Distributed VNF Management Architecture and Use cases

Sridhar Pothuganti

Trinath Somanchi

INDIA

Session Outline

• NFV - Benefits

• NFV deployment models.

• Role of VNF Manager.

• Understanding em-vnf-vnfm

• Future VNFs.

• VNF Management – Tomorrow

• Distributed VNF Management – Overview.

• State and Operational Flow.

• Benefits and Use-cases

NFV - Benefits

Reduced operator CAPEX and OPEX through reduced equipment costs and reduced power consumption

Reduced time-to-market to deploy new network services

Improved return on investment from new services

Greater flexibility to scale up, scale down or evolve services

Openness to the virtual appliance market and pure software entrants

Opportunities to trial and deploy new innovative services at lower risk

Network Function Virtualization – Benefits

Evolving Telco needs

1900-1990s

1960-2000s

2000-2010s

Today

Future

Time

Value

Physical(Copper/Fiber/Radio)

Physical(Copper/Fiber/Radio)

Physical(Copper/Fiber/Radio)

Physical(Copper/Fiber/Radio)

Physical(Copper/Fiber/Radio)

Voice Voice Voice Voice Voice

SMS SMS

Data (Internet/IP)

SMS SMS

Data (Internet/IP) Data (Internet/IP)

Distributed Telco Cloud

Centralized PlatformsPaaS, IaaS etc..

Service/ContentSaaS

Centralized PlatformsPaaS, IaaS etc..

Service/ContentSaaS

NFV Deployment Models

VNFVNFVNF

Customer Premises

CSP Network

CSP PoP (CO/DC)

Virtual Network Functions located at CSP PoP

Centralized Model

• All Virtualized functionality located at CSPs PoP (DC/CO).• VNFs deployed using existing networks.• Carrier Ethernet is ideal for providing access to centralized

VNFs from the customer premises• Basic Switch/Router at the customer premises.• Heavy reliability on the cloud and network performance.

Customer Premises CSP Network

Virtual Network Functions located at Customer Premises

Decentralized Model

VNFVNFVNF

Customer Premises

VNFVNFVNF

• All Virtualized functionality located at Customer Premises.• Requires augmenting CP equipment.• No VNFs in the Data center.• Facilitates traffic handling and offloading to hardware-based

processing.

VNFVNF

Customer Premises

CSP Network

CSP PoP (CO/DC)

Virtual Network Functions distributed betweenCustomer premises and CSP PoP

Distributed Model

VNFVNFVNF

• Network functionality distributed between CSP’s PoP and CPE.

• VNFs can be deployed based on optimal feasibility,performance, reliability, scalability and costconsiderations.

• VNFs can be dynamically ordered, configured and chained as per the requirement.

Distributed Model – (Edge NFV)

VNFVNF

CSP Network

CSP PoP (CO/DC)

Virtual Network Functions distributed between Customer premises, Gateways/Aggregation points and CSP PoP

Customer Premises

VNFVNFVNF

• Network functionality distributed between CSP’s PoP, Cloud edge and CPE.

• Extending Multi-DC management to address many small "DC" locations.

Customer Premises

VNFVNFVNFAggregation Network Edge

VNFVNFVNF

Role of VNF Manager

Instantiate

Scale

Scale VNF to level

Change VNF Flavor

TerminateQuery VNF

Heal VNF

Operate VNF

Modify VNF

Virtual Network Function

• VNF Instantiation and Termination.

• Monitoring Health and Performance indicators.

• Scaling and healing.

• Interface to Vendor specific EMS.

• VNF Image update management.

• Manage group of VNFCs belonging to the same VNF instance.

VNF Managers are seen tightly coupled with other MANO components. But they are intended to be loosely coupled and have distributed implementation scope.

Reference: [ETSI GS NFV-IFA 008 V2.1.1 (2016-10)] Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Management and Orchestration; Ve-Vnfm reference point - Interface and Information Model Specification

Understanding em-vnf-vnfm

• Element Management System (EMS) manages the VNFs in co-ordination with VNFM.

• Ve-Vnfm-em – Provides the Interface for EMS to support various operations (LCM, Fault, Performance, Configuration etc..) produced by VNFM.

• EMS are specific to the VNFs and are provided by VNF vendors.

• EMS act as VNF specific managers by supporting various operations from VNFM.

• Ve-Vnfm-Vnf – Provides interface for VNF to support various operations produced by VNFM.

