF the container group; the VNFM sending the first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy includes: the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, to expand F on the target VNF the first type of virtual machine, and send the first capacity expansion information to the VIM, the first type of container group is non-affinity; the first capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the target Create F virtual machines of the first type on the VNF, and the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create F container groups of the first type in the F virtual machines of the first type. The F is an integer greater than 0.

The container group of the first type is non-affinity, that is, a virtual machine can only deploy one container group of the first type, and cannot deploy container groups of other types.

In this implementation, when the container group of the first type is non-affinity, after the VNFM determines the F container groups of the first type to be expanded, the VNFM determines the F virtual machines of the first type to be expanded according to the target expansion policy ; The required virtual machine can be quickly expanded.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding the container group of the second type; the second capacity expansion information is further used to indicate that the container group of the first type is expanded A container group of the second type is created in a virtual machine of the type. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type can support the same service and can be deployed on the same virtual machine.

In this implementation manner, when expanding the container group of the first type, the container group of the second type can be expanded, and the resources of the virtual machine can be fully utilized.

In a possible implementation manner, the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, before the container group of the first type is to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF, the method further includes: the VNFM receives data from The resource usage status indicator of the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the VNFM determines the remaining target according to the target capacity expansion policy Expanding the container group of the first type on the virtualized network function VNF includes: the VNFM determines, according to the resource usage status indicator and the target capacity expansion policy, to expand the container of the first type on the target VNF Group.

In this implementation manner, the VNFM can accurately and quickly determine the type of container group to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicator and the target expansion strategy.

In a possible implementation manner, the resource usage status indicator includes two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the first indicator in the target VNF. The resource usage of a type of container group at two or more moments in the same time period; the VNFM determines the location to be expanded on the target VNF according to the resource usage status indicator and the target expansion strategy The container group of the first type includes: the VNFM determines to expand the first type on the target VNF when the two or more of the resource usage status sampling indicators all exceed the expansion threshold container group.

In this implementation, when two or more of the resource usage status sampling indicators exceed the capacity expansion threshold, it is determined that the container group of the first type is to be expanded on the target VNF, which can prevent the expanded container group from reduced in a short period of time.

In a possible implementation manner, the VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the virtualized infrastructure manager VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy, including: the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, whether to expand the first capacity Before a container group of one type needs to expand the capacity of the virtual machine of the first type; the VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM.

In this implementation manner, the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, that the virtual machine of the first type needs to be expanded before expanding the container group of the first type. Then, the first capacity expansion information is sent to the VIM to expand the virtual machine of the first type; the required virtual machine can be expanded when the current virtual machine resources do not meet the requirements, which can improve resource utilization.

In a possible implementation manner, the method further includes: receiving, through a capacity expansion policy configuration interface, a user's capacity expansion policy configuration instruction for the container group of the first type; configuring and obtaining the target capacity expansion according to the capacity expansion policy configuration instruction Strategy.

In this implementation manner, the target expansion strategy is configured according to the expansion strategy configuration instruction; the user can configure the required expansion strategy according to actual needs, which can meet different business requirements.

In a second aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides an automatic scaling method, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM. The method includes: the VNFM extracts data from a virtualized network function description VNFD Obtain a target scaling policy, where the target scaling policy includes: scaling down a first type of virtual machine after scaling down a first type of container group, where the first type of container group is hosted on the first type of virtual machine The VNFM determines the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down according to the target reduction strategy; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target reduction strategy; The VNFM sends first scaling information, where the first scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the VNFM sends the virtualized The infrastructure manager VIM sends second scaling information, where the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF.

In this embodiment of the present application, after shrinking the container group of the first type, the virtual machine of the first type (that is, the virtual machine that carries the container group of the first type) is reduced, which can prevent redundant virtual machines from running any container group. resulting in waste of resources.

In a possible implementation manner, the target shrinking policy further includes: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the first shrinking information is further used to indicate the shrinking The container group of the second type in the target VNF is accommodated, and the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type may support the same service.

In this implementation manner, when shrinking a container group of a first type when shrinking a container group of a second type, the resources occupied by the container group of the second type can be released in time.

In a possible implementation manner, the target scaling strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be scaled down when the conditions for scaling down the container group of the first type are met; the VNFM according to For the target reduction policy, determining the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled includes: the VNFM determining, according to the target reduction policy, the container groups in the target VNF to be scaled down. K container groups of the first type, where K is an integer greater than 0.

In this implementation manner, the number of container groups of the first type to be scaled down can be quickly and accurately determined according to the target scale down policy.

In a possible implementation manner, before the VNFM sends the first capacity reduction information, the method further includes: the VNFM sends third capacity reduction information to the target VNF, where the third capacity reduction information is used for confirmation Whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down; the VNFM receives fourth scale down information from the target VNF, the fourth scale down information indicates that the container group in the target VNF can be scaled down; the first type of container group.

In this implementation manner, the VNFM sends the third scaling information to the target VNF, so as to confirm whether the container group of the first type can be scaled down, so as to avoid scaling down the container group that cannot be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, before the VNFM determines, according to the target scaling policy, the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down, the method further includes: the VNFM Receive a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the VNFM determines according to the target scaling policy The container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down includes: the VNFM determines, according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scale down policy, all the containers in the target VNF to be scaled down. The first type of container group is described.

In this implementation manner, the VNFM resource usage status indicator and the target scaling strategy can accurately and quickly determine the type of container group that needs to be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, the resource usage status indicator includes two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the first indicator in the target VNF. Resource usage of a type of container group at two or more moments in the same time period; the VNFM determines the target VNF to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scaling policy The container group of the first type includes: the VNFM determines that the VNF in the target VNF to be scaled down is under the condition that none of the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators exceeds the scaling threshold. The first type of container group.

In this implementation manner, when two or more of the resource usage status sampling indicators do not exceed the scaling threshold, it is determined that the container group of the first type to be scaled down on the target VNF can be avoided. The container group needs to be re-scaled in a short period of time.

In a possible implementation manner, the method further includes: receiving a user's scaling policy configuration instruction for the first type of container group through a scaling policy configuration interface; and configuring the desired scaling policy according to the scaling policy configuration instruction Describe the target scaling strategy.

In this implementation manner, the target shrinkage policy is generated according to the shrinkage policy configuration instruction; the user can configure the required shrinkage policy according to actual needs, which can meet different business needs.

In a possible implementation manner, the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the first type of virtual machines of the first type that are not deployed in the service container group among the plurality of virtual machines of the first type deployed in the target VNF. virtual machine; or, the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down one or more of the first type of virtual machines with the lowest CPU usage of the CPU among the plurality of virtual machines of the first type deployed in the target VNF A type of virtual machine. A business container group refers to a container group that provides business services.

In this implementation manner, the virtual machines in which the service container group is not deployed or the virtual machines with low CPU occupancy rate are preferentially scaled down, which can improve resource utilization.

In a third aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides an automatic scaling method, which is applied to a network function virtualized NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, and the method includes: the target VNF Receive third scaling information from the VNFM, where the third scaling information is used to confirm whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down; the target VNF converts the first type of container group The services executed by the container group are migrated out of the container group of the first type; the target VNF sends fourth reduction information to the VNFM, where the fourth reduction information indicates that the target VNF can be reduced in size The first type of container group. The target VNF may be any VNF configured with a scaling policy.

In the embodiment of the present application, after the target VNF migrates the services performed by the first type of container group out of the first type of container group, it sends fourth capacity reduction information to the VNFM; this can avoid shrinking the container group that still executes services.

In a fourth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides an automatic capacity expansion method, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, the method comprising: the target VNF according to The target expansion strategy is to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded; the target VNF determines to expand the first type of virtual machine before expanding the container group of the first type according to the target expansion strategy; The VNFM sends third capacity expansion information, where the third capacity expansion information is used to instruct to expand the virtual machine of the first type on the target VNF; the target VNF sends fourth capacity expansion information to the VNFM, the The fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the container group of the first type is created in the virtual machine of the first type. The target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target capacity expansion strategy.

In the embodiment of the present application, the target VNF determines to expand the capacity of the first type of virtual machine before expanding the container group of the first type according to the target capacity expansion policy. The first type of virtual machine is expanded by sending the third capacity expansion information to the VNFM, and then the fourth capacity expansion information is sent to the VNFM, so as to create a first type of container group in the first type of virtual machine. In this way, the first type of virtual machine can be expanded only after it is determined that the first type of virtual machine needs to be expanded, and the first type of virtual machine does not need to be expanded in advance, which can improve resource utilization.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the target VNF is based on the The target expansion strategy, determining the container group of the first type to be expanded includes: the target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the target expansion strategy; the target VNF according to the target expansion strategy A capacity expansion strategy, determining to expand the first type of virtual machines before expanding the container group of the first type includes: the target VNF determines, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, to expand K before expanding the container group of the first type the virtual machine of the first type; the container group of the first type is affinity, and the third capacity expansion information is used to instruct the expansion of K virtual machines of the first type on the target VNF, The fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type. Both the F and the K are integers greater than 0, and the F The virtual machines of the first type include the K virtual machines of the first type.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF can accurately determine the number of virtual machines of the first type to be expanded, and can fully utilize virtual machine resources.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the target VNF is based on the The target expansion strategy, determining the container group of the first type to be expanded includes: the target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the target expansion strategy; the target VNF according to the target expansion strategy A capacity expansion strategy, determining to expand the first type of virtual machines before expanding the container group of the first type includes: the target VNF determines, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, to expand F number of virtual machines before expanding the container group of the first type For the virtual machine of the first type, the container group of the first type is non-affinity; the third capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF , the fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding the container group of the second type; the fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the container group of the first type is expanded. Create the container group of the first type and create the container group of the second type in the virtual machine of the . The second type is the container group type associated with the first type. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type can support the same service and can be deployed on the same virtual machine.

In a possible implementation manner, before the target VNF determines the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion policy, the method further includes: acquiring, by the target VNF, a resource usage status indicator, the resource usage status indicator Characterizing the resource usage of the first type of container group in the target VNF; the target VNF determining the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion policy includes: the target VNF according to the resource usage status The index and the target expansion strategy determine the container group of the first type to be expanded.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF can accurately and quickly determine the type of container group that needs to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicator and the target capacity expansion strategy.

In a possible implementation manner, the method further includes: configuring, by the target VNF, the target capacity expansion policy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF can conveniently configure the required target capacity expansion policy through the MML configuration command.

In a fifth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides an automatic scaling method, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, the method comprising: the target VNF Determine the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy; the target VNF determines, according to the target scaling policy, to scale down the virtual machine of the first type after scaling down the container group of the first type ; The target VNF sends fifth shrinkage information to the VNFM, and the fifth shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the target VNF reports to the The VNFM sends sixth scaling information, where the sixth scaling information is used to instruct to scale down the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF, and the container group of the first type is hosted on the first type virtual machine. The target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target shrinking policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the target scaling strategy further includes: the number of container groups of the first type to be scaled down when the conditions for scaling down the container group of the first type are met; the target VNF Determining the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the target reduction strategy includes: the target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be scaled down according to the target reduction strategy; the target VNF according to the target reduction strategy In the target shrinking policy, determining to shrink the virtual machine of the first type after shrinking the container group of the first type includes: the target VNF determines, according to the target shrinking policy, to shrink the first type of virtual machine after shrinking the first type of container group. After scaling down the H virtual machines of the first type after the container group of the first type; the fifth scaling information is used to indicate scaling down the F container groups of the first type in the target VNF, and the The six shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the H virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF, the F and the H are both integers greater than 0, and the H is less than or equal to the F.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF can accurately determine the number of virtual machines of the first type to be scaled down, and release redundant virtual machine resources in time to achieve energy saving and emission reduction.

In a possible implementation manner, the target shrinking policy further includes: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the fifth shrinking information is further used to indicate the shrinking A container group of the second type in the target VNF is accommodated, where the second type is a container group type associated with the first type, and the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the second type.

In a possible implementation manner, before the target VNF determines the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy, the method further includes: acquiring, by the target VNF, a resource usage status indicator, and the resource usage The state indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the target VNF determining the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy includes: the target VNF according to the The resource usage status indicator and the target scaling strategy are used to determine the container group of the first type to be scaled down.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF resource usage status indicator and the target scaling strategy can accurately and quickly determine the type of container group that needs to be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, the method further includes: configuring, by the target VNF, the target scaling policy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

In this implementation manner, the target VNF can conveniently configure the required target scaling policy through the MML configuration command.

In a sixth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a VNFM, including: a processing unit configured to obtain a target capacity expansion policy from a virtualized network function description VNFD, the target The capacity expansion strategy includes: expanding a first type of virtual machine before expanding a first type of container group, where the first type of container group is borne by the first type of virtual machine; the processing unit is further configured to: The target capacity expansion strategy is to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target capacity expansion strategy; the processing unit is further configured to The target capacity expansion policy controls the transceiver unit to send first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM, where the first capacity expansion information is used to instruct the creation of the first type of virtual machine on the target VNF; the transceiver unit, It is also used for sending second capacity expansion information, where the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the container group of the first type in the virtual machine of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the processing unit, specifically using According to the target capacity expansion strategy, it is determined that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF; the target VNF does not meet the virtual requirements for expanding the F container groups of the first type. In the case of host resources, send the first expansion information to the VIM according to the target expansion policy; the first type of container group is affinity, and the first expansion information is used to indicate K virtual machines of the first type are expanded in the target VNF, and the second capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type. The F and the K are integers greater than 0, and the F virtual machines of the first type include the K virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the processing unit, specifically using In accordance with the target expansion strategy, it is determined that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF; according to the target expansion strategy, it is determined that the target VNF is to be expanded. type of virtual machine, and send the first expansion information to the VIM, the container group of the first type is non-affinity; the first expansion information is used to instruct the target VNF to create an F virtual machines of the first type, the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create F container groups of the first type in the F virtual machines of the first type, where F is greater than or equal to An integer of 0.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding the container group of the second type; the second capacity expansion information is further used to indicate that the container group of the first type is expanded A container group of the second type is created in a virtual machine of the type.

