Cost-Efficient Virtual Network Function Placement in an Industrial Edge System: A Proposed Method

Edge computing has been a promising framework to provide effective computing services for edge users in most industrial environments. Due to the limited resources at the edge, it is not suitable for massive requirements such as the virtual reality process, communication, and so on. Cloud computing can provide sufficient resources for those requirements, but it has some latency lags. Industrial edge clouds enable flexible service providers for industrial applications by merging edge and cloud computing. The virtual network function (VNF) is one approach, while placement is a dominant solution. However, this solution may increase the cost of communication as the nodes are more distant. In this article, we investigate the resource allocation problem for VNF placement in industrial edge systems. The aim is to minimize the overall cost of the whole placement procedure, including operating cost, communication cost, and placement cost. We formulate this VNF placement problem as an integer programming problem, and due to the complexity of the problem, we propose a heuristic method to solve it. Numerical simulation shows that our proposed method can significantly cut down the cost while meeting the multiple resource constraints.