• Provides a direct communication to VNF management.

Reference: [ETSI GS NFV-IFA 008 V2.1.1 (2016-10)] Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Management and Orchestration; Ve-Vnfm reference point - Interface and Information Model Specification

While VNF Centric management approach is a required, VNFMs can take fair share in managing VNFs. Moving forward, VNFMs will need to manage multi vendor VNFs. Standardized specification is still in literature.

VNFM

EMS VNF

Ve-Vnfm-em Ve-Vnfm-vnf

Elem

ent

Man

agem

ent

Syst

emV

irtu

al N

etw

ork

Fu

nct

ion

Future VNFs

Containerized VNFs

• Reduced Overhead

Microservices,

• which enables service composability, reusability, efficient scaling and ease of deployment

Stateless processing

• Makes cloud VNFs fault tolerant and scalable without notional limits – Application isolated from state.

Easy Orchestration

• VNFs are designed to minimize the amount of configuration needed in each component.

Monolithic VNF

• VNF combined with all the

components

Minimal Reuse

• VNFC level re-usability is minimal or no

Stateful

• The states are tightly coupled with the packet processing unit itself,

Orchestration

• VNF orchestration is dependent on VNF Complexity.

CN-VNFVNF

VNF Manager - Tomorrow

Today … Tomorrow..

VNF Management Centralized Distributed NFV, Edge NFV is evolving. VNF management must change scope.

VNF/EMS/VNFM from single providers Complex decomposed VNFCs from multiple providers

EMS to manage VNFs EMS based VNF management faded. VNFMs to managed decomposed shared VNF(C)s.

Security management centralized Distributed Security management - VNF and NS centric.

Intelligent VNFs – Still in literature Intelligent VNFs – a Reality

With the adoption of VNF decomposition to microservices and evolving Telco needs, Cloud Edge and Customer premises equipment management requires localized control for low latency and Service agility. This expands the view of VNF management.

Distributed VNF Management

Core DC

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF VNFVNFVNF

CSP Network

vEdge

vEdge

vEdge

VNFVNFVNF

Mini DCNFVI PoP

vCPEvCPEvCPE

vBranch

vCPEvCPE

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

vCPE

D-VNF-M

D-VNF-M

D-VNF-M

D-VNF-M

D-VNF-M

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

vCPE

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

vCPE

VNFVNFVNF

VNFVNFVNF

Centralized Orchestration D-VNF Management

Mini DCNFVI PoP

Centralize what you can.. Distribute what you must…

D-VNFM - Architecture

D-VNFM

Data analytics/Learning Interface

Res

ou

rce

mgm

t. I

nte

rfac

e (V

i-V

nfm

)

Fault Management Interface

Config Management Interface

Security Management Interface

Performance Management interface

Orc

hes

trat

ion

. In

terf

ace

(Or-

Vn

fm)

VNF LCM/Elastic Interface (Ve-Vnfm-vnf)

Localized Policy Store Localized Key Store

Light weight VNF Manager

Localized VNF management.

Logical Zone –Security

management.

Integration to external

applications.

VNFC specific FCPS

management

VNF LCM/Elastic Interface (ve-

Vnfm)

Basic VNF lifecycle management, On-

demand scale in/out and auto-healing of VNFs.

Resource Management

Interface (Vi-Vnfm)

Store and provide VNF deployment specific resource

information (Faulty resource,

Performance metric, Resource

reservation)

Orchestration interface (Or-

Vnfm)

As Generic VNFM, communicates with

NFVO for on-demand resource

allocation and VNF specific

requirements

Distributed Policy Store

Stores the Flow, security policy,

healing and monitoring policies and performance

upgrade rules.

Distributed Key Store

Stores the key and certificates required for

cryptography.

FCPS Management Interface

VNFC Centric FCPS management.

Data analytics/Learning

interface

Provision external data/machine

learning systems and query policies

to enable intelligent VNFs (means to

self-auto-scale and self-auto-heal provided VNF

supports additional functionality

inclusion).

