Virtualization, or NFV for short, is a way to virtualize the structures and components in the network. Components such as routers, firewalls,s and others. These components are placed on the hardware as virtual machines and allow the service providers to use the characteristics of each in a certain place on their networks.
By implementing NFV, you don’t need to buy the hardware you need. Each performs a specific task through hardware such as routers and firewalls, etc.. NFV also increases the scalability and agility of the network and allows a service provider to be able to implement and provide the services and applications needed by users and customers as needed. It is not new hardware by any means.
The NFV architecture includes the following:
- Virtualized network functions: This section includes application software that delivers specific tasks such as file server, domain controller, and others.
- Network functions virtualization infrastructure: This section includes infrastructure components. Such as computing resources, storage, and network are placed on a software platform such as a hypervisor.
- Management, automation, and network orchestration: It is a framework for managing NFV and its infrastructure.
With the use of NFV, the service provider can have all the components and needs of a network on standard hardware platforms and, as mentioned, on virtual environments instead of running on separate hardware. The next issue is the virtualization of network tasks and the use of several simultaneous components that are running only on one server.
There is also a dependency between NFV and SDN, and these two are not independent of each other; both have one similarity, which is a dependency on virtualization, but they have differences in the use of resources and how to separate it. These two can be used side by side and implement new architectures in the network world.