SIST ES 203 539 V1.1.1:2020

ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)






ETSI STANDARD
Environmental Engineering (EE);
Measurement method for energy efficiency of
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
in laboratory environment

---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
2 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)



Reference
DES/EE-EEPS19
Keywords
energy efficiency, NFV, SDN

ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE

Tel.: +33 4 92 94 42 00  Fax: +33 4 93 65 47 16

Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - NAF 742 C
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° 7803/88

Important notice
The present document can be downloaded from:
http://www.etsi.org/standards-search
The present document may be made available in electronic versions and/or in print. The content of any electronic and/or
print versions of the present document shall not be modified without the prior written authorization of ETSI. In case of any
existing or perceived difference in contents between such versions and/or in print, the prevailing version of an ETSI
deliverable is the one made publicly available in PDF format at www.etsi.org/deliver.
Users of the present document should be aware that the document may be subject to revision or change of status.
Information on the current status of this and other ETSI documents is available at
https://portal.etsi.org/TB/ETSIDeliverableStatus.aspx
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comment to one of the following services:
https://portal.etsi.org/People/CommiteeSupportStaff.aspx
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and microfilm except as authorized by written permission of ETSI.
The content of the PDF version shall not be modified without the written authorization of ETSI.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.

© ETSI 2019.
All rights reserved.

TM TM TM
DECT , PLUGTESTS , UMTS and the ETSI logo are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members.
TM TM
3GPP and LTE are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and
of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
oneM2M™ logo is a trademark of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and
of the oneM2M Partners.
®
GSM and the GSM logo are trademarks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
3 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Modal verbs terminology . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 5
2 References . 5
2.1 Normative references . 5
2.2 Informative references . 6
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Terms . 7
3.2 Symbols . 7
3.3 Abbreviations . 7
4 Metrics definition . 8
4.1 Overview of System Under Test . 8
4.2 Metrics of VNFs . 10
4.2.0 General . 10
4.2.1 VNF energy efficiency . 10
4.2.2 VNF resource efficiency . 11
4.3 Metrics of NFVI . 11
5 Measurement methods . 12
5.1 Measurement conditions . 12
5.2 Measurement procedure . 13
5.3 Measurement method for power consumption of VNF . 14
5.4 Measurement method for resource consumption of VNF . 14
5.5 Measurement method for energy efficiency of NFVI . 15
6 Measurement Report . 15
Annex A (informative): Example of VNF measurement . 16
History . 19


ETSI

---------------------- Page: 3 ----------------------
4 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
Intellectual Property Rights
Essential patents
IPRs essential or potentially essential to normative deliverables may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (https://ipr.etsi.org/).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Trademarks
The present document may include trademarks and/or tradenames which are asserted and/or registered by their owners.
ETSI claims no ownership of these except for any which are indicated as being the property of ETSI, and conveys no
right to use or reproduce any trademark and/or tradename. Mention of those trademarks in the present document does
not constitute an endorsement by ETSI of products, services or organizations associated with those trademarks.
Foreword
This ETSI Standard (ES) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Environmental Engineering (EE).
The present document was developed jointly by ETSI TC EE and ITU-T Study Group 5. It is published respectively by
ITU and ETSI as Recommendation ITU-T L.1361 [i.14] and ETSI ES 203 539 (the present document), which are
technically-equivalent.
Modal verbs terminology
In the present document "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "may", "need not", "will", "will not", "can" and
"cannot" are to be interpreted as described in clause 3.2 of the ETSI Drafting Rules (Verbal forms for the expression of
provisions).
"must" and "must not" are NOT allowed in ETSI deliverables except when used in direct citation.
Introduction
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) changes the traditional telecom network architecture to layered model by
replacing physical equipment with network functions running on standard server platform. Three main domains are
identified in high-level NFV architecture: Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs) is the software implementation of a
network functions which is capable of running over the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI). NFVI include diversity of physical
resources and virtualised resources to support the execution of the VNFs. NFV Management and Orchestration
(MANO) covers the orchestration and lifecycle management of physical and/or software resources that support the
infrastructure virtualisation, and the lifecycle management of VNF. The three decoupled elements with connection of
standardized and open interface can be provided by different vendors. VNFs and NFVI are the dominant parts from
energy consumption point of view.
Therefore the present document defines energy efficiency metrics and measurement methods for NFV components
including VNFs and NFVI. The energy efficiency of VNF is evaluated according to hardware energy consumption,
resource consumption and utilization related with VNF. The energy efficiency of NFVI is evaluated as resource
provision capability which is expressed as service capacity of reference VNFs running on it with amount of energy
consumption.