D-VNFM – Functional Blocks

Authorized Agent VNFs NFVODistributed VNFM VIM External Apps

1. VNF Instantiation1.1 Grant Lifecycle Operation 1.2 Check Policies

and Resource Availability

1.3 Resource Reservation

1.4 Resource Reservation Response1.5 Ack

1.6 Allocate Resources

1.7 Ack : Allocate Resource1.8 Configure VNF

1.10 VNF Created1.9 Notify VNF Instantiated

2. Monitor VNF 2.2 Data Analytics/ML data2.1 Stats feed to External Apps

2.3 Advice for VNF improvement

3. Prediction as scaling required

3.1 Grant LCO(scale, Bulk) 3.2 Check Policies and Resource

Availability

3.3 Resource Reservation3.4 Resource Reservation

Response3.5 Ack (scale, bulk)

6.6 Allocate Resources

3.7 Ack : Allocate Resource3.8 Configure VNF

3.9 Notify Resources Utilized

3.10 Notify VNF Scaled

Operational Flow 1/2V

NF

Inst

anti

atio

nV

NF

Imp

rove

VN

F Sc

ale

VNFs NFVODistributed VNFM VIM External Apps

51. Notify performance measurement results

Security Engine

6.2 VNF Stats feed to External Apps

4.1 VNF Fault

4.2 Trigger Corrective Action4.3 VNF Corrective

Action4.4 VNF Fault Notification

5.2 Contraction Required

5.3 Graceful termination of VNFC 5.4 Release Resources

5.5 Ack : Release Resource

5.6 Notify Resources Utilized

5.7 Notify VNF Update

6.3 VNF vulnerability patch fix required6.4 update VNF with

vulnerability patches

6.1 update VNF status

Operational Flow 2/2V

NF

Fau

lt M

anag

emen

tV

NF

Per

form

ance

Man

agem

ent

VN

F Se

curi

ty

Man

agem

ent

D-VNF ManagementState transitions

(S1) NULL

(S2) On-Boarding(S3) Instantiate

(S4) Configure/Halt/Reboot

(S5) Active/Started

(S6) Halted

S1-T1) On-Boarding VNF

S2-T1) Instantiate

S3-T1) Scale in/Out S4-T1) Configure

S4-T1) Scale In/OutS4-T2) Update

S5-T1) Scale in/Out

Instantiation state Configuration state Ready state

S5-T3) Security ConfigS5-T5) Perf Config

S5-T6) Perf mgmt

D-VNF management aligns with VNFM for all state transitions. But is specific to VNF, Localized administrative zone

Customer Edge DeviceManagement

Diagram Source: http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/supporting-information/DN-Digital%20Networking%20solution-2017.pdf

CED is the first entry point from the end-user/subscriber to connect to a network and subscribe a specific service.

Legacy CED, are deeply hardware and software coupled and recently IPTV, VOIP, remote storage was introduced making CEDs more sophisticated.

Today CEDs are made more intelligent with NFV, there by dynamically provision new services into CEDs.

D-VNFM is a best fit solution to provision, manage and monitor VNFs with improved service security, reliability and proactive resource management.

Since IoT is moving fast in residential market, DVNFM can improve overall deployment flexibility and generate potential benefits to the complete ecosystems

Intelligent VNF

With advent of data analytics and machine learning it’s possible to foresee the improvements needed to manage the networks with experience from existing data.

This requires a local management of VNFs and their underlying networks and infrastructures.

Distributed management of VNFs using analytical tools paves a new path for sophisticated and intelligent management of resource. This helps improve fault tolerance, better availability and resiliency at complete infrastructure.

Since VNFs are split into fine granular VNFCs integration with Data Analytics/learning systems will surely benefit the ecosystem.

D-VNFM - Benefits

✓Efficient, localized and unique services for VNFs

✓Managing different VNFs from different VNF vendors

✓VNFC and Network Service Centric Security management.

✓VNF management in and across trust domains.

✓Using DA/ML for effective utilization of VNFs and resources

✓Fast instantiation and increase resource utilization

✓Agile VNF software upgrade

✓Addressing E2E automation

Improved Fault

Management

Security Hardened VNFs

Speedy Configuration Management

Data Analysis and learning – On the Fly

VNF Centric Resilient

environment

Improved VNF Elasticity

Quality assurance –Economics -

Future work

• Detailed Design and architecture.• PoC with ETSI proposed use-cases.• API definitions and Communication end point design.• Plugin architecture for External app integration.• Realizing with OpenStack modules.

That’s all folks.For Questions/Discussion

Sridhar PothugantiEmail: sridhar.pothuganti@nxp.comIRC : SridharP

Trinath SomanchiEmail: trinath.Somanchi@nxp.comIRC : trinaths

Thank you all.