NFV

FOUNDATION
DISCLAIMER

• This presentation is an extract of key learnings from sdxCentral report on

NFV.

• (2017 Network Functions Virtualization Report Series – 3rd Edition)

HOW IT STARTED

• Cloud computing matured and Telco operators realized cost benefit.

• When servers can be commoditized why not network?
• NFV Initiated by Operators
• Industry Specification Group (ISG) for NFV created in European
Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) that has grown from
7 to more than 290 member companies.
• ETSI took the lead on NFV in 2012 with a breakthrough “Network Functions
Virtualization” white paper.
• ETSI published more than 50 NFV documents so far.
NFV FRAMEWORK - ETSI
NFV GAINS MOMENTUM

• NFV gained momentum after ETSI releases model framework.

• Some operators took initiatives and started development of NFV platforms
putting together funding & developed technology.
• OSM/OpenMANO from Telefonica
• ONAP comprising ECOMP from AT&T
• Open-O from China Mobile

• Most of that work was then donated to Open Source programs.

NFV INFRASTRUCTURE (NFVI)

• Vn-Nf  Data Path & Nf-Vi  Control Path

• VNF runs on top of NFVI
• VIM responsible for managing NFVI
NFV INFRASTRUCTURE (NFVI)
NFVI – PHYSICAL INFRA.

• Open Compute Project (OCP) creating standards & specifications to

be complied by HW vendors offering servers for Cloud Infrastructure.
• For NFV workloads, some vendors starting to provide converged and
hyper-converged workloads and starting to tune them for more I/O-
centric network services
• EDGE computing/Fog computing becoming more relevant in NFV
space.
• customer edge replacing host of devices into one light weight box
hosting vm and network functions such as vrf, dhcp, nat,etc offered as
service.
NFVI-VIRTUALIZATION LAYER

• The NFVI virtualization layer sits on top of the hardware and is a software
platform that typically involves a hypervisor.
• Hypervisors split up the resources of the physical machine and offer the
equivalent of a physical machine to the application.
• Three main functions of the hypervisor :
• split up the resources of the physical machine
• provide isolation between different VMs (CPU level)
• emulate all the necessary peripherals e.g. NIC cards

• Main hypervisors used for NFV are VMWare vSphere®, KVM.

HYPERVISORS

• vSphere®:
• vSphere is a proprietary hypervisor from VMware.
• It is very mature (15+ years since the first release)
• vSphere also has several rich features such VM migration across hypervisors and high-
availability.
• Type 1 or bare-metal hypervisor.

• KVM (Kernal-based Virtual Machine):

• Open source hypervisor project.(10+ years since first release)
• Type 2 or hosted hypervisor typically runs on top of Linux OS.
• Commonly used Host OS operating systems are RHEL,SUSE or Ubuntu.
VIRTUAL INFRA.

• Virtual Machines
• VM’s are created by hypervisors.
• Hypervisors presents API’s to create,destroy,migrate and manage VMs.
• KVM – libvirt ,VMWare – vCenter

• Virtual Storage
• virtualizing block or file storage lies with the SAN, NAS or SDS software,the VM is simply
presented with a LUN (logical unit number) or file share.

• Virtual Networking
• A hypervisor contains a virtual switch or router providing functions such as security,
gateway connectivity, overlay, inter-vm communication, etc.,
 NFVI - FUTURE TRENDS

• NFV is a very young field with a high velocity of innovation.

• New specialized IO processors that target NFV are likely to emerge.
• The virtualization layer is going through a renaissance.
• Container technologies bringing paradigm shift in how workloads are
deployed.
• DevOps & Micro Services gaining traction.
NFVI - FUTURE TRENDS
ETSI-MANO ARCHITECTURE
VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER
(VIM)

• Virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) is a key component of the NFV-

MANO architectural framework
• The NFVI layer consists of the hardware and virtualization software that the
VNFs run on. This layer is simply a data path and does not deal with any of
the scheduling, orchestration, provisioning, monitoring, service assurance etc.
intelligence.
• The VIM manages the NFVI and the serves as a conduit for control-path
interaction between VNFs and NFVI.
VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER
(VIM)
VIM - PLAYERS

