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Progress report on NFV standardization in ETSI. NetV: IRISA / Technicolor Workshop on Network Virtualization
Bruno CHATRAS, Orange, ETSI NFV ISG Vice-Chairman
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NFV is now a 4 year-old concept!
The seminal white paper on Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) signed by 13 network operators was published at the ONS conference in Darmstadt in October 2012.
The first meeting of the ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) on NFV was held in January 2013.
− Today, the ISG membership has grown over 290 companies.
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A short reminder about Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV)
Relocating network functions from dedicated appliances to pools of generic industry servers, leveraging:
- Cloud Computing Technology
- Virtualisation Technologies
- Advances in general purpose processors performance
- Software images - Metadata - Supporting files
distributed pools of commodity server
Automated installation & lifecycle management
Virtualised Network Function
Physical Network Function
NFV Management & Orchestration
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ETSI NFV Specification Releases
Release 1 Setting the concepts
Release 2 Looking for interoperability
Release 3 Operationalizing NFV
2013-2014
2015-2017
2016-2018
PoCs Large-scale deployments Trials
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NFV Release 2 normative deliverables
Management and Orchestration
Requirement specifications applicable to functional blocks
Requirement specifications applicable to interfaces
Requirement and information model specifications applicable to deployment templates and VNF Packaging
NFV Acceleration
Requirement specifications applicable to interfaces between VNFs and a hardware-acceleration abstraction layer (still ongoing).
I.130 specification stages
Stage 2 Stage 3
APIs and Data Model specifications (ongoing)
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NFV Release 3 normative deliverables (work ongoing)
NFV Infrastructure • Requirements for the hypervisor
domain • NFV Hardware requirements • Performance Metrics
NFV Acceleration • NFV acceleration management
interface • Network Acceleration Interface
NFV Management & Orchestration • Architecture enhancement for Security
Management • Performance Measurements • Software Update
NFV Security • Security management and monitoring • Security for Management & Orchestration • System architecture for execution of
sensitive NFV components
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NFV Release 3 main ongoing studies
NFV operationalization
Charging, billing and accounting for NFV.
Automated deployment of element management functions and other OSS functions.
Management of the NFV Management and Orchestration functional blocks
Multi-sites network service deployment, including connectivity across one or more WANs
Creation and use of VNF snapshots for troubleshooting.
License management
NFV
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NFV Release 3 main ongoing studies
Forward-looking studies
Integrating policy management in NFV Management & Orchestration
Multi-domain orchestration
Support of real-time/ultra-low latency aspects in NFV
Support of PaaS and massively decomposed VNFs
5G Network Slicing support
Guidelines for VNF design
Still under discussion
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NFV Descriptors specifications
GS NFV-IFA 011 (VNFD) and GS NFV-IFA014 (NSD) makes GS NFV-MAN 001 obsolete!
Similar high level structure but … many differences inside
Many Open Source solutions are still based on GS NFV-MAN 001 with own extensions, leading to non-compatible solutions!
Major changes in VNFD w.r.t. Flavours/Profiles Scaling parameters Affinity rules
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VNF Deployment Flavour
Flavour = A specific deployment variant of a VNF Selects • the type and number of VNFC instances to be
created. • QoS and Bandwidth requirements for internal
virtual links • Affinity and anti-affinity rules
A VNF instance flavour can be changed during the VNF instance lifetime
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Scaling aspects
• A VNF may be scaled in multiple independent aspects
- A scaling aspect describes in an abstracted manner what “property” of the VNF to scale.
- A scaling aspect maps to a set of VDUs and VLDs.
- Each scale level of a scaling aspect defines a valid size of the VNF w.r.t to
that aspect.
One
sca
ling
aspe
ct
with
sca
le le
vels
Example - 2 aspects:
DataBase, PROCessing
Actual VNF “sizes”
From „red“: DB=1, Proc=1
To „yellow“: DB=2, Proc=3
The
sca
ling
spac
e
(all
scal
ing
aspe
cts)
Scale Call
Processor 0 1 2 3 4 O
pera
ting
expe
rienc
e
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Affinity vs Anti-Affinity rules
Scope = Host, Zone, etc. Scope = Host, Zone, etc.