In a possible implementation manner, the transceiver unit is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the status of the container group of the first type in the target VNF Resource usage; the processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF according to the resource usage state indicator and the target expansion policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the resource usage status indicator includes two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the first indicator in the target VNF. The resource usage of a type of container group at two or more moments in the same time period; the processing unit is specifically configured to be used when the two or more of the resource usage status sampling indicators exceed the capacity expansion In the case of the threshold, it is determined that the container group of the first type is to be expanded on the target VNF.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit is specifically configured to determine, according to the target capacity expansion policy, that the virtual machine of the first type needs to be expanded before the container group of the first type needs to be expanded; The unit sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM.

In a possible implementation manner, the communication device further includes: an input unit, configured to receive a user's capacity expansion policy configuration instruction for the container group of the first type through a capacity expansion policy configuration interface; the processing unit is further configured to According to the capacity expansion policy configuration instruction, the target capacity expansion policy is obtained by configuration.

Regarding the technical effects brought by the sixth aspect or various possible implementation manners, reference may be made to the introduction to the technical effects of the first aspect or corresponding implementation manners.

In a seventh aspect, the embodiments of the present application provide another communication device, which is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a VNFM, and includes: a processing unit configured to obtain a target capacity reduction policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, so that the The target scaling strategy includes: scaling down a first type of virtual machine after scaling down a first type of container group, where the first type of container group is borne on the first type of virtual machine; the processing unit, is also used to determine the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down according to the target reduction strategy; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target reduction strategy; the transceiver unit, is used for sending first scaling information, where the first scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the processing unit is further configured to scale down according to the target a policy, controlling the transceiver unit to send second scaling information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM, where the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF.

In a possible implementation manner, the target shrinking policy further includes: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the first shrinking information is further used to indicate the shrinking The container group of the second type in the target VNF is accommodated, and the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target scaling strategy further includes: the number of the first type of container groups to be scaled down when the conditions for scaling down the first type of container groups are met; the processing unit , which is specifically configured to determine, according to the target scaling policy, K container groups of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down, where K is an integer greater than 0.

In a possible implementation manner, the transceiver unit is further configured to send third scaling information to the target VNF, where the third scaling information is used to confirm whether the target VNF can be scaled down A container group of a first type; receiving fourth scaling information from the target VNF, where the fourth scaling information indicates that the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, the transceiver unit is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the status of the container group of the first type in the target VNF Resource usage; the processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scaling policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the resource usage status indicator includes two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the first indicator in the target VNF. Resource usage of a type of container group at two or more moments in the same time period; the processing unit is specifically configured to sample indicators of the two or more resource usage states that do not exceed the capacity reduction In the case of the threshold, it is determined that the container group of the first type in the target VNF is to be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, the communication device further includes: an input unit, configured to receive a user's scaling policy configuration instruction for the first type of container group in the scaling policy configuration interface; the processing unit, It is also used to configure and obtain the target capacity reduction policy according to the capacity expansion policy configuration instruction.

In a possible implementation manner, the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the first type of virtual machines of the first type that are not deployed in the service container group among the plurality of virtual machines of the first type deployed in the target VNF. virtual machine; or, the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down one or more of the first type of virtual machines with the lowest CPU usage of the CPU among the plurality of virtual machines of the first type deployed in the target VNF A type of virtual machine.

Regarding the technical effects brought by the seventh aspect or various possible implementation manners, reference may be made to the introduction to the technical effects of the second aspect or corresponding implementation manners.

In an eighth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, which is applied to a network function virtualized NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, including: a transceiver unit for receiving data from the The third scaling information of the VNFM, the third scaling information is used to confirm whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down; the processing unit is used to execute the container group of the first type The services of the first type are migrated out of the container group of the first type; the transceiver unit is further configured to send fourth capacity reduction information to the VNFM, where the fourth capacity reduction information indicates that all the containers in the target VNF can be reduced The first type of container group is described. The communication device is an entity that implements the target VNF. The target VNF may be any VNF configured with a scaling policy.

Regarding the technical effect of the eighth aspect, reference may be made to the introduction to the technical effect of the third aspect.

In a ninth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides another communication device, which is applied to a network function virtualized NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, including: a processing unit for expanding capacity according to the target a strategy, to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded; according to the target expansion strategy, to determine to expand the virtual machine of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type; a transceiver unit, configured to send the first type of virtual machine to the VNFM Three capacity expansion information, where the third capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the virtual machine of the first type is to be expanded on the target VNF; fourth capacity expansion information is sent to the VNFM, and the fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the virtual machine of the first type is to be expanded on the target VNF. The container group of the first type is created in the virtual machine of the first type. The target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target capacity expansion strategy. The communication device is an entity that implements the target VNF.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the processing unit, specifically using In accordance with the target expansion strategy, it is determined that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded; according to the target expansion strategy, it is determined to expand the K container groups of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type. virtual machine; the container group of the first type is affinity, the third capacity expansion information is used to instruct the expansion of K virtual machines of the first type on the target VNF, and the fourth capacity expansion information It is used to instruct F number of container groups of the first type to be expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type, the F and the K are both integers greater than 0, and the F number of the first type The virtual machines include the K virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met; the processing unit, specifically using According to the target expansion strategy, it is determined that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded; according to the target expansion strategy, it is determined to expand the F container groups of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type. virtual machine, the container group of the first type is non-affinity; the third capacity expansion information is used to instruct the expansion of F virtual machines of the first type on the target VNF, and the fourth capacity expansion The information is used to instruct F number of container groups of the first type to be expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding the container group of the second type; the fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the container group of the first type is expanded. Create a container group of the first type and create a container group of a second type in the virtual machine of the virtual machine, where the second type is a container group type associated with the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the communication apparatus further includes: a processing unit, configured to acquire a resource usage status indicator, where the resource usage status indicator represents resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF situation; the processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the resource usage state indicator and the target capacity expansion policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit is further configured to configure the target capacity expansion strategy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

Regarding the technical effects brought by the ninth aspect or various possible implementation manners, reference may be made to the introduction to the technical effects of the fourth aspect or corresponding implementation manners.

In a tenth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, which is applied to a network function virtualized NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM and a target virtualized network function VNF, including: a processing unit for reducing capacity according to the target strategy, determine the container group of the first type to be scaled down; according to the target scaling strategy, determine to scale down the virtual machine of the first type after scaling down the container group of the first type; the transceiver unit, to the VNFM Send fifth size reduction information, where the fifth size reduction information is used to instruct to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF; send sixth size reduction information to the VNFM, the sixth size reduction information The capacity information is used to instruct to scale down the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF, and the container group of the first type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type. The target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target shrinking policy. The communication device is an entity that implements the target VNF.

In a possible implementation manner, the target scaling strategy further includes: the number of the first type of container groups to be scaled down when the conditions for scaling down the first type of container groups are met; the processing unit , which is specifically used to determine F container groups of the first type to be scaled down according to the target shrinking strategy; and determine, according to the target shrinking strategy, to shrink the H container groups of the first type after scaling down the first type of container groups. A virtual machine of the first type; the fifth shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the F container groups of the first type in the target VNF, and the sixth shrinkage information is used to instruct the shrinkage of the For the H virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF, both the F and the H are integers greater than 0, and the H is less than or equal to the F.

In a possible implementation manner, the target shrinking policy further includes: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the fifth shrinking information is further used to indicate the shrinking To accommodate the container group of the second type in the target VNF, the second type is the type of the container group associated with the first type, and the container group of the second type is carried on the virtual machine of the second type. machine.

In a possible implementation manner, the communication apparatus further includes: a processing unit, configured to acquire a resource usage status indicator, where the resource usage status indicator represents resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF situation; the processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scale down policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit is further configured to configure the target scaling policy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

Regarding the technical effects brought by the tenth aspect or various possible implementation manners, reference may be made to the introduction to the technical effects of the fifth aspect or corresponding implementation manners.

In an eleventh aspect, the present application provides a communication apparatus, the communication apparatus includes a processor, and when the processor executes a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to the first aspect is performed.

In a twelfth aspect, the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor, and when the processor calls a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to the second aspect is executed.

In a thirteenth aspect, the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor, and when the processor calls a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to the third aspect is executed.

In a fourteenth aspect, the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor, and when the processor calls a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to the fourth aspect is executed.

In a fifteenth aspect, the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor, and when the processor calls a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to the fifth aspect is executed.

In a sixteenth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor and a memory; the memory is used for storing computer-executed instructions; the processor is used for executing computer-executed instructions stored in the memory , so that the communication apparatus executes the method according to the first aspect and any possible implementation manner described above.

In a seventeenth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor and a memory; the memory is used for storing computer-executed instructions; the processor is used for executing computer-executed instructions stored in the memory , so that the communication apparatus executes the method according to the second aspect and any possible implementation manner described above.

In an eighteenth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor and a memory; the memory is configured to store computer-executed instructions; the processor is configured to execute computer-executed instructions stored in the memory , so that the communication apparatus executes the method according to the third aspect and any possible implementation manner described above.

In a nineteenth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor and a memory; the memory is used for storing computer-executed instructions; the processor is used for executing computer-executed instructions stored in the memory , so that the communication apparatus executes the method according to the fourth aspect and any possible implementation manner described above.

In a twentieth aspect, an embodiment of the present application provides a communication device, the communication device includes a processor and a memory; the memory is used for storing computer-executed instructions; the processor is used for executing computer-executed instructions stored in the memory , so that the communication apparatus executes the method according to the fourth aspect and any possible implementation manner described above.

In a twenty-first aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, where the computer-readable storage medium is used to store instructions or computer programs, and when the instructions or the computer programs are executed, the first aspect makes the The described method is implemented.

In a twenty-second aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, where the computer-readable storage medium is used to store instructions or computer programs, and when the instructions or the computer programs are executed, the second aspect makes the The described method is implemented.

In a twenty-third aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, where the computer-readable storage medium is used to store instructions or computer programs, and when the instructions or the computer programs are executed, make the third aspect The described method is implemented.

In a twenty-fourth aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, the computer-readable storage medium is used to store instructions or computer programs, when the instructions or the computer programs are executed, the fourth aspect is The described method is implemented.

In a twenty-fifth aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium for storing an instruction or a computer program, when the instruction or the computer program is executed, the computer-readable storage medium of the fifth aspect is executed. The described method is implemented.

In a twenty-sixth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, the computer program product comprising instructions or a computer program, when the instructions or the computer program are executed, the method of the first aspect is implemented.

In a twenty-seventh aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, the computer program product comprising instructions or a computer program, when the instructions or the computer program are executed, the method of the second aspect is implemented.

In a twenty-eighth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, the computer program product comprising instructions or a computer program, when the instructions or the computer program are executed, the method of the third aspect is implemented.

In a twenty-ninth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, the computer program product comprising instructions or a computer program, when the instructions or the computer program are executed, the method of the fourth aspect is implemented.

In a thirtieth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product, the computer program product comprising instructions or a computer program, when the instructions or the computer program are executed, the method of the fifth aspect is implemented.

Description of drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an NFV reference architecture;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

3 is a flowchart of another automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 4 is an interaction flow of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of an automatic shrinking method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 6 is an interaction flow of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of another automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 8 is an interaction flow of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of another automatic shrinking method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 10 is an interaction process of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 11 is a schematic structural diagram of a communication device according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 12 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 13 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication device provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 14 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 15 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 16 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application.

Detailed ways

The embodiments of the present application will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings in the embodiments of the present application.

The terms "first" and "second" in the description, claims and drawings of the present application are used to distinguish different objects, rather than to describe a specific order. Furthermore, the terms "comprising" and "having" and any variations thereof are intended to cover non-exclusive inclusion. For example, a process, method, system, product or device comprising a series of steps or units is not limited to the listed steps or units, but optionally also includes unlisted steps or units, or optionally also includes For other steps or units inherent to these processes, methods, products or devices.

It should be understood that in this application, "at least one (item)" refers to one or more, "multiple" refers to two or more, and "at least two (item)" refers to two or three And three or more, "and/or" is used to describe the association relationship of related objects, indicating that three kinds of relationships can exist, for example, "A and/or B" can mean: only A exists, only B exists, and A exists at the same time and B three cases, where A, B can be singular or plural. The character "/" generally indicates that the associated objects are an "or" relationship. "At least one item(s) below" or similar expressions thereof refer to any combination of these items, including any combination of single item(s) or plural items(s). For example, at least one (a) of a, b or c, can mean: a, b, c, "a and b", "a and c", "b and c", or "a and b and c" ", where a, b, c can be single or multiple.

