Vines: A CloudStack Platform for the Orchestration and Holistic Management of Virtualized Network Functions and Services
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5753/jisa.2026.5499Keywords:
Network Functions Virtualization, Network Management, Network Services, Cloud ComputingAbstract
Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is changing the way networks are built and maintained by replacing traditional middleboxes with software that runs on commodity hardware. This paradigm shift not only increases flexibility but can also reduce the cost of building and maintaining the network. The ETSI NFV-MANO reference model is currently widely adopted as the de facto NFV standard, with a large number of compliant platforms currently available. In this work, we propose Vines (Vines Is an NFV-MANO Extensible Solution), a CloudStack-based platform that supports NFV technology and is compliant with the ETSI NFV specifications. Vines includes an NFV Orchestrator (NFVO) that enables the creation of complex network services composed of multiple individual functions. Management & orchestration are holistic, in the sense that they provide a comprehensive set of functionalities for heterogeneous network functions and services. Moreover, nearly all NFV developments have been done on the OpenStack cloud platform. Vines opens up the possibility of using NFV solutions on Apache CloudStack, one of the most widely used cloud platforms worldwide. Experimental results are presented showing that Vines has the same performance level as the widely used OpenStack/Tacker.
Downloads
References
Anuket (2025). Anuket. [link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
ASF (2025a). Apache CloudStack. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
ASF (2025b). Apache CloudStack Users. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
ASF (2025c). VNF Appliance Integration. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
Bondan, L., Franco, M. F., Marcuzzo, L., Venancio, G., Santos, R. L., Pfitscher, R. J., Scheid, E. J., Stiller, B., De Turck, F., Duarte, E. P., et al. (2019). FENDE: Marketplace-based distribution, execution, and life cycle management of VNFs. Communications Magazine, 57(1):13-19. DOI: 10.1109/mcom.2018.1800507.
Canonical (2025a). Cloud-init: The standard for customising cloud instances. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
Canonical (2025b). Deploy Osm using Charmhub - The Open Operator Collection. Available at:[link].Accessed Oct., 2025.
Chiosi, M., Clarke, D., Willis, P., Reid, A., Feger, J., Bugenhagen, M., Khan, W., Fargano, M., Cui, C., Deng, H., et al. (2012). Network functions virtualisation: An introduction, benefits, enablers, challenges & call for action. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
Cloudify (2025). Cloudify devops automation & orchestration platform, multi cloud. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
da Cruz Marcuzzo, L., Garcia, V. F., Cunha, V., Corujo, D., Barraca, J. P., Aguiar, R. L., Schaeffer-Filho, A. E., Granville, L. Z., and dos Santos, C. R. (2017). Click-on-osv: A platform for running click-based middleboxes. In The 15th IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management (IM), pages 885-886. IFIP/IEEE. DOI: 10.23919/inm.2017.7987396.
ETSI (2014). Network functions virtualisation (nfv): Management and orchestration. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
ETSI (2018). Network functions virtualisation (nfv) release 2; protocols and data models; vnf package specification. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
ETSI (2020). Network functions virtualisation (nfv) release 3; management and orchestration; ve-vnfm reference point - interface and information model specification. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
ETSI (2022). Network functions virtualisation (nfv) release 4; protocols and data models; restful protocols specification for the os-ma-nfvo reference point. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
ETSI (2023). Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 4; Management and Orchestration; Os-Ma-nfvo reference point - Interface and Information Model Specification. Technical report, European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Available at:[link].
ETSI (2025). Open Source MANO. Avaialble at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
Fielding, R. (2000). Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures. PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine - EUA. Available at:[link].
Flexera (2022). State of the cloud report from flexera. Technical report, Flexera: IT Management Software, Optimization & Solutions. Available at:[link].
Fulber-Garcia, V., Duarte Jr, E. P., Huff, A., and dos Santos, C. R. (2020). Network service topology: Formalization, taxonomy and the custom specification model. Computer Networks, 178:107337. DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2020.107337.
Fulber-Garcia, V., Flauzino, J., Dos Santos, C. R., and Duarte, E. P. (2023). An etsi-compliant architecture for the element management system: The key for holistic nfv management. In The 19th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM), pages 1-9. IEEE. DOI: 10.23919/cnsm59352.2023.10327882.
Fulber-Garcia, V., Flauzino, J., Venâncio, G., Huff, A., and Junior, E. P. D. (2024). Breaking the limits: Bio-inspired sfc deployment across multiple domains, clouds and orchestrators. In 2024 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), pages 1-6. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/nfv-sdn61811.2024.10807470.
Garcia, V. F., Marcuzzo, L. C., Souza, G. V., Bondan, L., Nobre, J. C., Schaeffer-Filho, A. E., Santos, C. R. P. d., Granville, L. Z., and Duarte, E. P. (2019a). An NSH-enabled architecture for Virtualized Network Function platforms. In The 33rd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA), pages 376-387. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-15032-7_32.
