New services and ever increasing traffic volumes require the next generation of mobile networks, e.g. 5G, to be much more flexible and scalable. The primary enabler for its flexibility is transforming network functions from proprietary hardware to software using modern virtualization technologies, paving the way of virtual network functions (VNF). Such VNFs can then be flexibly deployed on cloud data centers while traffic is routed along a chain of VNFs through software-defined networks. However, such flexibility comes with a new challenge of allocating efficient computational resources to each VNF and optimally placing them on a cluster. In this thesis, we argue that, to achieve an autonomous and efficient performance optimization method, a solid understanding of the underlying system, service chains, and upcoming traffic is required. We, therefore, conducted a series of focused studies to address the scalability and performance issues in three stages. We first introduce an automated profiling and benchmarking framework, named NFV-Inspector to measure and collect system KPIs as well as extract various insights from the system. Then, we propose systematic methods and algorithms for performance modelling and resource recommendation of cloud native network functions and evaluate them on a real 5G testbed. Finally, we design and implement a bottom-up performance simulator named PerfSim to approximate the performance of service chains based on the nodes’ performance models and user-defined scenarios. / <p>Article 5 part of thesis as manuscript, now published.</p>