As described in the background art, it is currently necessary to research an automatic capacity expansion and contraction solution with high resource utilization suitable for telecom cloud. The present application provides an automatic capacity expansion scheme and an automatic capacity reduction scheme with high resource utilization. In this application, a container group (Pod) can be used as the smallest unit of business expansion and contraction, or a container can be used as the smallest unit of business expansion and contraction, and the resource usage status indicators that need to be supported are defined for each business, and Related scaling policies. A Pod can contain one or more containers, and has the ability to share storage/networking, as well as specifications for running containers. The automatic capacity expansion solution provided in this application can realize the linkage capacity expansion of the VM and the container group (Pod). The linkage expansion of the VM and the container group refers to the automatic expansion of the VM and the automatic expansion of the container as a whole, rather than the automatic expansion of the VM and the automatic expansion of the container. For example, when the container group of the first type is to be expanded, the virtual machine of the first type is first expanded, and then the container group of the first type is expanded from the expanded virtual machine of the first type. This example can be understood as the linkage expansion of the container group of the first type and the virtual machine of the first type. In the automatic capacity expansion solution provided by the present application, the virtual machine used to carry the container group to be expanded is expanded after the container group to be expanded is determined, so as to avoid resource waste caused by expanding the VM in advance and improve resource utilization. The automatic scaling solution provided by this application can realize the linkage scaling of the VM and the container group. The linkage expansion of the VM and the container group refers to the realization of the automatic shrinking of the VM and the automatic shrinking of the container as a whole, rather than the automatic shrinking of the VM and the automatic shrinking of the container. For example, the container group 1 of the first type is deployed in the virtual machine 1 of the first type. After the container group 1 of the first type is scaled down, the virtual machine 1 of the first type is scaled down. This example can be understood as the linkage expansion of the container group 1 of the first type and the virtual machine 1 of the first type. In the automatic scaling solution provided by the present application, the virtual machines without deployed service container groups are scaled down after the container groups are scaled down, so as to prevent resource waste caused by VMs without any deployed service container groups, and improve resource utilization.

The automatic capacity expansion solution and the automatic capacity reduction solution provided in this application are applicable to the NFV reference architecture proposed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (european telecommunications standards institute, ETSI). The automatic capacity expansion solution provided by this application can realize the automatic capacity expansion of VMs and container groups (corresponding to the linkage expansion), so that the VNF can dynamically increase the service capacity and make full use of resources during the operation process. The automatic scaling solution provided by the present application can realize the automatic scaling of VMs and container groups (corresponding to linked scaling), so that the VNF can dynamically reduce service capacity and avoid resource waste during the running process. Because both the automatic capacity expansion solution and the automatic capacity reduction solution provided in this application involve multiple network elements in the NFV reference architecture. The following is an introduction to the NFV reference architecture.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of an NFV reference architecture. As shown in Figure 1, the NFV reference architecture mainly includes: NFV infrastructure (NFV infrastructure, NFVI), virtualized network function (virtualized network function, VNF), NFV management and orchestration (NFV management and orchestration, MANO) 3 main core tasks The specific description of each main function module is as follows.

(1) NFVI

NFVI provides virtualized resources for VNF, covering all hardware and software resources in the basic network environment. NFVI is divided into two parts: hardware resources that constitute the infrastructure and virtualized instances. NFVI includes virtual machine management software and hardware. It is the direct provider of virtual computing, virtual storage, and virtual network capabilities on each server. It logically divides and provides resources to VNFs, thereby decoupling hardware and software. The main function of NFVI is to provide resource pools for VNF deployment, management and execution. NFVI needs to virtualize physical computing, storage, and switching resources into virtual computing, storage, and switching resource pools. NFVI can be deployed across regions.

(2) VNF and network element management (Element Management, EM)

VNF is the virtualized network function module, which is the logical result of the NFV network function concept. VNFs consist of VMs running software on top of NFVI, such as storage, general purpose hardware or infrastructure cloud infrastructure. Each physical network element is mapped to a virtual network element VNF through virtualization technology, in which each or more virtualized network function modules form a VNF component, and an instance of this component can be mapped 1:1 to a single virtualized container middle. The resources required by VNF need to be decomposed into virtual computing/storage/exchange resources, which are carried by NFVI. A VNF can be deployed on one or more VMs. A VNF is a software-based network element, deployed on a virtual machine, and its functions are consistent with interfaces and non-virtualized ones. EM mainly completes the management functions of network elements and new management functions in the virtualized environment.

(3) NFV management and orchestration system (management and orchestration, MANO)

NFV MANO contains three logical component roles: NFV orchestrator (NFV orchestrator, NFVO), VNF manager (VNFmanager, VNFM) and virtual facility manager (virtualised infrastructure manager, VIM). The three logical components serve the three layers S layer, P layer and I layer respectively, and manage the objects seen by each layer.

VIM: Responsible for the I layer and manage basic resources (VM, network, storage). The objects it sees are VMs or containers and their images and network interfaces. The implementation example of this layer is Openstack/Kubernetes. OpenStack is an open source cloud computing management platform project, which is a combination of a series of software open source projects. Kubernetes is a container orchestration engine open sourced by Google, which supports automated deployment, large-scale scalability, and application containerized management. VIM is mainly responsible for the management, monitoring and fault reporting of hardware resources and virtualized resources at the infrastructure layer, and provides virtualized resource pools for upper-layer VNFM and NFVO. VIM can be used to manage NFVI and control the allocation of virtual resources of VNF. The functions include hardware resource management and monitoring, virtualized resource management and monitoring, and hardware resource and virtualized resource fault management. VIM is often part of the virtualization layer, not a standalone solution, providing visual management and resource management for the underlying virtualization infrastructure (virtual hosts, virtual storage, and virtual networks).

VNFM: Responsible for the P layer, VNF life cycle management (VNF deployment, expansion, reduction, offline, etc.), it sees one VNF network element, and can perceive the characteristics of each VNF, such as vRG, vRG_VM, vNAT, etc., and describe the characteristic parameters of each specific network element through a virtualised network function descriptor (VNFD) file.

NFVO: Responsible for the S layer, treating the network as a capability to provide life cycle management of network services (deployment, expansion, reduction, and offline of network services). NFVO is used to manage the life cycle of network services, coordinate the management of various resources of NFVI in the life cycle of VNF, and manage, orchestrate and automate the end-to-end network services provided by VNF and NFVI, so as to ensure that the various resources required are compatible with each other. Optimized configuration of connections. Generally, an orchestrator (orchestrator) generally manages the NFV service implementation.

In addition, the operator's operation support system (operations support systems and business support system, OSS/BSS) includes billing, settlement, accounting, customer service, business and other functions; among them, OSS is the traditional network management system; BSS is the traditional business support system.

The automatic capacity expansion scheme and the automatic capacity reduction scheme provided by the present application are described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. This application provides an automatic capacity expansion scheme and an automatic capacity reduction scheme initiated by the VNFM, as well as an automatic capacity expansion scheme and an automatic capacity reduction scheme initiated by the VNF. In the automatic capacity expansion scheme initiated by the VNFM, the VNFM obtains the capacity expansion policy from the VNFD, and implements the linked capacity expansion of the container group and the virtual machine according to the capacity expansion policy. Similarly, in the automatic scaling scheme initiated by the VNFM, the VNFM obtains the scaling policy from the VNFD, and implements the coordinated scaling down of the container group and the virtual machine according to the scaling policy. In the automatic expansion scheme initiated by the VNF, the VNF realizes the linkage expansion of the container group and the virtual machine according to the expansion strategy. Similarly, in the automatic scaling scheme initiated by the VNF, the VNF realizes the coordinated scaling down of the container group and the virtual machine according to the scaling policy. The following first introduces the automatic capacity expansion scheme initiated by VNFM.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application. The method flow in Figure 2 is applied to an NFV system including VNFM and VNF, such as the NFV reference architecture. As shown in Figure 2, the method includes:

201. The VNFM obtains the target capacity expansion policy from the VNFD.

One or more expansion strategies may be defined in the above VNFD, and each expansion strategy may correspond to a type of container group. If there are multiple expansion policies defined in the VNFD, it means that the VNFD supports the automatic expansion of multiple types of container groups. Any expansion strategy defined in the VNFD is the expansion strategy supported by the VNFM. In some embodiments, the user can adjust one or more capacity expansion policies defined in the initial VNFD according to business scenario requirements to obtain the required capacity expansion policy (ie, the capacity expansion policy defined in the VNFD). That is, the user can modify the pre-configured initial VNFD to obtain the required VNFD, and the capacity expansion policy defined in the VNFD can be understood as the capacity expansion policy configured by the user. The above VNFD may be associated with one or more VNFs, for example, the VNFD is associated with a target VNF. The target capacity expansion policy obtained by the VNFM from the VNFD may be understood as the capacity expansion policy adopted by one or more VNFs associated with the VNFD, that is, the configured capacity expansion policy of the one or more VNFs. For example, a VNFM can obtain expansion policies from one or more VNFDs, and each VNFD is associated with one or more VNFs. The VNFM can obtain the expansion policy adopted by the VNF from the VNFD associated with any VNF.

The above-mentioned target capacity expansion policy may include: conditions that need to be satisfied for expanding the container group of the first type, and expanding the virtual machine of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type. The container group of the first type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type. The above-mentioned target capacity expansion policy may be configured with an association relationship between the first container group type and the first virtual machine type. The first container group type is a container group type corresponding to the first type of container group, and the first virtual machine type is a virtual machine type corresponding to the first type of virtual machine. That is, the container group of the first type (ie, the first container group type) is associated with the virtual machine of the first type (the first virtual machine type). The first type of container group can be any type of container group.

202. The VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF.

The above target VNF is a VNF that adopts the above target capacity expansion strategy. The above target VNF may be a VNF associated with the above VNFD. The VNFM may determine to expand the container group of the first type on the target VNF when the target VNF meets the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type.

A possible implementation manner of step 202 may be: the VNFM determines the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF according to the resource usage status indicator from the target VNF and the target capacity expansion policy. The resource usage status indicator can represent the resource usage of the first type of container group in the target VNF. Exemplarily, the resource usage status indicator includes two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent that the container group of the first type in the target VNF is at the same time. Resource usage at two or more moments in the segment, two or more resource usage status sampling indicators are in one-to-one correspondence with two or more moments; the above VNFM is expanded according to the above resource usage status indicators and the above target The strategy to determine that the container group of the first type to be expanded on the above-mentioned target VNF may be: the above-mentioned VNFM determines that the above-mentioned two or more above-mentioned resource usage status sampling indicators exceed the expansion threshold (for example, 60%). The container group of the first type is to be expanded on the target VNF.

In some embodiments, for a service node where only one container is deployed in a container group, the VNF (for example, the target VNF) can directly obtain the key performance indicator (KPI) value of the container, and the VNF summarizes the data of all container groups of the same type. After the KPI values, the average value of these KPI values is taken as the resource usage status sampling indicator and reported to the VNFM. Understandably, if only one container is deployed in a container group, the KPI value of the container is the KPI value of the container group. The KPI value of a container can be any parameter that characterizes the resource usage of the container, such as the CPU usage rate and memory usage rate corresponding to the container, or it can be a representation obtained by using multiple calculations in the CPU usage rate and memory usage rate. Parameters for the resource usage of this container. In some embodiments, for a service node where multiple containers are deployed in a container group, the VNF needs to select the largest KPI value among the KPI values of each container in the container group as the KPI value of the container group, and the VNF summarizes all containers of the same type After obtaining the KPI values of the group, the average value of these KPI values is taken as the resource usage status sampling indicator of the container group of this type and reported to the VNFM. It should be understood that the VNF can calculate the KPI value of any container group in which multiple containers are deployed in the same manner. In practical applications, the VNF may periodically (for example, every 10s) report a resource usage status sampling indicator of each type of container group to the VNFM.

The conditions that need to be satisfied for expanding the container group of the first type may include: consecutive multiple (eg 30) resource usage status sampling indicators of the container group of the first type all exceed the capacity expansion threshold (eg 60%). The above target capacity expansion strategy may further include: F (corresponding to the capacity expansion step) container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met. Therefore, when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met, the VNFM determines that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded in the target VNF. In some embodiments, the VNFM compares two or two resource usage status sampling indicators from the target VNF with the capacity expansion threshold, and determines whether to initiate capacity expansion according to other monitoring configurations. For example, the target VNF is sampled every 10s, and a resource usage status sampling indicator obtained by sampling is reported, and the samples are continuously sampled 30 times. If the resource usage status sampling indicators of the first type container group reported by the target VNF for 30 consecutive times all exceed the capacity expansion threshold (for example, 60%), the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be expanded is determined.

203. The VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine in the target VNF. A possible implementation manner of step 203 may be: the VNFM determines the virtual machine of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF according to the target capacity expansion policy; the VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM.

204. The VNFM sends the second capacity expansion information.

The above-mentioned second capacity expansion information is used to indicate that the above-mentioned first type of container group is created in the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine. A possible implementation manner of step 204 may be: the VNFM sends the second capacity expansion information to a platform as a service (platform as a service, PAAS). PAAS is responsible for managing containers. PAAS is an important part of cloud computing, providing computing platforms and solution services. In a typical layer of cloud computing, the PAAS layer is between software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service. PAAS allows users to deploy and create cloud infrastructure to clients, or access programming languages, libraries and services. Users do not need to manage and control cloud infrastructure (including network, server, operating system or storage), but need to control the upper-layer application deployment and application hosting environment. PAAS takes the software development platform as a service and delivers it to users in a software-as-a-service model. PAAS provides a software deployment platform (runtime) that abstracts hardware and operating system details and can be seamlessly extended (scaling).

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, the container group of the second type is expanded; the second capacity expansion information is further used to indicate that the virtual machine of the first type is Create a container group of the second type above. That is to say, the second capacity expansion information indicates that a container group of the first type and a container group of the second type are created in the virtual machine of the first type, so that the container group can be expanded in linkage. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type can support the same service and can be deployed on the same virtual machine. In this implementation manner, when expanding the container group of the first type, the container group of the second type can be expanded, and the resources of the virtual machine can be fully utilized.