ETSI

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5 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
1 Scope
The present document defines the metrics and measurement methods for the energy efficiency of functional components
of NFV environment. The NFV functional components include Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs) and NFV
Infrastructure (NFVI) defined in NFV architecture framework as described in ETSI GS NFV 002 [i.1]. Management
and Orchestration (MANO) is not included as system under test, but will be eventually taken as test environment.

Figure 1: NFV function components in the scope of the present document
The measurement method described in the present document is intended to be used to assess and compare the energy
efficiency of same functional components independently in lab testing and pre-deployment testing. Energy efficiency of
co-located VNFs sharing same platform resources cannot be compared using the defined method in present document.
The scope of the document is not to define measurement method in operational NFV environment.
The present document is intended to define common energy efficiency measurement methods for NFV environments,
not try to cover all different types of VNFs (e.g. firewall, gateway, etc.), but it provides the basis to make extensible
definition.
2 References
2.1 Normative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
https://docbox.etsi.org/Reference/.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are necessary for the application of the present document.
Not applicable.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 5 ----------------------
6 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
2.2 Informative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are not necessary for the application of the present document but they assist the
user with regard to a particular subject area.
[i.1] ETSI GS NFV 002 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Architectural
Framework".
[i.2] ETSI GS NFV-INF 001 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Infrastructure
Overview".
[i.3] ETSI EN 303 470: "Environmental Engineering (EE); Energy Efficiency measurement
methodology and metrics for servers".
[i.4] ETSI ES 203 136 (V1.1.1): "Environmental Engineering (EE); Measurement methods for energy
efficiency of router and switch equipment".
[i.5] ETSI GS NFV-TST 001 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Pre-deployment
Testing; Report on Validation of NFV Environments and Services".
[i.6] ETSI GS NFV-PER 001 (V1.1.2): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); NFV Performance &
Portability Best Practises".
[i.7] IEC 62018: "Power consumption of information technology equipment - Measurement methods".
[i.8] OPNFV Yardstick project: "Network Service Benchmarking (NSB) framework extension".
NOTE: Available at https://wiki.opnfv.org/display/yardstick/Network+Service+Benchmarking.
[i.9] ETSI EN 300 132-2: "Environmental Engineering (EE); Power supply interface at the input of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment; Part 2: -48 V Direct Current
(DC)".
[i.10] CENELEC EN 50160: "Voltage characteristics of electricity supplied by public electricity
networks".
[i.11] ETSI GS NFV-TST 008: "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 3; Testing; NFVI
Compute and Network Metrics Specification".
[i.12] ETSI GS NFV-IFA 027: "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 2; Management and
Orchestration; Performance Measurements Specification".
[i.13] ETSI GS NFV 003 (V1.2.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Terminology for Main
Concepts in NFV".
[i.14] Recommendation ITU-T L.1361: "Measurement method for energy efficiency of network
functions virtualization".
ETSI

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7 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations
3.1 Terms
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms apply:
energy consumption: amount of consumed energy
NOTE: It is measured in Joule or kWh (where 1 kWh = 3,6 × 106 J) and corresponds to energy use.
energy efficiency: relation between the useful output and energy consumption
erlang: average number of concurrent calls carried by the circuits
function: logical representation of a network element defined by 3GPP
node: physical representation of one or more functions
power consumption: amount of consumed power
NOTE: It is measured in W and corresponds to the rate which energy is converted.
resource consumption: VM resources, VN resources
system under test: node being measured
useful output: maximum capacity of the system under test which is depending on the different functions
NOTE: It is expressed as the number of Erlang (Erl), Packets/s (PPS), Subscribers (Sub) or Simultaneously
Attached Users (SAU).
3.2 Symbols
Void.
3.3 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the abbreviations given in ETSI GS NFV 003 [i.13] and the following apply:
EER Energy Efficiency Ratio
HSS Home Subscriber Server
HW HardWare
NFV Network Functions Virtualisation
NFVI NFV Infrastructure
QoS Quality of Service
RER Resource Efficiency Ratio
SLA Service Level Agreement
SUT System Under Test
SW SoftWare
VNF Virtualised Network Function
ETSI

