FEATURE: NFV ORCHESTRATION
FEATURE: NFV ORCHESTRATION
Michael Howard, principal analyst, Infonetics Research, says that the importance of orchestration is that it can unlock the potential benefits of cloudified networks. “While operators are certainly attuned to the capital and operational benefits of these transformative technologies, it is the orchestration of virtual compute, storage, and network, combined with the automation of existing network resources that will lead to new, higher-margin revenue streams and happier customers.” Tom Nolle of CIMICorp, who has probably spent as long thinking about NFV as anyone on the planet, points out that you can organise services across both horizontal federations of controllers
and vertically down through the layers of network protocol/technology in three ways; policy-linked structures, domain federation requests, and orchestration. In his view: “The orchestration model says that the responsibility for creating a service doesn’t lie in any layer at all, but in an external process (which, for example, NFV would call “MANO”). The service request from the user invokes an orchestration process that commits resources. This process can “see” across layers and commit the resources where and when needed. The continuity of the service and the cooperative behavior of the layers or controller domains is guaranteed by the orchestration and not by interaction among the domains.”
NFV MANAGEMENT AND ORCHESTRATION ARCHITECTURE
OSS/BSS
NFV ORCHESTRATOR (NFVO)
NS CATALOG
VNF CATALOG
NFV INSTANCES
NFVI RESOURCES
VeNf-Vnfm EMS VNF
VNF Manager (VNFM) VeNf-Vnfm
Vn-Nf NFVI
Nf-VI
Vnfm-VI Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM)
Or-VI NFV-MANO
EXECUTION REFERENCE POINTS OTHER REFERENCE POINTS MAIN NFV REFERENCE POINTS
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Operators will feel that they have, intrinsically, some of this functionality already in their OSS and network management systems. But the difference is in how these will behave in networks of virtualised functions controlled by software controllers. NFV Orchestration allows for: the configuration, provisioning, and chaining of virtual network functions in addition to other resources required for a service, the determination and selection of an optimal physical location and platform on which to place VNFs, mapping of the instantiation of virtual network functions against real-time demand and full lifecycle management of the VNFs, ie. the creation, instantiation, and monitoring of the VNF until it is decommissioned. The ETSI MANO framework breaks down the management and orchestration needs for the NFV architecture into three functional layers: Virtualised Infrastructure Managers (VIMs): This layer handles the virtualisation of physical hardware by integrating with virtual-machine managers. Using a hypervisor, the virtual-machine manager provides the ability to create multiple virtual compute, network, and storage elements. The virtual machines provide lifecycle management functions (create, edit, delete, start, and stop) for the virtual data center elements related to compute, network, and storage functions. VNF Managers (VNFMs): The VNF managers handle the configuration, lifecycle management, and element management of the virtualised network functions. NFV Orchestrator (NFVO): The orchestrator provides lifecycle management of the network services that includes instantiation, scaling,, performance measurements, event
correlation, resource management, validation and authorisation for resource requests, and policy management. So in ETSI’s MANO (Management and Orchestration) architecture, the Orchestrator is responsible for onboarding network services and service lifecycle management (instantiation, scale-out/in, performance measurements, event correlation, termination). The VNF Manager, as it sounds, manages VNF instances, coordinating between the VNF Infrastructure and element management systems.
VENDOR APPROACHES Amdocs views its NSC Orchestrator as forming both the NFV Orchestrator functional block and that of the Virtual Network Function (VNF) Manager (although the orchestrator can also work with other VNF Managers). Shaul Rozen, Director Of Product Strategy, Network Cloud Service Orchestration, Amdocs, said, that the Amdocs Orchestrator has created a “unique” network modelling scheme that enables carriers to model choice into the network diagram from the network service catalogue. For example a user could create a model by choosing either a Checkpoint or Juniper firewall, Rozen said, and then define in the model the security services to be applied (firewall, DDOS protection etc). Rozen said Amdocs is also working to build a partner ecosystem, with 22 partners from VNFs (vEPC, vIMS, vCPE) and from NFV infrastructure and hardware providers. This will provide pre-integrated NFV Proof of Concepts, Rozen said, to enable carriers to move forward quickly with NFV deployments. In one example Rozen cited, a call recording service was created on a vIMS (from Metaswitch) that
was modelled into the Amdocs catalogue and instantiated within five days. So if you are open, why the need for a pre-integrated partner approach? Rozen said it is really about benefitting from shared experience, and to get around the lack of standards available so far. “Every partner comes with a different VNF Descriptor (NFV-D), and most don’t even have a VNF-D so we are creating best practices to drive the industry forward. Another issue is that our partners are looking for Proof of Concept and it’s hard to show proof of Orchestration by itself and so for that go to market we needed to bring partners on board.” As for the issue of next generation OSS and network management in NFV-SDN networks, Rozen said that he thinks Amdocs is ahead of the curve. “We see ourselves as covering the orchestration and the VNF manager, as well as some even more northbound functions bordering next gen OSS because we are very much serviceorientated. I can tell you we will hear more and more talk in ETSI within the next year about real time OSS and next gen OSS, because if has not been tackled enough. So we are ahead of ETSI.” Amdocs is certainly not alone in targeting service orchestration. There have been a clutch of product launches over the past months.
CYAN Cyan’s Planet Orchestrate, launched before the Amdocs product and commercially available towards the end of 2014, is also designed to fulfill the roles of the orchestrator and VNF manager functionality described in the ETSI NFV ISG architecture. Cyan’s vision is to be able to support VNF management and orchestration across one or more data centers, as well as distributed architectures where VNFs may be
deployed at the customer premise edge. Cyan took part in two ETSI-approved operator-sponsored proof-of-concept demonstrations in 2014 including “End-toEnd vEPC Orchestration in a Multi-vendor Open NFVI Environment” and “Multivendor Distributed NFV.”
OVERTURE Orchestrator is an NFV service lifecycle management and orchestration system that coordinates virtual resources and physical network elements to create, activate and assure services using one or more virtual network functions. It uses the OpenStack cloud controller – bundled with ESO – to manage the virtual compute environment, including virtual machines, virtual switches and top-of-rack data center switches. For management of the physical wide area network traffic flows, ESO leverages Overture’s Ensemble Network Controller, but it can also be integrated with other third-party network controllers. Overture is also part of an ecosystem approach being delivered by WindRiver. NetCracker’s Service Orchestrator is described as “unique” by NetCracker because “it enables end-to-end orchestration of service provisioning and assurance for hybrid networks made of both virtualized SDN/NFV-based components and traditional network technologies.” This is clearly designed with the migration market in mind, and also potentially as a protective play of the company’s widely deployed OSS and telecoms management software. The product provides configuration management, service chaining, capacity management and real-time service provisioning as well as policy and analytics capabilities that orchestrate and execute network and service policies in response to live analyses of network and service conditions and events.
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