Fig. 2 describes the method flow performed by the VNFM when expanding the container group of the first type on the target VNF. It should be understood that a VNFM can perform a similar approach in order to achieve scaling of any type of container group on any VNF.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart of another automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application. The method flow in FIG. 3 is a refinement and improvement of the method flow in FIG. 2 . As shown in Figure 3, the method includes:

301. The VNFM obtains the target capacity expansion policy from the VNFD.

The implementation manner of step 301 may be the same as that of step 201 .

302. The VNFM receives the resource usage status indicator from the target VNF.

The above-mentioned resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage situation of the above-mentioned container group of the above-mentioned first type in the above-mentioned target VNF. The resource usage status indicators may include two or more resource usage status sampling indicators. In some embodiments, the VNFM may periodically query the target VNF for the resource usage status sampling indicator of the container group of the first type, and receive the resource usage status sampling indicator of the first type container group reported by the target VNF. The target VNF may be associated with the VNFD in step 301 .

303. The VNFM determines F first type container groups to be expanded on the target VNF according to the resource usage status indicator from the target VNF and the target capacity expansion policy.

The above target capacity expansion strategy includes: conditions to be satisfied for expanding the container group of the first type, and the number of container groups to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are satisfied. When the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met, the number of the container group of the first type to be expanded may be referred to as the expansion step size corresponding to the container group of the first type. The above-mentioned F is an integer greater than 0. The implementation of step 303 may be similar to that of step 202 .

304. The VNFM determines that K virtual machines of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF are to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion policy when the target VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required for expanding the F first type container groups.

The above-mentioned K is an integer greater than 0, and the above-mentioned K is less than or equal to the above-mentioned F. The first type of container group described above is affinity. Since the above-mentioned container group of the first type is affinity, the container group of the first type can be created in the existing virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF (the container group of the first type is not deployed). The condition that the target VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required for expanding the F first type container groups may be: the target VNF does not contain F virtual machines that can be used to expand the first type container groups. The virtual machine in the target VNF that can be used to expand the container group of the first type refers to a virtual machine of the first type that can create the container group of the first type and does not affect the operation of the deployed container group. If the target VNF satisfies the virtual machine resources required for the expansion of F first-type container groups, F can be expanded from the existing F first-type virtual machines (where the first-type container group is not deployed). The first type of container group, which can make full use of virtual machine resources without having to expand the virtual machine. If the target VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required to expand the F container groups of the first type, then determine the number of virtual machines of the first type that need to be expanded when deploying the F container groups of the first type to be expanded, and expand the corresponding number of virtual machines of the first type. For example, there are 5 (corresponding to F) container groups of the first type to be expanded in the target VNF, and only 2 virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF can be used to expand the container group of the first type. The VNFM expands according to the target expansion policy It is determined that 3 (corresponding to K) virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF, and one container group of the first type can be expanded in each virtual machine of the first type.

Step 304 may be replaced with: the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, F virtual machines of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF. Wherein, the container group of the above-mentioned first type is non-affinity. It should be understood that since the above-mentioned container group of the first type is non-affinity, if F container groups of the first type are to be expanded, F virtual machines of the first type must be expanded first.

305. The VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion information is used to indicate to expand the capacity of K (or F) virtual machines of the above-mentioned first type in the above-mentioned target VNF.

306. The VNFM sends the second capacity expansion information.

The foregoing second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create F first-type container groups in F first-type virtual machines, and create one first-type virtual machine in each first-type virtual machine. For example, the VNFM determines that 5 container groups of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF (corresponding to step 303 ) and 3 virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded (corresponding to step 304 ), and the target VNF is expanded by 3 After the first type of virtual machine, the VNFM sends second capacity expansion information, the second capacity expansion information instructs to create five first type of virtual machines in five first type of container groups; The virtual machine includes 3 virtual machines of the first type for expansion. For another example, the VNFM determines that five container groups of the first type and five virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded on the target VNF. After the five virtual machines of the first type are expanded on the target VNF, the VNFM sends the Second capacity expansion information, where the second capacity expansion information indicates that five container groups of the first type are created in the five virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding M number of container groups of the second type; the second capacity expansion information is also used to indicate that the container group of the first type is M number of container groups of the second type are created in the virtual machine. That is to say, the foregoing second capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F first-type container groups and (F*M) second-type container groups are created in the F first-type virtual machines. One container group of the first type and M container groups of the second type are created in each virtual machine of the first type, so that the container group can be linked and expanded. Linkage expansion of container groups refers to the expansion of two or more different types of container groups in the same virtual machine at the same time. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type can support the same service and can be deployed on the same virtual machine. In this implementation manner, when the container group of the first type is expanded, the container group of the second type is expanded, and the resources of the virtual machine can be fully utilized.

In the embodiment of the present application, the VNFM sends the first capacity expansion information to the VIM when the target VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required for capacity expansion of F first-type container groups; The number of virtual machines, which can make full use of virtual machine resources.

FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 introduce the main flow performed by the VNFM in the automatic capacity expansion solution provided by the present application. In practical applications, the linkage expansion of VMs and virtual machines requires not only the participation of VNFM, but also the participation of NFVO, VNF, PAAS, and VIM. The following describes an interaction process of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings. The interaction process of the automatic expansion method describes the operations performed by VNFM, NFVO, VNF, PAAS and VIM respectively in the process of realizing the linkage expansion of the container group and the virtual machine. FIG. 4 is an interaction flow of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application. As shown in Figure 4, the method includes:

401. The VNFM configures a capacity expansion strategy.

The user can configure capacity expansion policies for one or more types of container groups, for example, configure capacity expansion policies for the first type of container groups, that is, target capacity expansion policies. The following describes how to configure the capacity expansion policy of any type of container group by taking the configuration of the capacity expansion policy of the first type of container group as an example. A possible implementation manner of configuring the capacity expansion policy of the container group of the first type is as follows: receiving a user's capacity expansion policy configuration instruction for the container group of the first type through the capacity expansion policy configuration interface; The expansion strategy of the container group, that is, the target expansion strategy. The VNFM can display the initial VNFD (corresponding to the predefined expansion strategy) on the user interface (UI) of NFVI in a graphical interface, that is, the expansion strategy configuration interface. An initial VNFD can be associated with one or more VNFs. A capacity expansion policy can be predefined in the initial VNFD. That is to say, the VNFM can display the predefined expansion strategy (corresponding to the initial VNFD) through the UI interface; the user can adjust (or modify) the predefined expansion strategy through the UI interface to obtain the required expansion strategy (corresponding to the initial VNFD). VNFD). The operation of the user adjusting (or modifying) the predefined capacity expansion policy through the UI interface is the capacity expansion policy configuration instruction input by the user for the above-mentioned first type of container group. In practical applications, users can configure the VNFD associated with any VNF through the expansion policy configuration command. That is to say, users can configure the expansion strategy adopted by any VNF. For example, the expansion strategy of any type of container group includes one or more of the following configuration parameters: 1), the type of the container group to be automatically expanded, such as the first container group type; 2), the KPI sampling period, such as 10s; 3), the expansion threshold, such as 60%; 4), the expansion step, such as 3, that is, 3 container groups are expanded each time; 5), the duration, such as 300s, that is, if the KPI sampled within 300s (that is, the resource usage status If the sampling indicators) exceed the expansion threshold, automatic expansion will be triggered; 6), the cooling time, such as 300s, that is, after the automatic expansion task is completed, no automatic expansion will be performed within 300s; 7), the type association of the automatically expanded container group 8), the type and quantity of the container group to be expanded in linkage. In this application, the KPI sampling period refers to the period during which the VNF obtains the resource usage status sampling indicators of each type of container group, that is, the period during which the VNF reports the resource usage status sampling indicators of each type of container group to the VNFM once. The above configuration parameters can be fields in the VNFD, and can be modified by users. In some embodiments, the KPI of the container group is a fixed support field of the VNF, which does not support manual modification by the user. In some embodiments, the KPIs of the container group support manual modification by the user. In practical applications, the user can select the type of container group that needs to be automatically expanded, and configure the required expansion strategy by modifying the corresponding configuration parameters. Step 401 is optional, but not necessary. Step 401 can be replaced with: the VNFM obtains the expansion policy from the VNFD.

402. The VNFM sends a first query request to the target VNF.

The above-mentioned first query request is used to query the resource usage status indicators of one or more types of container groups in the target VNF. Exemplarily, the VNFM periodically (for example, every 10s) sends a first query request to the target VNF, where the first query request is used to query the resource usage status indicators of each type of container group configured with a capacity expansion policy. For example, the VNFM is configured with expansion policies for 10 types of container groups, and the VNFM sends a first query request to the target VNF, where the first query request is used to query the resource usage status of each type of container group in the 10 types. index.

403. The target VNF sends the first indicator information to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first indicator information is information fed back for the first query request. The above-mentioned first indicator information may include resource usage status indicators of one or more types of container groups in the target VNF. For example, the VNFM is configured with expansion policies for 10 types of container groups, and the VNFM sends a first query request to the target VNF, where the first query request is used to query the resource usage status of each type of container group in the 10 types. Indicator; the target VNF sends first indicator information to the VNFM, where the first indicator information includes resource usage status indicators of each type of container group in the 10 types.

404. The VNFM determines the type and number of container groups to be expanded on the target VNF according to the first indicator information and the capacity expansion policy.

The above-mentioned first indicator information includes resource usage status indicators of one or more types of container groups. The VNFM can obtain the configured expansion policy of any type of container group from the VNFD. It should be understood that the VNFM can determine whether any type of container group needs to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicator of any type of container group and the configured expansion policy of the container group of any type. For example, the VNFM determines F first-type container groups to be expanded on the target VNF according to the first indicator information and the target expansion strategy, where the target expansion strategy is the configured expansion strategy for the first-type container group.

405. The VNFM queries the virtual machine type associated with the container group to be expanded.

A possible implementation manner of step 405 is as follows: the VNFM queries the VNFD for the virtual machine type associated with the type of the container group to be expanded (also called binding). For example, the configuration parameters in the VNFD may include the virtual machine type (corresponding to the first type) associated with the container group of the first type. In some embodiments, before expanding the container group of the first type, the VNFM first expands the virtual machine of the first type (that is, the virtual machine type associated with the container group of the first type), and then according to whether the container group of the first type is Configure a linked container group, and determine whether to expand the capacity of other container groups simultaneously with the expansion of the first type of container group. If the container group of the first type is not configured with a linked container group, after the virtual machine of the first type is expanded, the container group of the first type is expanded in the virtual machine of the first type to be expanded. If the container group of the first type is configured with a linked container group, after the virtual machine of the first type is expanded, the container group of the first type and the linked container group of the first type are expanded in the expanded virtual machine of the first type. container group.

406. The VNFM sends a first virtual machine creation request to the VIM.

The above-mentioned first virtual machine creation request (corresponding to the first capacity expansion information) is used to indicate the type and number of virtual machines that need to be expanded by the VIM. For example, the VNFM determines that five virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded; the VNFM sends a virtual machine creation request to the VIM, and the virtual machine creation request instructs the VIM to create five virtual machines of the first type.

407. The VIM creates a virtual machine according to the first virtual machine creation request, and sends a first creation success response to the VNFM.

The VIM may create virtual machines of a corresponding type and number according to the first virtual machine creation request. For example, the first virtual machine creation request instructs the VIM to create five virtual machines of the first type, and the VIM creates five virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF. As another example, the first virtual machine creation request instructs the VIM to create 5 virtual machines of the first type and 3 virtual machines of the second type, and the VIM creates 5 virtual machines of the first type and 3 virtual machines of the second type in the target VNF. The second type of virtual machine. The first creation success response indicates that the virtual machine has been successfully created according to the first virtual machine creation request.

408. The VNFM sends the first management information to the PAAS.

The above-mentioned first management information is used to notify the PAAS to manage the virtual machine created by the VIM. The first managed information may include the identifier of the virtual machine created by the VIM in step 407 .

409. The PAAS manages the virtual machine created by the VIM, and sends a first management response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first administration response indicates that the PAAS has already managed the virtual machine created by the VIM. In some embodiments, the first management information may include the identifiers of the virtual machines created by the VIM in step 407, and the PAAS manages the corresponding virtual machines according to these identifiers.

410. The VNFM sends a notification of the end of the first capacity expansion event to the NFVO.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion event end information indicates that the capacity expansion of the virtual machine has been completed.

411. The NFVO sends a first capacity expansion event notification response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion event notification response indicates that the NFVO has received the first capacity expansion event end notification.

412. The VNFM sends a first capacity expansion notification to the target VNF.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion notification is used to notify the target VNF of the type and number of container groups to be expanded. For example, the VNFM sends a first capacity expansion notice to the target VNF, where the first capacity expansion notice is used to notify the target VNF that F container groups of the first type are to be expanded.

413. The target VNF sends a first capacity expansion notification response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first capacity expansion notification response indicates that the target VNF has received the first capacity expansion notification.

414. The VNFM sends a first container group creation request to the PAAS.

The above-mentioned first container group creation request (corresponding to the second capacity expansion information) is used to indicate the type and number of container groups to be created by the PAAS.

415. The PAAS creates a container group according to the first container group creation request, and sends the first creation result to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first creation result may include the identifier of the container group created by the PAAS.

