Source: ETSI <www.etsi.org>

 

How Open Orchestration (OSM Release-7) enhances  Enterprise, 5G , Edge and Containerized applications in Production

An architect’s perspective from ETSI® the Standards People

 

As highlighted in the Heavy reading latest End-to-End Service Management for SDN & NFV all the major T1 Telco’s are currently refining their Transformation journey to bring standard Orchestration and Service modeling in their networks , one of such standard approach is promised by ETSI OSM a seed project from ETS® the standards people .

Recently in Q4 2019 ETSI OSM release the Release7 which address surmount challenges of brings CNF and Containerized applications to the production ETSI OPEN SOURCE MANO UNVEILS RELEASE SEVEN, ENABLES MORE THAN 20,000 CLOUD-NATIVE APPLICATIONS FOR NFV ENVIRONMENTS

This capability of ETSI® OSM is specifically important considering the ushering of 5G SA architecture and solutions which already find its way to the market thanks to early work from CNCF and specifically CNTT K8S specs . OSM brings value to the picture as it will allow to design, model, deploy and manage CNF’s (As ETSI NFV call is a containerized VNF) without any translation or modeling. It also lets operators experience early commercial use case of integration Helm2.0 in their production environments. On top of it will allow a NS (Network Service) to combine CNF’s with existing VNF’s or legacy PNF’s to deliver complex services in an easy to deploy and manageable manner.

In the following part of this paper I will try to share my understanding on OSM release7 and sum up results from ETSI OSM webinar on this subject held on JAN 16^th 2020 . For details you may need to refer to webinar content itself and can be found https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12761/380670  

Why Kubernetes is so important for Telco and Enterprise

Telco industry has experienced lot of pain points the way NFV journey has steered with focus on migrating existing PNF’s to the Cloud. K8S offers opportunity for all Platform providers, application vendors, assurance partners to build something on modern principles of micro services, DevOps and Open API’s driven. This is something that already made its way to Telco’s in OSS and IT systems as an example mycom OSI UPM , OSM and  infact ONAP all are already based on Kubernetes , the arrival of 5G SA and uCPE branches has driven almost all operators adopt networks to use Kubernetes . Further it is principally agreed as CSP’s move to Edge the K8S will be the platform of choice.

Foundation for K8S Clusters

Kubernetes made it simple for the applications and CNF’s to use API’s in a standard fashion using K8S Clusters which are deployed either in an open source manner or via Distros. The early adoption of CNF’s in Telco largely supports the consumption model of vendor Distros like RedHat OpenShift, Vmware PKS, Ericsson CCD to mention the most important ones.

Since containers are like a floating VM’s so networking architecture specially the one promised by L3 CNI plugin and Flannel is important direction to be supported in Platforms as it is supported in OSM .

The reusability of API makes it simple for application to craft unique application in form a build configuration files using artifacts of PoD, services, cluster, config map and persistent volumes which are defined in a very standard manner in K8S by which I mean deploy all artifacts through a single file.

ETSI® OSM can be deployed using both HELM2.0 as well as Juju charmed bundles

Foundation for Helm

Helm gives teams the tools they need to collaborate when creating, installing, and managing applications inside of Kubernetes. With Helm, you can… Find prepackaged software (charts) to install and use Easily create and host your own packages , Install packages into any Kubernetes cluster Query the cluster to see what packages are installed and running Update, delete, rollback, or view the history of installed packages Helm makes it easy to run applications inside Kubernetes. For details please refer to details HELM packages on https://helm.sh/blog/helm-3-released/

In a nut shell all day1 and day2 tasks required for the CNF’s are made possible using Helm and its artifacts known as Helm charts including application primitives, network connectivity and configuration capabilities.

Key Features of OSM Release7

OSM Release 7 is a carrier grade and below are its key features as per wiki

• Improved VNF Configuration interface (One stop shop) for all Day0/1/2 operations
• Improved Grafana dashboard
• VNFD and NSD testing
• Python3 support
• CNF’s support in both options where OSM creates the Cluster or rely on OEM tools to provision it
• Workload placement and optimization (Something very important for Edge and Remote clouds)
• Enhancement in both Multi VIM and Multi SDN support
• Support for Public Clouds

How OSM handles deployment of CNF’s

For most Telco guys this is most important question e.g how VNF package will be standardized with arrival of CNF’s , Will it mean a totally new Package or enhancement of existing.

Fortunately, OSM approach on this is modeling of Application in a standard fashion which means same package can be enhanced to reflect containerized deployment. On a NS level it can flexibly interwork with VNF/PNF as well, the deployment unit used to model CNF specific parameters is called KDU’s (Kubernetes Deployment Unit) other major change is K8S cluster under resources. It is important as it explains most important piece the Networking and related CNI interfaces.

OSM can deploy the K8S cluster using API integration or rely on 3^rd party tools like Openshift® or PKS deploy it on instructions of OSM

Changes to NFVO interfaces

Just like Or-Vi is used for infrastructure integration with Orchestration the Helm2.0 (Will support 3.0 in near future) is used for infrastructure integration with K8S applications. Since the NBI supports mapping of KDU’s in same NSD it means only changes from orchestration point of view is on the south side only.

Workload Placement

As per latest industry standing and experience sharing in Kubecon and Cloud Native  summit Americas  there is a growing consensus that Container is the platform of choice for the Edge primarily due to its robustness , operational model and lighter foot print . As per our experience of containers here in STC a 40% reduction in both CAPEX and Foot print will be realized on DC’s if deployed Edge using Containers.

However, definition of business definition of Edge raise number of queries the most important of it are work load identification, placement and migration specially consider the fact the Edge is a lighter foot print that in future will host carrier mission critical applications.

Optimization of Edge from CSP perspective has to address following  Cost of compute in NFVI PoP’s , Cost of connectivity and VNFDFG something implemented by SFC’s and Constraints on service like SLA, KPI and Slicing

The issues with the Upgrades and How OSM addresses

Compared to early release the OSM ns action primitives allow the CNF to be upgrades to the latest release and execute both dryrun and  Juju tests to ensure the application performance bench mark is same like before  .Although this works best for small applications like LDAP the same is difficult to achieve with more complex CNF’s like 5G SA . Through liaison with LFN OVP program I am sure soon the issue will be addressed. We as operator have a plan to validate it on a 5G SA nodes.

My final thoughts on this that  Container journey for CSP is already a reality and coming very shortly in 2020+ and OSM ecosystem supports the commercialization of CNF’s through early use cases of 5G SA , Enterprise branch uCPE and most important Edge including MEC for which OSM seems to reach maturity  For details and how to participate and use do get involved in upcoming OSM Hackfest IN MARCH OSM-MR8 Hackfest

Many thanks to colleague , mentor and industry collaborator Jose Miguel Guzman , Francisco Javier Ramón Salguero  Gerardo García and Andy Reid for OSM growth in recent years … See you in Madrid

References:

ETSI

Linux Foundation

OVP

5G Cloud DevNetOps & SecOps Digital Operations Edge Services and MEC NFV and SDN Open Source Telco Orchestration 5G Containers Enterprise IT NFV OSM