y varia- tions and types of networking hardware and configurations; here we will focus on NICs, control planes, and routers. A NIC is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network, either by using cables or wirelessly (8, n.d.). The control plane is the part of a network that carries signaling traffic and is responsible for routing. Control packets originate from or are destined for a router. Functions of the control plane include system configuration and management (9, n.d.). The router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers per- form the traffic directing functions on the Internet. A data packet is typically forwarded from one router to another through the networks that constitute the Internet work until it reaches its destina- tion node. When a data packet comes in on one of the lines, the router reads the address information in the packet to determine the ultimate destination. Then, using information in its routing table or routing policy, it directs the packet to the next network on its journey n.d.). 4.2.1.3 Storage An all-flash array is a solid-state storage disk system that contains multiple flash memory drives that can be erased and reprogrammed in memory units called "blocks." The benefit to a flash array is that it can transfer data to and from solid-state drives at a higher rate than traditional disk drives because they do not have to spin up additional hard disk drives at each time of need. Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure Block storage is a type of data storage typically used in storage-area network (SAN) environ- ments where data are stored in volumes, also referred to as blocks. Each block acts as an individual hard drive and is configured by the storage administrator. Because the volumes are treated as indi- vidual hard disks, block storage works well for storing a variety of applications such as file systems and databases. While block storage devices tend to be more complex and expensive than file storage