416. The VNFM sends the first capacity expansion list to the target VNF.

The first expansion list indicates the container group successfully created by PAAS. The above-mentioned first capacity expansion list may include the identifiers of the container groups successfully created by the PAAS. The target VNF can obtain the container group successfully created by PAAS according to the first expansion list. Step 416 can be understood as the VNFM notifying the target VNF of the identifier of the newly created container group. The newly created container group refers to the container group created by the PAAS in step 415 . It should be understood that the VNFM may also notify the target VNF of the identity of the newly created container group in other ways.

417. The target VNF sends a first notification response to the VNFM, expands the container group according to the first expansion list, and reports the expansion progress to the VNFM.

The foregoing first notification response is used to indicate that the first capacity expansion list is received. The capacity expansion progress refers to the progress of expanding the container group of the target VNF according to the first capacity expansion list. Expanding the container group according to the first capacity expansion list may be: expanding the container group in the first capacity expansion list by the target VNF.

418. The target VNF performs service load balancing.

419. VNFM displays the results of automatic capacity expansion tasks through the UI interface of NFVO.

The result of the automatic expansion task can include the type and number of the virtual machines to be expanded, and the type and number of the container group to be expanded. Figure 4 uses the target VNF as an example to describe the linkage expansion process of container groups and virtual machines. It should be understood that any VNF in the NFV system can use a similar process to realize expansion and contraction of container groups and virtual machines.

In the embodiment of the present application, the VNFM can accurately determine the type and number of container groups that need to be expanded, and the type and number of virtual machines, which can improve resource utilization.

The following describes the automatic scaling solution initiated by the VNFM provided by the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application. The method flow in Figure 5 is applied to an NFV system including VNFM and VNF, such as the NFV reference architecture. As shown in Figure 5, the method includes:

501. The VNFM obtains the target scaling policy from the VNFD.

The above-mentioned target shrinking strategy may include: the conditions that need to be satisfied for shrinking the container group of the first type, the number of container groups to be reduced (corresponding to the shrinkage) when the conditions for shrinking the container group of the first type are satisfied. step size), and the first type of virtual machine is scaled down after the above-mentioned first type of container group is scaled down. The container group of the first type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type.

One or more scaling policies may be defined in the above VNFD, and each scaling policy may correspond to a type of container group. If there are multiple scaling policies defined in the VNFD, the VNFD supports automatic scaling of multiple types of container groups. Any scaling policy defined in the VNFD is a scaling policy supported by the VNFM. In some embodiments, the user can adjust one or more scaling policies defined in the initial VNFD according to business scenario requirements to obtain the required scaling policies (that is, the scaling policies defined in the VNFD). That is, the user can modify the pre-configured initial VNFD to obtain the required VNFD, and the scaling policy defined in the VNFD can be understood as the scaling policy configured by the user.

502. The VNFM receives the resource usage status indicator from the target VNF.

The above-mentioned resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage situation of the above-mentioned container group of the above-mentioned first type in the above-mentioned target VNF. The VNFD in step 501 may be associated with the target VNF. The target reduction strategy obtained by the VNFM from the VNFD may be understood as the reduction strategy adopted by the VNF associated with the VNFD, that is, the reduction strategy configured for the VNF associated with the VNFD. For example, a VNFM can obtain a scaling policy from one or more VNFDs, and each VNFD is associated with one or more VNFs.

503. The VNFM determines F container groups of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy and the resource usage status indicator.

The above-mentioned F is an integer greater than 0. The conditions that need to be met for scaling down the container group of the first type may include: none of consecutive multiple (eg 30) resource usage status sampling indicators of the container group of the first type exceeds the scaling threshold (eg 20%). When the conditions for shrinking the container group of the first type are satisfied, the number of container groups of the first type to be reduced is F. Therefore, when the conditions for shrinking the container group of the first type are met, the VNFM determines F container groups of the first type in the target VNF to be reduced. In some embodiments, the VNFM compares the resource usage status indicators (ie, two or more resource usage status sampling indicators) from the target VNF with the scaling threshold, and determines whether or not according to other monitoring configurations in the target scaling policy Scaling needs to be initiated. For example, the target VNF is sampled every 10s, and a resource usage status sampling indicator obtained by sampling is reported, and the samples are continuously sampled 30 times. If the resource usage status sampling indicators of the first type container group reported by the target VNF for 30 consecutive times do not exceed the scaling threshold (for example, 20%), the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled is determined.

504. The VNFM sends the first capacity reduction information.

The foregoing first scaling information is used to indicate the F first type container groups in the scaling target VNF. A possible implementation manner of step 504 may be: the VNFM sends the first capacity reduction information to the PAAS. The first shrinking information may be a list including the type and number of container groups to be shrinked.

In a possible implementation manner, the above-mentioned target shrinking strategy further includes: shrinking N number of container groups of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the first shrinking information is further used to indicate the shrinking For the container group of the second type, the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type may support the same service. For example, the second capacity expansion information is used to indicate F container groups of the first type and (F*N) container groups of the second type in the scale-down target VNF, where N is an integer greater than 0. In each virtual machine of the first type, one container group of the first type and N container groups of the second type can be scaled down, so that the container group can be reduced in a coordinated manner. Linked shrinking of container groups refers to the simultaneous shrinking of two or more different types of container groups in the same virtual machine. In this implementation manner, when shrinking a container group of a first type when shrinking a container group of a second type, the resources occupied by the container group of the second type can be released in time.

In a possible implementation manner, before sending the first shrinkage information, the VNFM may perform the following operations: the VNFM sends third shrinkage information to the target VNF, and the third shrinkage information is used to confirm whether the target VNF can be shrinked. The VNFM receives fourth shrinkage information from the VNF, where the fourth shrinkage information indicates that the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be shrinkable. In this implementation manner, the VNFM sends the third scaling information to the target VNF, so as to confirm whether the container group of the first type can be scaled down, so as to avoid scaling down the container group that cannot be scaled down.

505. The VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down.

506. The VNFM sends the second capacity reduction information to the VIM.

The above-mentioned second scaling information is used to indicate the above-mentioned virtual machine of the first type in the scaling-down target VNF. In a possible implementation manner, the above-mentioned second capacity reduction information is used to instruct to scale down the above-mentioned virtual machines of the first type in which the service container group is not deployed among the plurality of above-mentioned virtual machines of the above-mentioned first type deployed in the above-mentioned target VNF; or , the second shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink one or more virtual machines of the first type with the lowest CPU occupancy rate of the CPU among the plurality of virtual machines of the first type deployed in the target VNF. For example, the manner in which the VNFM selects the first type of virtual machines to be scaled down is as follows: the VNFM preferentially selects the virtual machines in which the service container group is not deployed among the plurality of first type virtual machines deployed in the target VNF, and then selects the CPU One or more virtual machines of the first type with the lowest occupancy.

Fig. 5 describes the method flow executed by the VNFM when scaling down the container group of the first type on the target VNF. It should be understood that a VNFM can perform a similar approach to enable scaling of any type of container group on any VNF.

In this embodiment of the present application, after shrinking the container group of the first type, the virtual machine of the first type (that is, the virtual machine that carries the container group of the first type) is reduced, which can prevent redundant virtual machines from running any container group. waste of resources.

FIG. 5 introduces the main flow of VNFM execution in the automatic scaling solution provided by this application. In practical applications, to realize the linkage reduction of VMs and container groups, not only the participation of VNFM is required, but also the participation of NFVO, VNF, PAAS, and VIM. The following describes an interaction process of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings. The interaction process of the automatic scaling method describes the operations performed by VNFM, NFVO, VNF, PAAS, and VIM respectively in the process of realizing the linkage scaling between the container group and the virtual machine. FIG. 6 is an interaction flow of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application. As shown in Figure 6, the method includes:

601. The VNFM configures a scaling policy.

A user can configure a scaling policy for one or more types of container groups, for example, configure a scaling policy for a container group of the first type. The VNFM can configure the shrinking policy in the same way as the expansion policy. The following describes how to configure a scaling policy for any type of container group by taking the configuration of the scaling policy of the first type of container group as an example. A possible implementation manner of configuring the shrinkage policy of the container group of the first type is as follows: receiving a user's shrinkage policy configuration instruction for the container group of the first type through the shrinkage policy configuration interface; according to the shrinkage policy configuration instruction, the configuration obtains Target scaling strategy. The VNFM can display the initial VNFD (corresponding to the predefined scaling policy) on the UI interface in a graphical interface, that is, the scaling policy configuration interface. A scaling policy is predefined in the initial VNFD. That is to say, the VNFM can display the predefined scaling strategy (corresponding to the initial VNFD) through the UI interface; the user can adjust (or modify) the predefined scaling strategy through the UI interface to obtain the required scaling strategy ( corresponds to VNFD). The operation that the user can adjust (or modify) the predefined scaling policy through the UI interface is the scaling policy configuration instruction input by the user for the above-mentioned first type of container group. For example, the scaling policy includes one or more of the following configuration parameters: 1), the type of the container group to be automatically scaled, such as the first container group type; 2), the KPI sampling period, such as 10s; 3), the scaling Capacity threshold, such as 20%; 4), scaling step, such as 3, that is, 3 container groups are scaled each time; 5), duration, such as 300s, that is, the KPI sampled within 300s exceeds the scaling threshold, it will trigger Automatic expansion; 6), cooling time, such as 300s, that is, after the completion of this automatic scaling task, no automatic scaling will be performed within 300s; 7), the type of the virtual machine associated with the type of the container group to be automatically expanded (that is, linked scaling 8), the type and number of container groups to be scaled in linkage. The above configuration parameters can be fields in the VNFD, and can be modified by users. In some embodiments, the KPI of the container group is a fixed support field of the VNF, which does not support manual modification by the user. In some embodiments, the user can manually modify the KPIs of the container group. In practical applications, the user can select the type of container group that needs to be automatically scaled, and configure the required scaling strategy by modifying the corresponding configuration parameters. Step 601 is optional, but not necessary. Step 601 may be replaced with: the VNFM obtains the scaling policy from the VNFD.

602. The VNFM sends a second query request to the target VNF.

The above-mentioned second query request is used to query the resource usage status indicators of one or more types of container groups in the target VNF. The implementation of step 602 may be similar to that of step 402 . The target VNF is any VNF.

603. The target VNF sends the second indicator information to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second indicator information is information fed back for the second query request. The above-mentioned second indicator information may include resource usage status indicators of one or more types of container groups in the target VNF. The implementation of step 603 may be the same as that of step 403 .

604. The VNFM determines the number and types of container groups to be scaled down on the target VNF according to the second indicator information and the configured scaling policies for each type of container group.

The above-mentioned second indicator information includes the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type. In some embodiments, the VNFM may determine whether any type of container group needs to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator of any type of container group and the configured scaling policy for the container group of any type . After judging that any type of container group needs to be scaled down, the VNFM determines the number of the container group of any type to be scaled down. For example, the VNFM determines F first-type container groups to be scaled down on the target VNF according to the second indicator information and the target scaling policy.

605. The VNFM sends the first shrinking list to the target VNF.

The first shrink list includes the number and type of container groups that need to be shrunk (that is, to be shrunk) on the target VNF.

606. The target VNF performs service migration for one or more types of container groups included in the first shrinking list, and generates a second shrinking list.

The second scale-down list indicates the container groups that can be scaled down on the target VNF. Exemplarily, the second scaling list includes identifiers of container groups that can be scaled down on the target VNF. In some embodiments, after receiving the first shrinking list, the target VNF determines whether the instance corresponding to each type of container group in the first shrinking list can be reduced in size. If the instance corresponding to a container group of a certain type can be scaled down, the service migration of the container group of this type is performed. If the instance corresponding to a certain type of container group cannot be scaled down, it returns a failure and waits for the next cycle to scale up. The next period may be a preset duration, such as 300s. When the target VNF selects the container group to be scaled down, it can preferentially select the container group on the same VM to be scaled down to prevent the container group topology after scaling down from meeting the requirements. When the container group topology does not meet the requirements, the container group needs to be rescheduled, which will cause service call loss.

607. The target VNF sends the second shrinking list to the VNFM.

608. The VNFM sends the second shrinking list to the PAAS.

609. The PAAS shrinks the container group in the second shrinking list, and sends the first shrinking result to the VNFM.

The first scale down result indicates the container group that PAAS scaled successfully. Exemplarily, the first scaling result includes the identifier of the container group successfully scaled down by the PAAS. PAAS shrinks the container groups in the second shrink list. After the PAAS completes the shrinking of the container group in the second shrinking list, it sends the first shrinking result to the VNFM.

610. The VNFM sends a third shrinking list to the target VNF.

The third scale-down list indicates the container groups in the target VNF that have been scaled down successfully. Exemplarily, the third scaling list includes the identifiers of the container groups in the target VNF that are successfully scaled down.

611. The target VNF sends a second notification response to the VNFM.

The second notification response is used to indicate that the third shrink list is received.

612. The target VNF shrinks the container group according to the third shrinking list, and reports the shrinking progress to the VNFM.

The target VNF shrinking the container group according to the third shrinking list may be: the target VNF shrinks the container group in the third shrinking list.

613. The VNFM sends a scaling progress response to the target VNF.

The shrinking progress response indicates that the VNFM receives the shrinking progress reported by the target VNF.

614. The VNFM sends the VNFO a capacity reduction authorization application.

The scaling-in authorization application is used to indicate the type and number of virtual machines to be scaled down. In some embodiments, after the container group is scaled down, the VNFM can determine the type and number of virtual machines to be deleted on the target VNF according to the scale down policy in the VNFD, and initiate a scale down authorization application to the NFVO. For example, after the container group of the first type is scaled down, the VNFM can determine the number of virtual machines that need to be scaled down and the number of virtual machines of the first type to be scaled down according to the scaling policy in the VNFD. .