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8 ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.1 (2019-06)
4 Metrics definition
4.1 Overview of System Under Test
In traditional networks, physical network elements provide network functions as a combination of vendor specific
hardware and software. The System Under Test (SUT) is a physical network element which is usually taken as a "black
box" in energy efficiency measurement standards. But in NFV environment, the functionality of physical network
element is decoupled into software and hardware via Virtualisation. Network functions are executed as VNFs on NFVI
composing of general purpose computing, networking and storage hardware resources, and Virtualisation layer. All of
them are managed and orchestrated by MANO. There will be many potential suppliers for NFV sub-systems and
components, which need to be measured separately on energy efficiency performance.
The energy efficiency metrics is typically defined as functional unit of useful output divided by the energy
consumption. As shown in Figure 2, NFV architecture decompose the integrity of traditional energy efficiency
measurement which tightly connect useful service output to energy consumption. VNF is software implementation of a
network function which consumes resources provided by NFVI to produce service capacity to cloud service users.
NFVI consume energy to provide infrastructure resources to support the execution of VNF. Such decoupled architecture
introduces complexity on measurement process. Resource consumption should be monitored, internal configuration of
SUT and test environment should be specified and reported to ensure repeatability and comparability.

Figure 2: High level NFV architecture (from Figure 23 of ETSI GS NFV-INF 001 [i.2])
There are already several energy efficiency measurement standards for NFVI components, for example ETSI
EN 303 470 [i.3] for server, ETSI ES 203 136 [i.4] for Ethernet switch.
In the following clauses the SUTs considered for energy efficiency measurement are a Virtualised Network
Function (VNF) and the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI).
The definition of test environment and test function are described in ETSI GS NFV-TST 001 [i.5]. The test environment
consists of reference implementation of those functional NFV components from the NFV architecture which do not
represent the particular SUT, and contain test functions and entities to enable controlling the test execution and
collecting the test measurement. Test function are entities that communicate with the SUT via standardized interfaces.
• VNF under test:
- For energy efficiency measurement of VNF, the SUT is VNF under test as illustrated in Figure 3.
- The test environment consists of reference implementation of NFVI and MANO functional components
plus a Test controller and Test VNF/PNFs, Performance monitor, Power meter. A Performance Monitor
as test function is required to measure the performance indicators from the NFVI.
ETSI

-----------------
...

Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)






ETSI STANDARD
Environmental Engineering (EE);
Measurement method for energy efficiency of
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
in laboratory environment

---------------------- Page: 1 ----------------------
2 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)



Reference
DES/EE-EEPS19
Keywords
energy efficiency, NFV, SDN

ETSI
650 Route des Lucioles
F-06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex - FRANCE

Tel.: +33 4 92 94 42 00  Fax: +33 4 93 65 47 16

Siret N° 348 623 562 00017 - NAF 742 C
Association à but non lucratif enregistrée à la
Sous-Préfecture de Grasse (06) N° 7803/88

Important notice
The present document can be downloaded from:
http://www.etsi.org/standards-search
The present document may be made available in electronic versions and/or in print. The content of any electronic and/or
print versions of the present document shall not be modified without the prior written authorization of ETSI. In case of any
existing or perceived difference in contents between such versions and/or in print, the prevailing version of an ETSI
deliverable is the one made publicly available in PDF format at www.etsi.org/deliver.
Users of the present document should be aware that the document may be subject to revision or change of status.
Information on the current status of this and other ETSI documents is available at
https://portal.etsi.org/TB/ETSIDeliverableStatus.aspx
If you find errors in the present document, please send your comment to one of the following services:
https://portal.etsi.org/People/CommiteeSupportStaff.aspx
Copyright Notification
No part may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and microfilm except as authorized by written permission of ETSI.
The content of the PDF version shall not be modified without the written authorization of ETSI.
The copyright and the foregoing restriction extend to reproduction in all media.

© ETSI 2019.
All rights reserved.

TM TM TM
DECT , PLUGTESTS , UMTS and the ETSI logo are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members.
TM TM
3GPP and LTE are trademarks of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and
of the 3GPP Organizational Partners.
oneM2M™ logo is a trademark of ETSI registered for the benefit of its Members and
of the oneM2M Partners.
®
GSM and the GSM logo are trademarks registered and owned by the GSM Association.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 2 ----------------------
3 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 4
Foreword . 4
Modal verbs terminology . 4
Introduction . 4
1 Scope . 5
2 References . 5
2.1 Normative references . 5
2.2 Informative references . 6
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations . 6
3.1 Terms . 6
3.2 Symbols . 7
3.3 Abbreviations . 7
4 Metrics definition . 7
4.1 Overview of System Under Test . 7
4.2 Metrics of VNFs . 10
4.2.0 General . 10
4.2.1 VNF energy efficiency . 10
4.2.2 VNF resource efficiency . 11
4.3 Metrics of NFVI . 11
5 Measurement methods . 12
5.1 Measurement conditions . 12
5.2 Measurement procedure . 13
5.3 Measurement method for power consumption of VNF . 14
5.4 Measurement method for resource consumption of VNF . 14
5.5 Measurement method for energy efficiency of NFVI . 15
6 Measurement Report . 15
Annex A (informative): Example of VNF measurement . 16
History . 19