Object Object Object Affinity Anti-Affinity
Rules can apply • Between VNFs (rules in NSD) and between VNFCs (rules
in VNFD) • Between instances of the same VNF(C)s or between all
instances of different types of VNF(C)s Typically used to reduce communication latency
Typically used to increase resilience
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APIs, Protocols and Data Models
Ongoing work
o Specification of a set of REST APIs applicable to the VNFM – NFVO, VNFM –VNF and OSS-NFVO and reference points: SOL002, 003 and 005
o Specification of a TOSCA profile for the VNFD and NSD: SOL001
o Specification of a VNF Packaging Format based on TOSCA CSAR: SOL004
o Analysis of the gap between functional requirements applicable to the VIM northbound interfaces and Open Stack APIs
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REST APIs for NFV MANO
Use basic CRUD methods: POST, GET, PATCH, DELETE
On a limited set of resources:
VNF instances
VNF lifecycle operation occurences
Subscriptions
Notifications
and extends with TASK resources to trigger complex operations (e.g. Instantiation, scaling)
HATEOAS (Hypertext As The Engine Of Application State) features used as well.
Inspired from TM Forum API Design Guidelines Level 3 of the Richardson maturity model
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Typical sequence diagram
Task resources include
Instantiate VNF
Scale VNF
Scale VNF to Level
Change VNF Flavour
Terminate VNF
Heal VNF
Operate VNF
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Interoperability between VNFs and NFV infrastructure: The portability challenge
Many VNFs need to be “accelerated” to deliver high performance will running on COTS servers.
Hardware acceleration is a widespread solution, which today creates dependencies between the VNF and the underlying hardware
Example
The VNF is a Diameter Routing Agent
IPSec processing is off-loaded to an enhanced Network Interface Card (NIC)
The VNF software communicates with the NIC using a proprietary API, specific to the card model.
Portability Performance
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NFV Acceleration specifications
Hardware
Virtualisation layer vSwitch
…
VNFC
Instance
Hardware Accelerators
Accelerated VNF Processing partly offloaded to the infrastructure (e.g. vSwitch or hardware accelerator) Improved IP stack (e.g. DPDK-based IP stack)
e.g. Network Interface Card (NIC) with offload capabilities
Hardware Acceleration Abstraction layer
GS NFV-IFA002 GS NFV-IFA018
Virtualised Infrastructure
Manager (VIM)
GS NFV-IFA019
Related Open Source projects OPNFV DPACC & OpenStack Nomad
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The Pass-through model Hardware dependencies have to be specified in the VNF Descriptor, by the VNF provider.
Restricted ability to move the VNF from one server to another.
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Towards an abstract model Need for abstract acceleration capabilities have to be specified in the VNF Descriptor, by the VNF provider.
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Further details
ETSI NFV Technology Web page
www.etsi.org/nfv
and (Drafts specifications)
https://docbox.etsi.org/ISG/NFV/Open
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High-level view of a VNF Descriptor (VNFD) contents
e.g. Need for acceleration capabilities
CPU architecture Number of vCPU CPU pinning data …
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Mapping LCM operations to HTTP verbs and task resources
Resource name
Resource URI
HTTP Method
Meaning
VNF instances /vnf_instances GET Query multiple VNF instances
POST Create a VNF instance resource Indiv idual VNF instance /vnf_instances/{instanceId} GET Query single VNF instance
PATCH Modify VNF instance information DELETE Delete VNF instance resource
Instantiate VNF task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/instantiate POST Instantiate a VNF Scale VNF task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/scale POST Scale a VNF instance incrementally Scale VNF to Level task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/scale_to_level POST Scale a VNF instance to a target level
Change VNF flavour task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/change_flavour POST Change the deployment flavour of a VNF instance Terminate VNF task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/ terminate POST Terminate a VNF instance
Heal VNF task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/heal POST Heal a VNF instance Operate VNF task /vnf_instances/{instanceId}/operate POST Operate a VNF instance
VNF lifecycle operation occurrences
/vnf_lc_ops GET Query list of VNF LCM operation occurrences
Indiv idual VNF lifecycle operation occurrence
/vnf_lc_ops/{vnfLcOpId} GET Query single VNF LCM operation occurrence
Subscriptions /subscriptions POST Subscribe to VNF lifecycle change notif ications
GET Query subscriptions
Individual subscription /subscriptions/{subscriptionId} GET Query a single subscription
DELETE Terminate subscription
Notif ication endpoint (client-provided) POST Notify about VNF lifecycle change