US Patent 9794352 Network function virtualization service chaining

Systems and methods for managing a service set in network function virtualization (NVF) are provided. A service set can be defined as an ordered list of services to be applied to packet traffic and assigned to instances of the services in a distributed pool of virtual hosts. Responsive to determining that a first service in the service set is to be transferred from a first host to a second host, other services in the service set can also be identified to be transferred to the second host to maintain quality of service and latency as a packet is processed by the service set.