ETSI

---------------------- Page: 3 ----------------------
4 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
Intellectual Property Rights
Essential patents
IPRs essential or potentially essential to normative deliverables may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (https://ipr.etsi.org/).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Trademarks
The present document may include trademarks and/or tradenames which are asserted and/or registered by their owners.
ETSI claims no ownership of these except for any which are indicated as being the property of ETSI, and conveys no
right to use or reproduce any trademark and/or tradename. Mention of those trademarks in the present document does
not constitute an endorsement by ETSI of products, services or organizations associated with those trademarks.
Foreword
This final draft ETSI Standard (ES) has been produced by ETSI Technical Committee Environmental Engineering (EE),
and is now submitted for the ETSI standards Membership Approval Procedure.
Modal verbs terminology
In the present document "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "may", "need not", "will", "will not", "can" and
"cannot" are to be interpreted as described in clause 3.2 of the ETSI Drafting Rules (Verbal forms for the expression of
provisions).
"must" and "must not" are NOT allowed in ETSI deliverables except when used in direct citation.
Introduction
Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) changes the traditional telecom network architecture to layered model by
replacing physical equipment with network functions running on standard server platform. Three main domains are
identified in high-level NFV architecture: Virtualised Network Functions (VNFs) is the software implementation of a
network functions which is capable of running over the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI). NFVI include diversity of physical
resources and virtualised resources to support the execution of the VNFs. NFV Management and Orchestration
(MANO) covers the orchestration and lifecycle management of physical and/or software resources that support the
infrastructure virtualisation, and the lifecycle management of VNF. The three decoupled elements with connection of
standardized and open interface can be provided by different vendors. VNFs and NFVI are the dominant parts from
energy consumption point of view.
Therefore the present document defines energy efficiency metrics and measurement methods for NFV components
including VNFs and NFVI. The energy efficiency of VNF is evaluated according to hardware energy consumption,
resource consumption and utilization related with VNF. The energy efficiency of NFVI is evaluated as resource
provision capability which is expressed as service capacity of reference VNFs running on it with amount of energy
consumption.

ETSI

---------------------- Page: 4 ----------------------
5 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
1 Scope
The present document define the metrics and measurement methods for the energy efficiency of functional components
of NFV environment. The NFV functional components include Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and NFV
Infrastructure (NFVI) defined in NFV architecture framework as described in ETSI GS NFV 002 [i.1]. Management
and Orchestration (MANO) is not included as system under test, but will be eventually taken as test environment.