615. The NFVO sends a reduction authorization response to the VNFM.

The above shrinkage authorization response indicates that the VNFO agrees to the VNFM's request for a shrinkage authorization.

616. The VNFM sends a notification of the start of a scaling event to NFVO.

The scale-in event start notification instructs the VNFM to start scaling down the virtual machine.

617. The NFVO sends a first scaling event response to the VNFM.

The first scale down event response indicates that the NFVO has received a scale down event start notification.

618. VNFM preferentially selects virtual machines that do not have service container groups deployed for shrinking. If there is no virtual machine of this type, it will be sorted according to the CPU usage, from low to high, and will be notified to PAAS to dismantle the VNFM to shrink. capable virtual machine.

619 . The PAAS de-manages the virtual machine scaled down by the VNFM, and sends a first de-managing response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned first decommissioning response instructs the PAAS to complete decommissioning of the virtual machine scaled by the VNFM.

620. The VNFM sends a first deletion request to the VIM.

The first deletion request is used to request to delete the virtual machine resources occupied by the virtual machine that is reduced in size by the VNF.

621. The VIM sends a first deletion response to the VNFM.

The first deletion response indicates that the virtual machine resources occupied by the downscaled virtual machine are successfully deleted.

622. The VNFM sends a notification of the end of the shrinking event to the NFVO.

The shrink event end notification instructs the VNFM to complete the shrink.

623. The NFVO sends a second scaling event response to the VNFM.

The second scale down event response indicates that the NFVO has received a scale down event end notification.

624. The VNFM displays the result of the automatic scaling task through the UI interface of NFVO.

The result of the automatic scaling task can include the type and number of the scaled virtual machines, and the type and number of the scaled container group. Figure 6 uses the target VNF as an example to describe the coordinated scaling process of a container group and a virtual machine. It should be understood that any VNF in the NFV system can use a similar process to realize the linkage reduction of the container group and the virtual machine.

In the embodiment of the present application, the VNFM can accurately determine the type and number of container groups that need to be scaled down, and the type and number of virtual machines, which can improve resource utilization.

The automatic capacity expansion scheme initiated by VNFM (corresponding to the method flow in Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4) and the automatic capacity reduction scheme initiated by VNFM (corresponding to the methods in Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4) are described above. process). In practical applications, the automatic capacity expansion solution and the automatic capacity reduction solution provided in this application can be implemented independently or simultaneously. In some embodiments, the VNFM may determine whether the coordinated capacity reduction or the coordinated capacity reduction is required according to the resource usage status indicator from the VNF. When it is determined that linkage expansion is required, the automatic expansion method process is executed; when it is determined that linkage reduction is required, the automatic capacity reduction method process is executed. For example, the VNFM can implement both the automatic capacity expansion method flow shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 , and the automatic capacity reduction method flow shown in FIG. 5 .

The following describes the automatic capacity expansion solution initiated by the VNF provided by the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart of another automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application. The method flow in Figure 7 is applied to an NFV system including VNFM and VNF, such as the NFV reference architecture. As shown in Figure 7, the method includes:

701. The target VNF acquires the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type.

The resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF. For example, the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type is the CPU usage rate corresponding to the container group of the first type.

702. The target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion policy and the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type.

The target VNF is any VNF that adopts the target expansion strategy. The above-mentioned target capacity expansion strategy includes: conditions to be satisfied for expanding the container group of the first type, and the number of container groups to be expanded (ie, F) when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are satisfied. The above-mentioned F is an integer greater than 0, such as 3, 5, and the like. In some embodiments, the VNF may determine the type and number of container groups to be expanded according to the configured capacity expansion policies of various types of container groups and the capacity expansion indicators of various types of container groups.

703. The target VNF determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, to expand the capacity of K virtual machines of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type.

The above target capacity expansion strategy further includes: expanding the first type of virtual machine before expanding the first type of container group. The above-mentioned K is an integer greater than 0, and the above-mentioned K is less than or equal to the above-mentioned F. The first type of container group described above is affinity. If the target VNF does not meet the virtual machine resources required to expand the F first-type container groups, determine the number of first-type virtual machines that need to be expanded when deploying the F first-type container groups to be expanded, and Expand a corresponding number of virtual machines of the first type. For example, if there are 5 (corresponding to F) container groups of the first type to be expanded in the target VNF, only 2 virtual machines of the first type in the target VNF can be used to expand the container group of the first type, and the target VNF is expanded according to the target The policy determines that 3 (corresponding to K) virtual machines of the first type are to be expanded, and each virtual machine of the first type can be expanded with one container group of the first type.

Step 703 may be replaced by: the target VNF determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, to expand F virtual machines of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type, and the container group of the first type is non-affinity.

704. The target VNF sends third capacity expansion information to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned third capacity expansion information is used to instruct to expand the capacity of K (or F) virtual machines of the above-mentioned first type on the target VNF.

705. The target VNF sends fourth capacity expansion information to the VNFM.

The foregoing fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F first type container groups are to be expanded in F first type virtual machines. FIG. 7 depicts a flow of a method for cooperating to expand a container group of the first type and a virtual machine of the first type. It should be understood that the target VNF can expand the capacity of any type of container group and its associated virtual machine in a similar manner.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: when expanding the container group of the first type, expand L (corresponding to the capacity expansion step) container groups of the second type; the fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate A container group of the first type is created in the virtual machine of the first type and a container group of the second type is created, where the second type is a container group type associated with the first type. The container group of the first type and the container group of the second type can support the same service and can be deployed on the same virtual machine. It should be understood that the second type (corresponding to the container group) and L are respectively the type and number of the container group that the first type of container group is linked to expand. In this implementation manner, when expanding the container group of the first type, the container group of the second type can be expanded, and the resources of the virtual machine can be fully utilized.

In this embodiment of the present application, the first type of virtual machine will be expanded only after the first type of virtual machine to be expanded is determined, so that the expanded first type of virtual machine can be fully utilized and resource utilization can be improved.

The following describes an interaction process of another automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings. The interaction process of the automatic expansion method describes the operations performed by VNFM, NFVO, VNF, PAAS and VIM respectively in the process of realizing the linkage expansion of the container group and the virtual machine. FIG. 8 is an interaction flow of an automatic capacity expansion method provided by an embodiment of the present application. As shown in Figure 8, the method includes:

801. The target VNF configures a capacity expansion policy through an MML configuration command.

The target VNF can be any VNF in the NFV system. In practical applications, users can configure expansion policies for any type of container group through MML configuration commands. The MML configuration parameters in the MML configuration command may include one or more of the following: 1) the type of the container group that needs to be automatically expanded, such as the second container group type; 2) the type of the automatically expanded container group associated with the virtual machine type (that is, the type of virtual machine for linkage expansion); 3), select the type of KPI to monitor, such as workload; 4), KPI sampling period, such as 10s; 5), expansion threshold, such as 60%; 6), Expansion step size, such as 3, that is, 3 container groups are expanded each time; 7) Duration, such as 300s, that is, the KPI (corresponding to the resource usage status sampling indicator) sampled within 300s exceeds the expansion threshold, which will trigger the system to automatically expand the capacity 8) Cooling time, such as 300s, that is, after the automatic expansion task is completed, no automatic expansion will be performed within 300s; 9) The type and number of container groups that need to be linked for expansion.

802. The target VNF periodically detects resource usage status indicators of various types of container groups.

The target VNF can periodically detect the resource usage status sampling indicators of various types of container groups according to the sampling period configuration (that is, the KPI sampling period configured by the MML configuration command). In some embodiments, the target VNF can first obtain the KPI values of each container group of the same type; after summarizing the KPI values of all container groups of the same type, the average value of these KPI values is taken as the resource usage of the container group of this type Status sampling metrics. If only one container is deployed in a container group, the KPI value of the container is the KPI value of the container group. For a service node that deploys multiple containers in a container group, the target VNF needs to select the largest KPI value among the KPI values of each container in the container group as the KPI value of the container group.

803. The target VNF determines the type and number of container groups to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicators and capacity expansion policies of various types of container groups.

The VNFM can determine whether any type of container group needs to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicator of any type of container group and the configured expansion policy of the container group of any type. For example, the target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type and the target expansion strategy, and the target expansion strategy is the configured capacity expansion of the container group of the first type. Strategy. In some embodiments, the target VNF compares the resource usage status indicators (that is, two or more resource usage status sampling indicators) of each type of container group with the configured expansion threshold, and determines whether it is necessary according to other monitoring configurations. Initiate expansion. Taking the MML configuration parameters in step 801 as an example, the target VNF is sampled once every 10s, and the samples are continuously sampled 30 times. If the resource usage status sampling indicators of the container group of the first type obtained by sampling the target VNF for 30 consecutive times all exceed 60%, it is determined that the container group of the first type is to be expanded. During capacity expansion, the target VNF can first expand the virtual machines associated with the first type of container group (for example, the first type of virtual machine) according to the expansion policy configured by the MML configuration command, and then according to whether the first type of container group is configured with linkage the container group, and determine whether it is necessary to expand the container group of other types simultaneously with the expansion of the container group of the first type. If the container group of the first type is not configured with a linked container group, after the expansion of the virtual machine is completed, the virtual machine of the first type is expanded in the expanded virtual machine. If the container group of the first type is configured with a linked container group, after the expansion of the virtual machine is completed, the container group of the first type and the linked container group are expanded in the expanded virtual machine.

804. The target VNF determines the type and number of virtual machines to be expanded, and sends a virtual machine expansion notification to the VNFM.

The virtual machine capacity expansion notification (corresponding to the third capacity expansion information) is used to indicate the type and number of virtual machines that need to be expanded on the target VNF.

805. The VNFM sends a second virtual machine creation request to the VIM.

The above-mentioned second virtual machine creation request is used to indicate the type and number of virtual machines that the VIM needs to expand. For example, the virtual machine expansion notification indicates that five virtual machines of the first type need to be expanded on the target VNF; the VNFM sends a second virtual machine creation request to the VIM, and the virtual machine creation request instructs the VIM to create five virtual machines of the first type. .

806. The VIM creates a virtual machine according to the second virtual machine creation request, and sends a second creation success response to the VNFM.

The VIM may create a corresponding virtual machine according to the second virtual machine creation request. The second creation success response indicates that the virtual machine has been successfully created according to the second virtual machine creation request.

807. The VNFM sends the second management information to the PAAS.

The foregoing second management information is used to notify the PAAS to manage the virtual machine created by the VIM. The second managed information may contain the identification of the virtual machine created by the VIM in step 806 .

808. The PAAS manages the virtual machine created by the VIM, and sends a second management response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second management response indicates that the PAAS has already managed the virtual machine created by the VIM. In some embodiments, the second virtual machine management information may include the identifiers of the virtual machines created by the VIM in step 806, and the PAAS may manage the corresponding virtual machines according to these identifiers.

809. The VNFM sends a notification of the end of the second capacity expansion event to the NFVO.

The above-mentioned second capacity expansion event end information indicates that the capacity expansion of the virtual machine has been completed.

810. The NFVO sends a second capacity expansion event notification response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second capacity expansion event notification response indicates that the NFVO has received the second capacity expansion event end information.

811. The VNFM sends a capacity expansion completion notification to the target VNF.

The resizing complete notification indicates that the resizing of the virtual machine is complete.

812. The target VNF sends a second capacity expansion notification to the VNFM.

The above second capacity expansion notification is used to notify the type and number of container groups that need to be expanded on the target VNF.

813. The VNFM sends a second container group creation request to the PAAS.

The above-mentioned second container group creation request is used to indicate the type and number of container groups to be created by the PAAS.

814. The PAAS creates a container group according to the second container group creation request, and sends the second creation result to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second creation result may include the identifier of the container group created by the PAAS.

815. The VNFM sends the second capacity expansion list to the target VNF.

The second expansion list indicates the container group successfully created by PAAS. The foregoing second capacity expansion list may include the identifiers of the container groups successfully created by the PAAS. The target VNF can obtain the container group successfully created by PAAS according to the second capacity expansion list.

816. The target VNF sends a second notification response to the VNFM, expands the container group according to the second capacity expansion list, and reports the expansion progress to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second notification response is used to indicate that the second capacity expansion list is received.

817. The target VNF performs service load balancing.

818. VNFM displays the result of the automatic expansion task through the UI interface of NFVO.

The result of the automatic expansion task can include the type and number of the virtual machines to be expanded, and the type and number of the container group to be expanded.

In the embodiment of the present application, the target VNF can accurately determine the type and number of container groups that need to be expanded, and the type and number of virtual machines, which can improve resource utilization.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart of another automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application. The method flow in Figure 9 is applied to an NFV system including VNFM and VNF, such as the NFV reference architecture. As shown in Figure 9, the method includes:

901. The target VNF acquires the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type.

The resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF. The target VNF may periodically detect the resource usage status sampling indicator of the container group of the first type.

902. The target VNF determines F container groups of the first type to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy and the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type.

The above-mentioned target shrinking strategy includes: the conditions that need to be satisfied for shrinking the container group of the first type, and the number of container groups to be reduced when the conditions for shrinking the container group of the first type are satisfied (corresponding to at the shrinkage step). The target VNF is any VNF that adopts the target scaling policy.

903. The target VNF sends fifth capacity reduction information to the VNFM.

The fifth shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the F first type container groups in the target VNF.