• There are two main VIM software stacks prevalent in

NFV:
• OpenStack®
• VMware vRealize6/vCloud NFV
• Other candidates like Cloud Stack have not been prominent
in the last 2-3 years in the NFV
VIM-OPENSTACK

“OpenStack is open source software for managing telecommunications

infrastructure for NFV, 5G, IoT and business applications. Global telecoms
including AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, NTT DOCOMO and Verizon deploy
OpenStack as an integration engine with APIs to orchestrate bare metal, virtual
machine and container resources on a single network. OpenStack is a global
community of more than 70,000 individuals across 183 countries supported by
the OpenStack Foundation.”

(Note from OpenStack Foundation)

VIM-OPENSTACK
VIM – VCLOUD NFV

• Operators often rely on VMWare solution owing to commercial offerings

stability vis.a.vis open source quirkiness.
• High-availability and VM Migration features differentiators.
• Made some improvement's with respect to I/O performance needed by NFV.
• VMware also adds the option to run its own flavor of OpenStack VIM (VIO)
when clients desire to do so.
VNFM (VNF MANAGER)

• The VNFM is responsible for the life-cycle management of VNFs under

the control of the NFVO, which it achieves by providing direction to the VIM.
• VNFM operations include:
• Instantiation of VNFs
• Scaling of VNFs
• Updating and/or upgrading VNFs
• Termination of VNFs
NFV ORCHESTRATOR

• NFVO performs two main functions:

• Resource Orchestration
• Network Service Orchestration

• Resource orchestration ensures VNFs have adequate compute, storage and

network resources. NFVO interacts with VIM to manage/execute activities in
NFVI.
• To ensure service fulfilment, NFVO coordinates with different VNFs through
VNFM as well as VIM to create end-to-end service.
• Ericsson Cloud Manager primarily plays NFVO role bridging
integration with OSS/BSS.
OSS/BSS INTEGRATION

• NFV/SDN deployments need to be integrated with OSS/BSS to seamlessly

fulfill customer demands to provision associated services in network.
• ETSI MANO layer overlooks OSS/BSS integration and focuses more on VNF
and NFVI management.
• To operationalize NFV services and to ensure that CSPs can bill for these
services, integration with OSS/BSS systems is crucial.
• So, other standard bodies and industry groups started working on extending
ETSI MANO architecture.
MEF LIFECYCLE ORCHESTRATION(LSO)
OPEN MANO/RIFT.IO ARCHITECTURE
(OSM)
OPEN BATON
OPENSTACK ARCHITECTURE/ TACKER
OPEN ECOMP ARCHITECTURE
OPEN-O ARCHITECTURE
ERICSSON MANO SOLUTION

• Ericsson Network Manager & Ericsson Cloud Manager positioned as MANO

solution.
• “Ericsson Network manager is a unified multi-layer, multidomain (NFV, SDN, radio,
transport & core) management system and provides various functions such as
VNFM,VNF application & network slice orchestration and network analytics.
Ericsson Cloud manager does the cloud infrastructure management, G-VNFM and
NFVO part of MANO.”
COMPETITION

• HPE Service Director

• Huawei FusionSphere
• VMWare vCloud NFV
• Amdocs Network Cloud Service Orchestrator
VNFS (VIRTUAL NETWORK
FUNCTIONS)

• The workhorse of NFV

• These are the actual network functions that provide the desired network services
• NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) host these services and provide the appropriate virtualization
capabilities.
• NFV MANO that orchestrates and manages the VNFs.
• Services increasingly being virtualized:
• vCPE(virtual customer premise equipment)
• SD-WAN (software-defined wide-area networks)
• vEPC (virtual evolved packet core) and others including vRAN

• Typically layer 4-7 services are adapted as VNFs.

BENEFITS OF VNF

• Reduces total cost of management.

• Agility and simplicity
• Scale up and scale down as needed
• No vendor lock-in
• Level playing field and more options for operators
VNF CHALLENGES

• VNF and NFV Washing

• VNF Licensing—Work in Progress
• Open Source vs. Commercial
• VNF Performance—Not a Solved Problem
• NFV Process and Orchestration
• Co-existence with bare metal network functions