Live Migration of Virtual Machine and Container Based Mobile Core Network Components: A Comprehensive Study

With the increasing demand for openness, flexibility, and monetization, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) of mobile network functions has become embracing factor most operators. Early reported field deployments virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC) - core (CN) component 4G LTE 5G non-standalone networks reflect this growing trend. To best meet requirements power management, load balancing, fault tolerance in cloud environment, need live migration these components cannot be shunned. platforms interest include both Virtual Machines (VMs) Containers, with latter option offering more lightweight characteristics. This paper's first contribution is proposal a framework that enables containerised virtual EPC using an open-source solution which does not fully support protocol stack yet. The second experimental-based comprehensive analysis two virtualization technologies VM Container additional scrutinization on container approach. presented experimental comparison accounts several system parameters configurations: flavor (image) size, characteristics, processor hardware architecture model, CPU backhaul components. reveals completion time also end-user service interruption reduced approximately by 70% platform when proposed framework.