904. The target VNF determines the virtual machine of the first type to be scaled down according to the target scaling policy.

The above-mentioned target scaling strategy further includes: scaling down the above-mentioned first type of virtual machines after the above-mentioned first type of container group is scaled down. The container group of the first type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type. The above-mentioned F and the above-mentioned H are both integers greater than 0, and the above-mentioned H is less than or equal to the above-mentioned F. In some embodiments, after the container group of the first type hosted by the virtual machine of the first type is scaled down, if the virtual machine of the first type needs to continue to run, the virtual machine of the first type is scaled down. For example, the container group of the first type hosted by the virtual machine of the first type provides a certain service. If the container group of the first type is scaled down, the virtual machine of the first type cannot provide the service, and the target VNF can Determines to scale down the first type of virtual machine. For another example, the first type of container group hosted by the first type of virtual machine and other types of container groups jointly provide a certain service. If the first type of container group is scaled down, the first type of virtual machine cannot Providing this kind of service, the target VNF can determine to shrink the virtual machine of the first type. For another example, five container groups of the first type are deployed in five virtual machines of the first type. After the five container groups of the first type are scaled down, the Two virtual machines no longer provide any services, and the other three continue to provide services. The target VNF can determine to shrink the two virtual machines of the first type that no longer provide any services.

905. The target VNF sends sixth scaling information to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned sixth scaling information is used to indicate the first type of virtual machine on the scaling target VNF.

The following describes an interaction process of another automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings. The interaction process of the automatic scaling method describes the operations performed by VNFM, NFVO, VNF, PAAS, and VIM respectively in the process of realizing the linkage scaling between the container group and the virtual machine. FIG. 10 is an interaction flow of an automatic scaling method provided by an embodiment of the present application. As shown in Figure 10, the method includes:

1001. The target VNF configures a scaling policy through an MML configuration command.

In practical applications, users can configure scaling policies for any type of container group through MML configuration commands. The implementation of step 1001 may be similar to that of step 801 . The MML configuration parameters in the MML configuration command may include one or more of the following: 1) the type of the container group that needs to be automatically scaled; 2) the type of the virtual machine associated with the type of the container group to be automatically scaled (that is, the linked scaling down type of virtual machine); 3), select the type of KPI to monitor, such as workload; 4), KPI sampling period, such as 10s; 5), shrink threshold, such as 20%; 6), shrink step Length, such as 3, that is, 3 container groups are scaled each time; 7), duration, such as 300s, that is, the KPI sampled within 300s exceeds the expansion threshold, which will trigger the system to automatically shrink; 8), cooling time, such as 300s , that is, after the automatic scaling task is completed, no automatic scaling will be performed within 300s; 9) The type and number of container groups that need to be linked with scaling. The target VNF can be any VNF in the NFV system.

1002. The target VNF periodically detects resource usage status indicators of various types of container groups.

The implementation of step 1002 may be the same as that of step 802 .

1003. The target VNF determines the type and number of container groups to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicators and scaling policies of various types of container groups.

The target VNF can determine whether any type of container group needs to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator of any type of container group and the configured scaling policy for the container group of any type. For example, the target VNF determines K container groups of the first type to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator of the container group of the first type and the target scaling policy, and the target scaling policy is that the container group of the first type is to be scaled down. The configured scaling policy. In some embodiments, the target VNF compares the resource usage status indicators of each type of container group (that is, two or more resource usage status sampling indicators) with the configured shrinkage threshold, and determines whether or not according to other monitoring configurations Scaling needs to be initiated. Taking the MML configuration parameters in step 1001 as an example, the target VNF is sampled once every 10s, and the samples are continuously sampled 30 times. If none of the resource usage status sampling indicators of the first type container group sampled by the target VNF for 30 consecutive times does not exceed the scaling threshold (for example, 20%), it is determined that the first type container group is to be scaled down. When scaling down, the target VNF can first scale down the first type of container group according to the scaling policy configured by the MML configuration command, and determine whether it needs to be scaled down according to whether the first type of container group is configured with a linked container group. The container group of the first type is simultaneously shrinking and shrinking other types of container groups. If the container group of the first type is not configured with a linked container group, after the container group of the first type is scaled down, the virtual machine of the first type is scaled down. For example, the first type of container group 1 is not configured with a linked container group, and the first type of container group 1 is hosted on the virtual machine 1; after the first type of container group 1 is scaled down, the virtual machine is scaled down 1. If the container group of the first type is configured with a linked container group, the container group of the first type and the linked container group will be scaled down, and the virtual machines carrying the container group of the first type and the linked container group will be scaled down after the scaling is completed. . For example, container group 1 of the first type is configured with linked container group 2, and container group 1 and container group 2 are hosted on virtual machine 1; after shrinking container group 1 and container group 2, shrink the virtual machine. 1.

1004. The target VNF performs service migration and load balancing.

1005. The target VNF sends a first shrinkage notification to the VNFM.

The first scale-down notification is used to indicate the type and number of container groups that need to be scaled down on the target VNF.

1006. The VNFM sends a second capacity reduction notification to the PAAS.

The second scale-down notification is used to indicate the type and number of container groups that need to be scaled down on the target VNF.

1007. The PAAS notifies the shrinking container group according to the second shrinking, and sends the second shrinking result to the VNFM.

The second scale down result indicates the container group that PAAS scaled successfully. The second shrink result may include the identification of the shrinked container group. For example, the second scale-in notification is used to indicate that PAAS needs to scale down 5 first-type container groups and 3 second-type container groups on the target VNF; PAAS scales down 5 first-type container groups and 3 container groups of the second type.

1008. The VNFM sends a fourth shrinking list to the target VNF.

The fourth shrink list may include the identifiers of the container groups in the target VNF that have been successfully shrunk.

1009. The target VNF sends a third notification response to the VNFM, shrinks the container group according to the fourth shrinking list, and reports the shrinking progress to the VNFM.

The third notification response is used to indicate that the fourth shrink list is received.

1010. The target VNF sends a fourth capacity reduction notification to the VNFM.

The fourth scale-down notification is used to indicate the type and number of virtual machines that need to be scaled down on the target VNF.

1011. The VNFM sends a second deletion request to the PAAS.

The second deletion request is used for requesting deletion of virtual machine resources occupied by the downsized virtual machine.

1012. The PAAS sends a second deletion response to the VNFM.

The second deletion response indicates that the virtual machine resources occupied by the downscaled virtual machine are successfully deleted.

1013. The VNFM notifies the PAAS to de-host the scaled-down virtual machine.

1014. The PAAS sends a second dismantling response to the VNFM.

The above-mentioned second decommissioning response instructs the PAAS to complete decommissioning of the scaled-down virtual machine.

1015. The VNFM sends a reduction completion notification to the target VNF.

The shrink complete notification indicates that the shrink is complete.

1016. The VNFM sends a first end notification to the NFVO.

The first end notification instructs the VNFM to complete scaling down.

1017. The NFVO sends a first end response to the VNFM.

The second end response indicates that the NFVO received the first end notification.

1018. VNFM displays the result of the automatic scaling task through the UI interface of NFVO.

The result of the automatic scaling task can include the type and number of the scaled virtual machines, and the type and number of the scaled container group.

The automatic capacity expansion scheme initiated by the VNF (corresponding to the method flow in FIG. 7 and FIG. 8 ) and the automatic capacity reduction scheme initiated by the VNFM (corresponding to the method flow in FIG. 8 and FIG. 10 ) are described above. In practical applications, the automatic capacity expansion solution and the automatic capacity reduction solution provided in this application can be implemented independently or simultaneously. In some embodiments, the VNF can determine whether it is necessary to scale down or scale down according to resource usage status indicators of various types of container groups. When it is determined that linkage expansion is required, the automatic expansion method process is executed; when it is determined that linkage reduction is required, the automatic capacity reduction method process is executed.

FIG. 11 is a schematic structural diagram of a communication apparatus according to an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in Figure 11 is a VNFM; the communication device includes:

The processing unit 1101 is configured to obtain a target capacity expansion strategy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the above target capacity expansion strategy includes: expanding a first type of virtual machine before expanding a first type of container group, and the above-mentioned first type of container group bears in the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine;

The processing unit 1101 is further configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF according to the above-mentioned target capacity expansion strategy; the above-mentioned target VNF is a VNF that adopts the above-mentioned target capacity expansion strategy;

The processing unit 1101 is further configured to control the transceiver unit 1102 to send first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the above-mentioned target capacity expansion policy, where the above-mentioned first capacity expansion information is used to instruct the above-mentioned target VNF to create the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine ;

The transceiver unit 1102 is further configured to send second capacity expansion information, where the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the above-mentioned first type of container group in the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine.

In a possible implementation manner, the target capacity expansion strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be expanded when the conditions for expanding the container group of the first type are met;

The processing unit 1101 is specifically configured to determine, according to the above-mentioned target capacity expansion strategy, F number of container groups of the first type to be expanded on the above-mentioned target VNF; the above-mentioned target VNF does not meet the requirements for expanding the F number of container groups of the above-mentioned first type. In the case of virtual machine resources, send the first expansion information to the VIM according to the target expansion strategy; the container group of the first type is affinity, and the first expansion information is used to indicate expansion in the target VNF K virtual machines of the first type, the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct F virtual machines of the first type to expand the capacity of F container groups of the first type, and F and K are integers greater than 0 , the F virtual machines of the first type include the K virtual machines of the first type.

The processing unit 1101 is specifically configured to determine, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, F number of container groups of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF; type of virtual machine, and send the above-mentioned first capacity expansion information to the above-mentioned VIM, the container group of the above-mentioned first type is non-affinity; the above-mentioned first capacity expansion information is used to instruct the above-mentioned target VNF to create F above-mentioned first type of container groups The second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create F container groups of the first type in the F virtual machines of the first type, where the F is an integer greater than 0.

In a possible implementation manner, the transceiver unit 1102 is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The processing unit 1101 is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF according to the resource usage state indicator and the target capacity expansion policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit 1101 is specifically configured to, according to the above target capacity expansion strategy, determine that the first type of virtual machine needs to be expanded before expanding the above-mentioned first type of container group; control the above-mentioned transceiver unit to send the above-mentioned VIM to the above-mentioned The above-mentioned first capacity expansion information.

In a possible implementation manner, the above communication device further includes: an input unit 1103, configured to receive a user's capacity expansion policy configuration instruction for the above-mentioned first type of container group through a capacity expansion policy configuration interface;

The processing unit 1101 is further configured to configure and obtain the target capacity expansion policy according to the above-mentioned capacity expansion policy configuration instruction.

In some embodiments, the communication device in FIG. 11 may further include a display unit for displaying a capacity expansion policy configuration interface.

FIG. 12 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in FIG. 12 is a VNFM; the communication device includes:

The processing unit 1201 is configured to obtain a target shrinking policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the above-mentioned target shrinking policy includes: shrinking a first type of virtual machine after shrinking a container group of a first type, the above-mentioned first type The container group is hosted on the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine;

The processing unit 1201 is configured to determine the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down according to the above-mentioned target reduction strategy; the above-mentioned target VNF is a VNF that adopts the above-mentioned target reduction strategy;

The transceiver unit 1202 is configured to send first shrinkage information, where the first shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF; the processing unit is further configured to reduce the size according to the target shrinkage policy , controlling the transceiver unit to send second capacity reduction information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM, where the second capacity reduction information is used to instruct the first type of virtual machine in the target VNF to be scaled down.

In a possible implementation manner, the transceiver unit 1202 is further configured to send third capacity reduction information to the target VNF, where the third capacity reduction information is used to confirm whether the container of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down group; receiving fourth scaling information from the target VNF, where the fourth scaling information indicates that the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down.

In a possible implementation, the transceiver unit 1202 is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the above-mentioned target VNF, where the above-mentioned resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the above-mentioned first type in the above-mentioned target VNF;

The processing unit 1201 is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down according to the resource usage state indicator and the target scaling policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the above-mentioned communication apparatus further includes: an input unit 1203, configured to receive a user's scaling policy configuration instruction for the container group of the first type in the scaling policy configuration interface;

The processing unit 1201 is further configured to configure and obtain the target capacity reduction policy according to the above-mentioned capacity expansion policy configuration instruction.

In some embodiments, the communication device in FIG. 12 may further include a display unit for displaying a scaling policy configuration interface.

The communication device in FIG. 11 and the communication device in FIG. 12 may be two different devices, or may be the same device. It should be understood that if the communication device in FIG. 11 and the communication device in FIG. 12 are the same device, the processing unit 1101 and the processing unit 1201 are the same unit, the transceiver unit 1102 and the transceiver unit 1202 are the same unit, and the input unit 1103 and the input unit 1203 are the same unit. for the same unit.

FIG. 13 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in FIG. 13 is the entity corresponding to the VNF; the communication device includes:

The transceiver unit 1301 is configured to receive third shrinkage information from the VNFM, where the third shrinkage information is used to confirm whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be reduced;

The processing unit 1302 is further configured to migrate the services performed by the container group of the first type out of the container group of the first type;

The transceiver unit 1301 is further configured to send fourth capacity reduction information to the above-mentioned VNFM, where the above-mentioned fourth capacity reduction information indicates that the container group of the above-mentioned first type in the above-mentioned target VNF can be scaled down.