Figure 1: NFV function components in the scope of the present document
The measurement method described in the present document is intend to be used to assess and compare the energy
efficiency of same functional components independently in lab testing and pre-deployment testing. Energy efficiency of
co-located VNFs sharing same platform resources cannot be compared using the defined method in present document.
The scope of the document is not to define measurement method in operational NFV environment.
The present document is intend to define common energy efficiency measurement methods for NFV environments, not
try to cover all different types of VNFs (e.g. firewall, gateway, etc.), but it provides the basis to make extensible
definition.
2 References
2.1 Normative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
Referenced documents which are not found to be publicly available in the expected location might be found at
https://docbox.etsi.org/Reference/.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are necessary for the application of the present document.
Not applicable.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 5 ----------------------
6 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
2.2 Informative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are not necessary for the application of the present document but they assist the
user with regard to a particular subject area.
[i.1] ETSI GS NFV 002 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Architectural
Framework".
[i.2] ETSI GS NFV-INF 001 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Infrastructure
Overview".
[i.3] ETSI EN 303 470: "Environmental Engineering (EE); Energy Efficiency measurement
methodology and metrics for servers".
[i.4] ETSI ES 203 136 (V1.1.1): "Environmental Engineering (EE); Measurement methods for energy
efficiency of router and switch equipment".
[i.5] ETSI GS NFV-TST 001 (V1.1.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Pre-deployment
Testing; Report on Validation of NFV Environments and Services".
[i.6] ETSI GS NFV-PER 001 (V1.1.2): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); NFV Performance &
Portability Best Practises".
[i.7] IEC 62018: "Power consumption of information technology equipment - Measurement methods".
[i.8] OPNFV Yardstick project: "Network Service Benchmarking (NSB) framework extension".
NOTE: Available at https://wiki.opnfv.org/display/yardstick/Network+Service+Benchmarking.
[i.9] ETSI EN 300 132-2: "Environmental Engineering (EE); Power supply interface at the input of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment; Part 2: -48 V Direct Current
(DC)".
[i.10] CENELEC EN 50160: "Voltage characteristics of electricity supplied by public electricity
networks".
[i.11] ETSI GS NFV-TST 008: "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 3; Testing; NFVI
Compute and Network Metrics Specification".
[i.12] ETSI GS NFV-IFA 027: "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Release 2; Management and
Orchestration; Performance Measurements Specification".
[i.13] ETSI GS NFV 003 (V1.2.1): "Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Terminology for Main
Concepts in NFV".
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations
3.1 Terms
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms apply:
energy consumption: amount of consumed energy
NOTE: It is measured in Joule or kWh (where 1 kWh = 3,6 × 106 J) and corresponds to energy use.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 6 ----------------------
7 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
energy efficiency: relation between the useful output and energy consumption
erlang: average number of concurrent calls carried by the circuits
function: logical representation of a network element defined by 3GPP
node: physical representation of one or more functions
power consumption: amount of consumed power
NOTE: It is measured in W and corresponds to the rate which energy is converted.
resource consumption: VM resources, VN resources
system under test: node being measured
useful output: maximum capacity of the system under test which is depending on the different functions
NOTE: It is expressed as the number of Erlang (Erl), Packets/s (PPS), Subscribers (Sub) or Simultaneously
Attached Users (SAU).
3.2 Symbols
Void.
3.3 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the abbreviations given in ETSI GS NFV 003 [i.13] and the following apply:
EER Energy Efficiency Ratio
HSS Home Subscriber Server
HW HardWare
QoS Quality of Service
RER Resource Efficiency Ratio
SLA Service Level Agreement
SUT System Under Test
SW SoftWare
4 Metrics definition
4.1 Overview of System Under Test
In traditional networks, physical network elements provide network functions as a combination of vendor specific
hardware and software. The System Under Test (SUT) is a physical network element which is usually taken as a "black
box" in energy efficiency measurement standards. But in NFV environment, the functionality of physical network
element is decoupled into software and hardware via Virtualisation. Network functions are executed as VNFs on NFVI
composing of general purpose computing, networking and storage hardware resources, and Virtualisation layer. All of
them are managed and orchestrated by MANO. There will be many potential suppliers for NFV sub-systems and
components, which need to be measured separately on energy efficiency performance.
The energy efficiency metrics is typically defined as functional unit of useful output divided by the energy
consumption. As shown in Figure 2, NFV architecture decompose the integrity of traditional energy efficiency
measurement which tightly connect useful service output to energy consumption. VNF is software implementation of a
network function which consumes resources provided by NFVI to produce service capacity to cloud service users.
NFVI consume energy to provide infrastructure resources to support the execution of VNF. Such decoupled architecture
introduces complexity on measurement process. Resource consumption should be monitored, internal configuration of
SUT and test environment should be specified and reported to ensure repeatability and comparability.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 7 ----------------------
8 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)

Figure 2: High level NFV architecture (from Figure 23 of ETSI GS NFV-INF 001 [i.2])
There are already several energy efficiency measurement standards for NFVI components, for example ETSI
EN 303 470 [i.3] for server, ETSI ES 203 136 [i.4] for Ethernet switch.
In the following clauses the SUTs considered for energy efficiency measurement are a Virtualised Network
Function (VNF) and the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI).
The definition of test environment and test function are described in ETSI GS NFV-TST 001 [i.5]. The test environment
consists of reference implementation of those functional NFV components from the NFV architecture which do not
represent the particular SUT, and contain test functions and entities to enable controlling the test execution and
collecting the test measurement. Test function are entities that communicate with the SUT via standardized interfaces.
• VNF under test:
- For energy efficiency measurement of VNF, the SUT is VNF under test as illustrated in Figure 3.
- The test environment consists of reference implementation of NFVI and MANO functional components
plus a Test controller and Test VNF/PNFs, Performance monitor, Power meter. A Performance Monitor
as test function is required to measure the performance indicators from the NFVI.
ETSI

---------------------- Page: 8 ----------------------
9 Final draft ETSI ES 203 539 V1.1.0 (2019-03)
Test Test
VNF/PNF VNF/PNF
VNF
VNFC VNFC VNFC
VNFO
Virtual Virtual Virtual
Performance Monitor
VNFM
Compute Net
...