Virtualization offers unprecedented benefits in terms of agility, service innovation and reduced cost. But transforming an infrastructure could be a difficult task unless planned properly. Mettle Networks proposes a virtualization road map that progresses in three distinctive phases. It helps to handle both technical and cultural challenges of virtualizing a legacy infrastructure in this step by step approach.

1. 3 Phase NFV/SDN Virtualization Road Map
Virtualization offers unprecedented benefits in terms of agility, service
innovation and reduced cost. But transforming an infrastructure could be a
difficult task unless planned properly. Mettle Networks proposes a virtualization
road map that progresses in three distinctive phases. It helps to handle both
technical and cultural challenges of virtualizing a legacy infrastructure in this
step by step approach.
Mettle Networks
Rajkumar Sukumaran
Abraham K. Jacob

2. Why Virtualization
Agility and customer
centric service delivery
model
AGILITY
Helps explore new
revenue models
NEW REVENUE
MODELS
Service innovation at a
faster pace
SERVICE
INNOVATION
Reduce operational
expense
LOWER OpEx

3. Challenges
Technical
Challenges
Cultural
Challenges
• Keeping too many balls in the air
• Interoperability issues
• Lack of standards in certain cases like L2
• Complexity of deployment
• Paradigm shift renders existing expertise
useless
• Resistance to learning new
technology/approach
• Acceptance of COTS hardware into telco infra

4. Concepts
• COTS Hardware
• NFV
• VNF
• Mircoservices
• Service Function Chain (SFC)
• Software Defined Network (SDN)
• Overlay Networks
• MANO
• ETSI Reference Architecture
VIRTUALIZATION
CONCEPTS
mano
vnf
scale

5. ETSI Reference Architecture
EMS 1 EMS 2 EMS 3
VNF 1
VIRTUAL
COMPUTING
COMPUTING
HARDWARE
STORAGE
HARDWARE
NETWORK
HARDWARE
VIRTUAL
STORAGE
VIRTUAL
NETWORK
VNF 2 VNF 3
NFV INFRASTRUCTURE (NFVI)
NFV MANAGEMENT & ORCHESTRATION
OSS/BSS
VIRTUALIZATION LAYER
HARDWARE RESOURCES
VI-Ha
VNF
MANAGER(S)
VIRTUALISED
INFRASTRUCTURE
MANAGER(S)
ORCHESTRATOR
SERVICE, VNF AND
INFRASTRUCTURE DESCRIPTION
Or-Vi
Vi-Vnfm
Or-Vnfm
Os-Ma
Se-Ma
Ve-Vnfm
Nf-Vi
Vn-Nf
EXECUTION REFERENCE POINTS OTHER REFERENCE POINTS MAIN NFV REFERENCE POINTS

6. Beginning with BNG
• North/South/Auxiliary
components left untouched
• No changes in access network or
CPE
A self-contained use-case
• Testing the waters without
affecting service
• Adopting without changing
other components
Incremental migration
• Equips NOC team for network-
wide migration
Equips NOC team

7. Strategy
A Transformation
Strategy for
Success
An incremental adoption of virtualization that
begins with valuing existing expertise of
operations team, inspires learning as
virtualization progresses through the phases
and have a fully transformed infrastructure and
a learned operations team on completion.

8. Virtualization Road Map
Phase 1: Introducing COTS
Hardware
Monolithic vBNG
1. Phase 2: Introducing VNFs
and Network Overlay
vBNG Cluster
2. Phase 3: MANO and
Automation
Cloud-native vBNG
3.

9. Phase I
• Introduce COTS hardware into
the infrastructure
• Setting up Virtualized network
appliance
• Configure to co-exist with legacy
infrastructure
Virtualization Objectives
2
3
1
• Leverage current knowledge on
setting up Intel/COTS server
• Utilize existing IP networking
knowledge
• Deploying Intel COTS hardware
for fast path application
Learning Objectives
Introducing
COTS Hardware

10. Phase I: Mettle 2vBNG
Monolithic virtual BNG
built on NFV/microservices
architecture
Monolithic
Intel powered dataplane
and control plane
Dataplane/
Control Plane
Runs on a single Intel
based COTS hardware
COTS Hardware
Mimics typical OS
installation experience
on a COTS hardware
OS Installation
Experience

11. Phase I: Meeting the Objectives
Appliance-like UI avoids any need to
learn anything new in this phase
Appliance-like UI/UX
Mettle 2vBNG turns regular Intel
CPU based server into a BNG
COTS Hardware
Helps to get familiar with having
COTS hardware in fastpath
Fastpath on COTS H/w
Appliance-like UI avoids any need to
learn anything new in this phase
Team Expertise

12. Phase II
• Virtualized network functions
running in COTS cluster
• Ansible based automated VNF
provisioning
• Overlay networking using
whitebox switches
• Protecting COTS hardware
investment
Virtualization Objectives
2
3
1
• Virtualized network function
(VNFs)
• Concepts of automation and
working knowledge of Ansible
• Understanding overlay networking
and whitebox switches
Learning Objectives
Introducing VNFs &
Network Overlay

13. Phase II: Mettle 2vBNG Cluster*
VNFs running in COTS
cluster, connected in a
service chain
Cluster
SDN/Overlay Networking
for configurable
connection end-points
Overlay
Networking
Supports static function
chaining and overlay
based SFC
SFC
This phase will see
Automated VNF
provisioning using
Ansible
Automation
*Mettle 2vBNG-CL is called Mettle 2vBNG Cluster

14. Phase II: Meeting the Objectives
White box switches are deployed for
programmable networking
SDN/Whitebox Switch
Introduction of VNFs and Network
Function Chain are brought on
board
VNF & SFC
Automation with Ansible for
managing VNFs in the cluster
Automation/Ansible
Overlay Networking/SDN in static
configuration
Overlay Networking

15. Phase III
• Moving to MANO based VNF life
cycle management
• Configuring automated scale-
in/scale-out
• Configuring for Self-healing
• Enable Zero-touch provisioning
• Programmable network
reconfiguration
Virtualization Objectives
2
3
1 • Cloud-native architecture
concepts
• MANO concepts
• Working knowledge on
programmable networks and
network automation
Learning Objectives
MANO &
Automation

16. Phase III: Mettle Cloud-native BNG*
Designed to be Cloud-
native from ground up
Cloud-native
Kubernetes for container
management
Kubernetes
Flexibility of choosing
either ONAP or
OpenBaton for MANO
MANO
Support for scale-in and
scale-out and self-
healing
Auto Scale &
Self-healing
*Mettle 2vBNG-CN-A2 is called Mettle Cloud-native BNG

17. At the End of Phase III
Mettle Virtualization Road Map provides a three-phased transformation path to
attain complete, ETSI-compliant virtualization in BNG use-case.
Successfully adopts
virtualization in a use-
case
Now Organization
Has A Success
Story
Prepares the
organization to adopt
virtualization in other
areas as well
Prepares the
Organization
Provides a blueprint to
acquire expertise in a
phased manner
Helps to Acquire
Expertise
Road Map inspires
learning and adoption
of new concepts.
Depends less on legacy
systems/approaches
Forward-looking
The pace of following
this road map can be
based on organizational
or business situations
Self-paced
Helps the organization
to measure the benefits
of virtualization.
Measuring the
Benefits

18. Conclusion
nfv@mettlenetworks.com