FIG. 14 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in Figure 14 is the entity corresponding to the target VNF; the communication device includes:

The processing unit 1401 is configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion strategy; according to the target capacity expansion strategy, determine to expand the virtual machine of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type;

The transceiver unit 1402 is configured to send the third capacity expansion information to the above-mentioned VNFM, where the above-mentioned third capacity expansion information is used to instruct the virtual machine of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF; send the fourth capacity expansion information to the above-mentioned VNFM, the above-mentioned fourth capacity expansion information It is used to instruct to create the container group of the first type in the virtual machine of the first type.

The processing unit 1401 is specifically configured to determine F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the target expansion strategy; and determine to expand K container groups of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type according to the target expansion strategy The above-mentioned first type of container group is affinity, the above-mentioned third capacity expansion information is used to instruct the expansion of K virtual machines of the above-mentioned first type on the above-mentioned target VNF, and the above-mentioned fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate that in the The F virtual machines of the first type are expanded to F container groups of the first type, the F and K are both integers greater than 0, and the F virtual machines of the first type include the K type of virtual machine.

The processing unit 1401 is specifically configured to determine F container groups of the first type to be expanded according to the target capacity expansion strategy; and determine to expand F container groups of the first type before expanding the container group of the first type according to the target capacity expansion strategy The above-mentioned first type of container group is non-affinity; the above-mentioned third capacity expansion information is used to indicate that F virtual machines of the above-mentioned first type are to be expanded on the above-mentioned target VNF, and the above-mentioned fourth capacity expansion information is used to indicate F number of container groups of the first type are expanded in the F virtual machines of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the above-mentioned processing unit 1401 is further configured to obtain a resource usage status indicator, where the above-mentioned resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the above-mentioned first type of container group in the above-mentioned target VNF;

The processing unit 1401 is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded according to the above resource usage state indicator and the above target capacity expansion strategy.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit 1401 is further configured to configure the above-mentioned target capacity expansion strategy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

FIG. 15 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in Figure 15 is the entity corresponding to the target VNF; the communication device includes:

The processing unit 1501 is configured to determine a container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the target shrinkage policy; and determine to shrink the virtual machine of the first type after shrinking the container group of the first type according to the target shrinkage policy , the above-mentioned target shrinking strategy further includes: shrinking the above-mentioned first type of virtual machine after shrinking the above-mentioned first type of container group;

The transceiver unit 1502 sends fifth shrinkage information to the VNFM, where the fifth shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF; The six shrinkage information is used to indicate the virtual machine of the first type in the shrinking target NFV, and the container group of the first type is carried on the virtual machine of the first type.

In a possible implementation manner, the above-mentioned target shrinking strategy further includes: the number of the container groups of the first type to be reduced when the conditions for shrinking the container group of the first type are met;

The processing unit 1501 is specifically configured to determine, according to the target shrinking strategy, F first-type container groups to be shrunk; according to the foregoing target shrinking strategy, determine to shrink the H above-mentioned container groups after shrinking the first-type container group. A virtual machine of the first type; the fifth shrinkage information is used to instruct to shrink the F container groups of the first type in the target VNF, and the sixth shrinkage information is used to instruct the shrinkage of H in the target VNF. A virtual machine of the first type described above, the above F and the above H are both integers greater than 0, and the above H is less than or equal to the above F.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit 1501 is further configured to obtain a resource usage status indicator, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The processing unit 1501 is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be scaled down according to the resource usage state indicator and the target scaling policy.

In a possible implementation manner, the processing unit 1501 is further configured to configure the above-mentioned target scaling policy through a man-machine language MML configuration command.

The communication device in FIG. 14 and the communication device in FIG. 15 may be two different devices, or may be the same device. It should be understood that if the communication device in FIG. 14 and the communication device in FIG. 15 are the same device, the processing unit 1401 and the processing unit 1501 are the same unit, and the transceiver unit 1402 and the transceiver unit 1502 are the same unit.

FIG. 16 is a schematic structural diagram of another communication apparatus provided by an embodiment of the present application. The communication device in FIG. 16 may be a VNFM, or may be an entity corresponding to a VNF.

As shown in Figure 16. The communication apparatus 160 includes at least one processor 1620, configured to implement the function of the VNFM in the method provided by the embodiment of the present application; or, configured to implement the function of the target VNF in the method provided by the embodiment of the present application. The communication device 160 may also include a transceiver 1610 . Transceivers are used to communicate with other devices/devices over a transmission medium. The processor 1620 uses the transceiver 1610 to send and receive data and/or signaling, and is used to implement the methods in the above method embodiments.

Optionally, the communication device 160 may further include at least one memory 1630 for storing program instructions and/or data. Memory 1630 and processor 1620 are coupled. The coupling in the embodiments of the present application is an indirect coupling or communication connection between devices, units or modules, which may be in electrical, mechanical or other forms, and is used for information exchange between devices, units or modules. Processor 1620 may cooperate with memory 1630. Processor 1620 may execute program instructions stored in memory 1630 . At least one of the at least one memory may be included in the processor.

The specific connection medium between the transceiver 1610, the processor 1620, and the memory 1630 is not limited in the embodiments of the present application. In the embodiment of the present application, the memory 1630, the processor 1620, and the transceiver 1610 are connected through a bus 1640 in FIG. 16. The bus is represented by a thick line in FIG. 16, and the connection between other components is only for schematic illustration. , is not limited. The bus can be divided into address bus, data bus, control bus and so on. For ease of presentation, only one thick line is shown in FIG. 16, but it does not mean that there is only one bus or one type of bus.

In this embodiment of the present application, the processor may be a general-purpose processor, a digital signal processor, an application-specific integrated circuit, a field programmable gate array or other programmable logic device, a discrete gate or transistor logic device, or a discrete hardware component, which can implement or The methods, steps and logic block diagrams disclosed in the embodiments of this application are executed. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor or any conventional processor or the like. The steps of the methods disclosed in conjunction with the embodiments of the present application may be directly embodied as executed by a hardware processor, or executed by a combination of hardware and software modules in the processor.

It can be understood that when the communication device 160 is a VNFM, the transceiver 1610 implements the functions of the transceiver unit 1102 and/or the transceiver unit 1202 , and the processor 1620 implements the functions of the processing unit 1101 and/or the processing unit 1201 . When the communication device 160 is an entity corresponding to the VNF, the transceiver 1610 implements the functions of the transceiver unit 1402 and/or the transceiver unit 1502 , and the processor 1620 implements the functions of the processing unit 1401 and/or the processing unit 1501 .

The present application also provides a computer-readable storage medium, where computer codes are stored in the computer-readable storage medium, and when the computer codes are executed on the computer, the computer is made to execute the methods of the above embodiments.

The present application also provides a computer program product, the computer program product includes computer code or computer program, when the computer code or computer program is run on a computer, the communication method in the above embodiment is executed.

The present application also provides an NFV system, including VNFM, VNF, PAAS, VIM and NFVO.

The above are only specific embodiments of the present application, but the protection scope of the present application is not limited to this. should be covered within the scope of protection of this application. Therefore, the protection scope of the present application should be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

An automatic capacity expansion method, characterized in that it is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM, the method comprising:

The VNFM obtains a target capacity expansion policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the target capacity expansion policy includes: expanding a first type of virtual machine before expanding a first type of container group, and the first type of container group is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type;

The VNFM determines, according to the target expansion strategy, the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target expansion strategy;

The VNFM sends first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy, where the first capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the first type of virtual machine on the target VNF;

The VNFM sends second capacity expansion information, where the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create a container group of the first type in the virtual machine of the first type.
The method according to claim 1, wherein the target capacity expansion strategy further comprises: when expanding the container group of the first type, expanding the container group of the second type; the second capacity expansion information is further used to indicate The container group of the second type is created in the virtual machine of the first type.
The method according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that, before the VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, to expand the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF, the method further comprises: include:

receiving, by the VNFM, a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The VNFM determines, according to the target capacity expansion policy, that the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF includes:

The VNFM determines, according to the resource usage status indicator and the target capacity expansion policy, the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF.
The method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the resource usage status indicator comprises two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators Characterize the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF at two or more moments in the same time period; the VNFM, according to the resource usage status indicator and the target expansion strategy, Determining that the container group of the first type to be scaled on the target VNF includes:

The VNFM determines that the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF is to be expanded in the case that the two or more than two sampling indicators of the resource usage state all exceed the capacity expansion threshold.
An automatic scaling method, characterized in that it is applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including a virtualized network manager VNFM, the method comprising:

The VNFM obtains a target scaling policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the target scaling policy includes: scaling down the first type of virtual machine after scaling down the first type of container group, the first A container group of a type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type;

The VNFM determines the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down according to the target capacity reduction policy; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target capacity reduction policy;

sending, by the VNFM, first shrinking information, where the first shrinking information is used to instruct to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The VNFM sends second scaling information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the target scaling policy, where the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down of the first type in the target VNF. virtual machine.
The method according to claim 5, wherein the target shrinking strategy further comprises: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the first shrinking information It is also used to instruct to shrink the container group of the second type in the target VNF, where the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type.
The method according to claim 4 or 5, wherein before the VNFM sends the first shrinkage information, the method further comprises:

The VNFM sends third scaling information to the target VNF, where the third scaling information is used to confirm whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down;

The VNFM receives fourth scaling information from the target VNF, the fourth scaling information indicating that the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down.
The method according to any one of claims 5 to 7, wherein the VNFM determines, according to the target scaling policy, before the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down , the method also includes:

receiving, by the VNFM, a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The VNFM determines, according to the target capacity reduction policy, that the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down includes:

The VNFM determines the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scaling policy.
The method according to claim 8, wherein the resource usage status indicator comprises two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the target VNF The resource usage of the container group of the first type at two or more moments in the same time period; the VNFM determines the to-be-reduced capacity according to the resource usage status indicator and the target reduction strategy The container group of the first type in the target VNF includes:

The VNFM determines that the container group of the first type in the target VNF is to be scaled down when none of the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators exceeds the scaling threshold.
A communication device, applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including VNFM, is characterized in that, comprising:

A processing unit, configured to obtain a target capacity expansion policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the target capacity expansion policy includes: expanding a first type of virtual machine before expanding the first type of container group, the first type of virtual machine the container group is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type;

The processing unit is further configured to determine, according to the target capacity expansion strategy, the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target virtualized network function VNF; the target VNF is a VNF that adopts the target capacity expansion strategy;

The processing unit is further configured to control the transceiver unit to send first capacity expansion information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM according to the target capacity expansion policy, where the first capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create the first capacity expansion information on the target VNF. a type of virtual machine;

The transceiver unit is further configured to send second capacity expansion information, where the second capacity expansion information is used to instruct to create a container group of the first type in the virtual machine of the first type.
The communication device according to claim 10, wherein the target capacity expansion strategy further comprises: expanding the container group of the second type when expanding the container group of the first type; the second capacity expansion information is further used for Instructs to create the container group of the second type in the virtual machine of the first type.
The communication device according to claim 10 or 11, wherein:

The transceiver unit is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The processing unit is specifically configured to determine, according to the resource usage state indicator and the target capacity expansion policy, the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF.
The communication device according to any one of claims 10 to 12, wherein the resource usage status indicator comprises two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators The indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF at two or more moments in the same time period;

The processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type to be expanded on the target VNF when the two or more of the resource usage status sampling indicators both exceed the capacity expansion threshold.
A communication device, applied to a network function virtualization NFV system including VNFM, is characterized in that, comprising:

a processing unit, configured to obtain a target scaling policy from the virtualized network function description VNFD, where the target scaling policy includes: scaling down the first type of virtual machines after scaling down the first type of container group, the A container group of the first type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type;

The processing unit is further configured to determine the container group of the first type on the target virtualized network function VNF to be scaled down according to the target capacity reduction strategy; the target VNF is a container group that adopts the target capacity reduction strategy. VNF;

Transceiver unit, for sending the first shrinkage information, and the first shrinkage information is used for instructing to shrink the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The processing unit is further configured to, according to the target scaling policy, control the transceiver unit to send second scaling information to the virtualization infrastructure manager VIM, where the second scaling information is used to instruct scaling down the the virtual machine of the first type in the target VNF.
The communication device according to claim 14, wherein the target shrinking strategy further comprises: shrinking the container group of the second type when shrinking the container group of the first type; the first shrinking The information is further used to instruct to shrink the container group of the second type in the target VNF, where the container group of the second type is hosted on the virtual machine of the first type.
The communication device according to claim 14 or 15, characterized in that:

The transceiver unit is further configured to send third scaling information to the target VNF, where the third scaling information is used to confirm whether the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down; receiving Fourth scaling information from the VNF, where the fourth scaling information indicates that the container group of the first type in the target VNF can be scaled down.
The communication device according to any one of claims 14 to 16, wherein:

The transceiver unit is further configured to receive a resource usage status indicator from the target VNF, where the resource usage status indicator represents the resource usage of the container group of the first type in the target VNF;

The processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down according to the resource usage status indicator and the target scaling policy.
The communication device according to claim 17, wherein the resource usage status indicator comprises two or more resource usage status sampling indicators, and the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators represent the target Resource usage of the container group of the first type in the VNF at two or more moments in the same time period;

The processing unit is specifically configured to determine the container group of the first type in the target VNF to be scaled down when none of the two or more resource usage status sampling indicators exceeds the scaling threshold .
A communication device, characterized by comprising a processor, when the processor executes a computer program or an instruction in a memory, the method according to any one of claims 1 to 9 is performed.
A computer-readable storage medium, characterized in that a computer program is stored in the computer-readable storage medium, and the computer program includes program instructions, and when executed by a processor, the program instructions cause the processor to execute The method of any one of claims 1 to 9.