PAVING THE WAY TO OPEN SOURCE NFV. A Linux Foundation Collaborative Project

Transcription

1 PAVING THE WAY TO OPEN SOURCE NFV A Linux Foundation Collaborative Project

2 1. AN OVERVIEW OF OPNFV The Open Platform for Network Functions Virtualization (OPNFV) project was introduced in September 2014 as an outgrowth of the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ETSI NFV ISG). Establishment of OPNFV resulted from the realization that an open reference platform was needed to validate key NFV concepts, leverage the growing open source community, and accelerate development and ultimately adoption of NFV products and services. Because of the breadth of the ETSI NFV ISG Architectural Framework, OPNFV initially addressed the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI1) and Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM2). In 2016, OPNFV expanded the scope to address Management and Orchestration (MANO)3 as well. In contrast to traditional open source projects, which develop common components or platforms, OPNFV is committed to an Upstream First methodology, only developing code when absolutely necessary to avoid proprietary forks of the upstream components. OPNFV adopts one or more upstream open source projects, and devotes development resources towards integration and testing, instead of developing new code. OPNFV has been built on OpenStack, supports multiple SDN Controllers (including OpenDaylight, ONOS, OpenContrail), host platforms, and deployment technologies. 1 NFVI: Totality of all hardware and software components thatbuild up the environment in which VNFs are deployed 2 VIM: Functional block that is responsible for controlling and managing the NFVI compute, storage and network resources, usually within one operator s Infrastructure Domain (e.g. NFVI-PoP) 3 MANO: describes the management and orchestration framework required for the provisioning of virtualized network functionas (VNF), and the releated operations, such as the configuration of the virtualized network functions and the infrastructure these functions run on. 2

3 Because each operator has a distinct environment, OPNFV offers a choice of distributions. For example, OpenStack may operate over an OpenDaylight or ONOS SDN Controller framework, with support for both x86 and ARM-compatible processors. Through the collective experience gathered from using the open reference platform, OPNFV will contribute back to the upstream projects, fueled by real-world use cases for network operators. A particularly strong aspect of the project is a diverse and vibrant community onsisting of network operators, network equipment manufacturers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and component suppliers. The majority of OPNFV members also participate in the ETSI NFV ISG, and make code contributions to the upstream projects as well, ensuring close collaboration. 2. WHY OPNFV? OPNFV was envisioned to address a number of challenges (listed below) anticipated by network operators who are pursuing their own NFV strategies: The transformative impact of NFV and Software Defined Networking (SDN) COTS hardware, which has traditionally has performed significantly poorer than purpose-built hardware Traditional operational processes, which are manually intensive, subject to errors, and slow Lack of definition for NFV areas (e.g., MANO), which has resulted in proprietary NFV architectures Lack of telecommunications features in the open source community An open NFV ecosystem, which avoids silos, proprietary solutions, and vendor lock-in 3

4 Considering that vendors and network operators are racing to deliver NFV platforms and services, and that neither is waiting for standards or open source communities to deliver, OPNFV is playing a timely and valuable role. OPNFV is speeding up integration and providing a technical forum to address performance, interoperability, security, and scalability issues that would otherwise be costly, time-consuming, and highly proprietary for each organization to address on their own. OPNFV is the only public forum with a broad community where the industry can pull together the components of the platform(s) to see if they work together. It is also an incubation environment to try out new software features or hardware components. The OPNFV roadmap has been built upon a twice-yearly release cycle, balancing the goal to deliver against the release cadence of the upstream projects. Each release incorporates select new upstream functionality that is verified against a Management and Orchestration (MANO) VIM environment, and could ultimately include VNF lifecycle management (VNFM) and NFV Orchestration (NFVO).4 OPNFV projects range from engaging directly with upstream projects, to internal projects that may be classified as system features (such as service function chaining or high availability), validation and testing (including function, system, or performance testing), development tools (such as installers and controllers) and documentation. Internal projects proposals, priorities, and scope, are motivated by the community, and overseen by the OPNFV Technical Steering Committee. However, OPNFV does not seek to provide a specific distribution for the NFV platform or even specify all the pieces in an NFV platform. The goal is to qualify a common set of building blocks with specific roles/functions. OPNFV building blocks need not necessarily be open, but must conform to a common framework. Many of the initial components in the initial OPNFV releases are open source in order to expedite the initial releases and stimulate larger community participation. 4 For a blog about the December 2015 decision that describes the removal of prior scope constraints to VIM and NFVI, see 4

