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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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Agenda

Overview

Selected technical items

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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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Agenda

Overview

Selected technical items

NFV Descriptors APIs and Data Models NFV Acceleration

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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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Agenda

Overview

Selected items

NFV Descriptors APIs and Data Models NFV Acceleration

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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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Agenda

Overview

Selected items

NFV Descriptors APIs and Data Models NFV Acceleration

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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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Thank you

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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