NFV Data Centers: A Systematic Review

Recently, the widespread use of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has meant a significant shift in communication and network cloud-based services. NFV increases network function, allocation, and flexibility, for the implementation of new network services, The benefits from optimizing resource allocation in NFV data center include automation of the operational processes, reducing the operational efforts, and lowering capital costs. Despite being a hot topic, NFV data centers are still in their early stages. In this sense, there are some aspects involved in the current NFV implementations that required further investigation, such as performance evaluation and managemen. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of NFV applications in data center. Therefore, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted aimed at studying and synthesizing the available works in the NFV state-of-the-art. Consequently, about 1,408 papers have been analyzed and filtered, evidencing a total of 65 relevant studies. This paper documents the relevance of the 65 papers, as well as provides an indepth insight into the primary open research questions concerning NFV architecture. In particular, highlighting the need for consolidating the integration of NFV in data centers by solving problems related to performance, dependability, resource allocation, cost, management, and resource interoperability. Based on the conducted SLR, several research gaps and open challenges have been identified, allowing the authors to provide new propositions and suggested future research avenues. Finally, the obtained results have shown that there is a strong need for further collaboration between academia and industry to conduct quality research and advance NFV practical implementations.