Dynamic flavor allocation

Abstract

A method for allocating a plurality of virtual machines (-) provided on at least one host (-) to a virtualized network function is provided, which provides a defined functional behavior in a network and requires a total application capacity for the functional behavior, the functional behavior being provided by needed virtual machines from the plurality of virtual machines, wherein each of the at least one host has an available processing capacity which can be assigned to the virtual machines provided on the corresponding host, and each virtual machine has at least one flavor which indicates a used processing capacity of the available processing capacity of the corresponding host and which corresponds to a partial application capacity of the total application capacity provided by the corresponding virtual machine, the method comprising: —determining the total application capacity of the virtualized network function, —determining, for each of the virtual machines, the at least one flavor taking into account the available processing capacity of the host on which the corresponding virtual machine is provided, and the corresponding at least one partial application capacity, —determining the needed virtual machines from the plurality of virtual machines and needed flavors of the needed virtual machines that are required to provide the total application capacity, wherein determining the needed virtual machines and needed flavors comprises: performing an iterative process in which the needed virtual machines are dynamically determined from the plurality of virtual machines based on the total application capacity, and in which the needed flavor for each of the needed virtual machines is dynamically determined taking into account the total application capacity and the available processing capacity provided on the host on which the corresponding needed virtual machine is provided.