VIRTUAL MACHINE MOBILITY WITH EVOLVED PACKET CORE

摘要

A system (85) and method (102) for controlling mobility of a subscriber-specific Virtual Machine (VM) instance from one VM to another VM using a network node (such as an Evolved Packet Gateway (EPG)) (108) in an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) (90) in a mobile communication network (87). The EPG may control the VM mobility for each subscriber in the context of cloud-based services or virtuaiized applications. The EPG may use GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) tunnels (112) rooted at the EPG to Data Center (DC) VMs (58-60, 62-64, 66-68) to govern intra-DC and inter-DC mobility of VMs and also to tie in the mobility triggers to service provider's policies. Each VM session for the mobile subscribers is anchored in the EPG, which then assumes the control of VM mobility for each subscriber through the new GTP interface with the VMs. The EPC-based control of VM mobility can provide optimization of cloud services accessed by a subscriber over a mobile connection.