5 3. PROGRESS TO DATE Since its formation in September 2014, OPNFV has grown considerably. At the time of publication, there are over 50 OPNFV members, including many of the world s most important wireline, mobile, and cable operators; along with leading network equipment vendors, software, semiconductors, including several innovative startups. The OPNFV developer community has grown to over 170 code contributors and many more developers working on OPNFV-related projects for their own organizations. In June, 2015, only 9 months after introduction, OPNFV announced the initial release ARNO. The ARNO 3 release represents more than integrating OpenStack (VIM), KVM (hypervisor), Ceph, (distributed storage), OpenDaylight (SDN Controller Framework), and Open vswitch (software switch), etc.. ARNO also introduces the OPNFV development environment: Continuous Integration, automated deployment and testing, documentation, and tooling. ARNO has been demonstrated running on platforms from multiple vendors across the x86 and ARM processor architectures. In February 2016, OPNFV built on the foundation of Arno with the Brahmaputra release. Brahmaputra demonstrates OPNFV s ability to significantly support upstream projects, address multiple technology components across the ecosystem, and make advances in stability, performance and automation. Brahmaputra offers many deployment scenarios that include additional SDN controllers, installers, deployment options, and carrier-grade features. Continuous integration mechanisms provide a stable framework for deploying and testing new use cases across the extensive Pharos community labs. 3 OPNFV release names are river-themed, a community decision, inspired by the work with upstream projects 5

6 Figure 3: OPNFV Third Release - Colorado In September of 2016, Colorado, the third release for OPNFV, was announced. Colorado builds on the foundation laid by the Arno and Brahmaputra releases to improve the underlying platform support for NFV applications as well as to set the stage for improved application on-boarding and management. The Colorado release includes critical advances in security, IPv6, SFC, VPN capabilities, support for multiple hardware architectures, as well as improvements to testing and CI/CD DevOps process support. 6

7 4. USE CASE EXAMPLES OPNFV is a use case driven project, motivated by the specialized capabilities required by CSP s. For example, one of the most important is virtualized CPE, which was prioritized among the initial use cases by the ETSI NFV ISG. An IHS/ Infonetics survey4 of leading netowrk operator last year rated ve-cpe as the #1 use case overall for NFV in Use cases such as vcpe are created on OPNFV by selecting and configuring platform components and features. For example, the following table shows the key requirements for vcpe and the requisite components that help fulfill the requirement. REQUIREMENT Massive scale out NFV integrated with virtualized networking Integrated resource reservation and capacity management Lightweight containerization COMPONENTS Fuel, IPv6 Open vswitch for NFV Promise ONOSFW 4 IHS/Infonetics SDN and NFV Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey,

8 For more information, please see the following whitepaper: Virtualizing Customer Premises with Service Function Chaining: How OpenDaylight and OPNFV Members Implement NFV s Top Use Cases. 4. FUTURE DIRECTIONS Another important objective is the cultivation and nurturing of an Open NFV ecosystem to offer network operators and vendors, qualified, and interoperable building blocks to enable network operators to move towards deployment. OPNFV progress will likely result in de facto standards that motivate continuous innovation, agility and usability, which ultimately expedite and facilitates NFV adoption. The future success of OPNFV will hinge not only how well we address functional and performance gaps in upstream projects, but also by industry-wide adoption of open, standardized interfaces to enable management and orchestration in an automated and interoperable manner. An OPNFV compliance program is planned, based on the testing and integration platform, which paves the way towards industrialization for NFV. 8

9 5. CLOSING THOUGHTS NFV and SDN are challenging entrenched assumptions about how networks are designed, deployed, and managed. To keep up with the frenetic pace of innovation that is radically altering the network operator landscape, a paradigm shift is necessary. Enter the open reference platform to incentivize unprecedented industry engagement, operator and vendor collaboration, intelligent automation and openness. OPNFV is paving new ground, by challenging the rules for open source projects, and offering huge time to market, quality, and interoperability benefits. As the project is just two years old, we have just begun. To find out how your organization can participate in the most significant re-architecture in decades, visit us at 9

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