Garcia, V. F., Marcuzzo, L. d. C., Huff, A., Bondan, L., Nobre, J. C., Schaeffer-Filho, A., dos Santos, C. R., Granville, L. Z., and Duarte, E. P. (2019b). On the design of a flexible architecture for virtualized network function platforms. In The 62th IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), pages 1-6. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/globecom38437.2019.9013111.
Huff, A., Venâncio, G., Garcia, V. F., and Duarte, E. P. (2020). Building multi-domain service function chains based on multiple nfv orchestrators. In The 6th IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), pages 19-24. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/nfv-sdn50289.2020.9289849.
Kourtis, M.-A., McGrath, M. J., Gardikis, et al. (2017). T-nova: An open-source mano stack for nfv infrastructures. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 14(3):586-602. DOI: 10.1109/tnsm.2017.2733620.
Krishnan, P., Duttagupta, S., and Achuthan, K. (2020). Sdn/nfv security framework for fog-to-things computing infrastructure. Software: Practice and Experience, 50(5):757-800. DOI: 10.1002/spe.2761.
Martins, J. et al. (2014). Clickos and the art of network function virtualization. In The 11th Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), pages 459-473. USENIX. Available at:[link].
Mijumbi, R., Serrat, J., Gorricho, J.-L., Bouten, N., De Turck, F., and Boutaba, R. (2015). Network Function Virtualization: State-of-the-art and research challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1):236-262. DOI: 10.1109/comst.2015.2477041.
Mijumbi, R., Serrat, J., Gorricho, J.-L., Latré, S., Charalambides, M., and Lopez, D. (2016). Management and orchestration challenges in network functions virtualization. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(1):98-105. DOI: 10.1109/mcom.2016.7378433.
ONAP (2024). ONAP Documentation - VF-C Architecture. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
ONAP (2025). Open Network Automation Platform. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
OpenBaton (2025). Open Baton: an open source reference implementation of the ETSI Network Function Virtualization MANO specification. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
OpenStack (2025). OpenStack - Main Page. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
Son, J., He, T., and Buyya, R. (2019). Cloudsimsdn-nfv: Modeling and simulation of network function virtualization and service function chaining in edge computing environments. Software: Practice and Experience, 49(12):1748-1764. DOI: 10.1002/spe.2755.
St-Onge, C., Kara, N., and Edstrom, C. (2023). Nfvlearn: A multi-resource, long short-term memory-based virtual network function resource usage prediction architecture. Software: Practice and Experience, 53(3):555-578. DOI: 10.1002/spe.3160.
Tacker (2025). Tacker - OpenStack NFV Orchestration. Available at:[link]. Accessed Oct., 2025.
Tavares, T. N., da Cruz Marcuzzo, L., Garcia, V. F., de Souza, G. V., Franco, M. F., Bondan, L., De Turck, F., Granville, L. Z., Junior, E. P. D., dos Santos, C. R. P., et al. (2018). Niep: Nfv infrastructure emulation platform. In The 32nd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA), pages 173-180. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/aina.2018.00037.
Turchetti, R. C. and Duarte, E. P. (2015). Implementation of failure detector based on network function virtualization. In 2015 IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks Workshops, pages 19-25. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/dsn-w.2015.30.
Turchetti, R. C. and Duarte Jr, E. P. (2017). Nfv-fd: Implementation of a failure detector using network virtualization technology. International Journal of Network Management, 27(6):e1988. DOI: 10.1002/nem.1988.
Venâncio, G., Garcia, V. F., da Cruz Marcuzzo, L., Tavares, T. N., Franco, M. F., Bondan, L., Schaeffer-Filho, A. E., Paula dos Santos, C. R., Granville, L. Z., and P. Duarte Jr, E. (2021). Beyond vnfm: Filling the gaps of the etsi vnf manager to fully support vnf life cycle operations. International Journal of Network Management, 31(5):e2068. DOI: 10.1002/nem.2068.
Venâncio, G., Turchetti, R. C., and Duarte, E. P. (2019). Nfv-rbcast: Enabling the network to offer reliable and ordered broadcast services. In 2019 9th Latin-American Symposium on Dependable Computing (LADC), pages 1-10. IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/LADC48089.2019.8995681.
Venâncio, G., Turchetti, R. C., and Duarte Jr, E. P. (2022). Nfv-coin: unleashing the power of in-network computing with virtualization technologies. Journal of Internet Services and Applications, 13(1):46-53. DOI: 10.5753/jisa.2022.2342.
Yousaf, F. Z., Bredel, M., Schaller, S., and Schneider, F. (2017). NFV and SDN—Key technology enablers for 5G networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 35(11):2468-2478. DOI: 10.1109/jsac.2017.2760418.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Journal of Internet Services and Applications
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
