Abstract: According to different scenario requirements and corresponding business needs, service function chaining (SFC) can be deployed from the edge cloud to the data center, between data centers, and within the data center. However, due to the inherent heavy asset nature of data centers, the assessment of flexibly combined SFC+X orchestration on this basis is difficult to carry out without an economically efficient assessment environment. Using a proof of concept (POC) method for assessment allows for the realization of a model or its most critical components in actual situations, enabling the validation of concerns at a relatively low implementation cost. In the process of assessing SFC+X orchestration in data centers, this paper analyzes whether the POC assessment environment can effectively evaluate the correctness of SFC+X orchestration functions and effectively measure the performance indicators of SFC+X orchestration, explores whether the POC assessment method can solve the problem of assessing SFC+X orchestration in data centers, and demonstrates the principle of correct transmission of SFC functions and the principle of maintaining the degradation relationship of performance indicators. Furthermore, the feasibility theorem of the POC assessment method is proposed. Based on these principles and theorems, combined with the characteristics of SFC+X orchestration in data centers, the hardware resources required for assessment are simplified to design and implement the POC assessment environment. Through theoretical derivation and POC validation methods, it is proved that the POC assessment method can not only effectively evaluate the correctness of SFC+X orchestration functions but also measure the performance indicators of SFC+X orchestration. Finally, an assessment method based on the POC method is proposed to determine whether the SFC+X orchestration in the data center meets the Service Level Agreement (SLA), providing an economically efficient solution to the problem of assessing SFC+X orchestration in data centers.

Key words: POC method, test oracle, POC evaluation environment, data center, functional evaluation, performance measurement