Aricent’s presentation on “Micro VNFs and Micro service environment” on next generation Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) is heating up. In debate on micro services, carriers has requested communities to step up research on micro service deployments. Aricent believes that existing VNFs, which comes directly from the physical appliances software are not rightly designed and are less suited for cloud operations. These first generation VNFs are replication of physical appliances, monolithic architecture and need more computational power. These are heavy with physical appliance platform features i.e. HA, ISSU, Nonstop Routing/Switching and they have lots of redundant code which may not be necessary on cloud. As cloud platform provides these feature through its inherent platform capabilities.

1. Data Center Virtualization – Micro VNFs and Micro
service environment
Masood Amin, Asst. VP Product Management
11th March 2016

2. Proprietary & Confidential. © Aricent 2016
 Problem statement
 First Generation VNFs
 Micro-service Platforms
 Case for Micro VNFs
 Case for VNF disaggregation
 Status of Micro service Platform for NFV
Agenda
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 DevOp is evolving rapidly and transforming the IT
infrastructure for cloud adoption
 How telco community can harness the DevOps methodology
in NFV deployments – Continuous integration, Test
frameworks, Platform Development
 Existing NFV state
– First Generation VNFs are Monolithic , optimized for purpose
build hardware
– Designed for high capacity throughput, sessions
– Aggregated functions in monolithic Architecture requires
Intensive amount of packet processing
 Explore how Micro VNF can solve some of the challenges
through a micro service approach
Time for Micro VNFs – Smaller , Faster and Disaggregated
3
FunctionA
FunctionB
FunctionC
FunctionD
FunctionE

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 In existing physical appliances, software is optimized
for underlying purpose build hardware to provide
maximum efficiency
– Subscribers per line card
– Sessions per system
 As hardware cost goes up, add more software
capacity ( Subscriber , Session ) to add value to
system
 Systems becomes critical because they serve large
subscriber base, more sessions, you cannot afford to
lose them
– HA requirements becomes stringent ( Virtual Chassis,
Hot redundancy, ISSUs ) as you cannot afford to lose
the system
– Nonstop routing , Not stop switching
– Database requirement become complex
4
NFV Characteristics (1/2)
5K Subscriber
10K Subscriber
20K Subscriber
Redundancy
Softwarecomplexity
increases

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 Most of the first generation VNF software share the
same codebase as the software runs on physical
appliance ( i.e. 20K capacity software framework)
– Little refactoring or no refactoring
– Similar HA characteristics
– Similar complexity and ISSU requirements
– Large Memory footprint, lots of redundant code
 Now, Imagine running a VNF with 1000 subscriber
capacity system subscriber system, leverage cloud
availability, resiliency and elasticity
– Replicate the system as you grow
– Fast replication and spinning the workloads
– Built in redundancy from cloud
– If the workload fails, limited loss, recovery is fast
5
NFV Workload characteristics (2/2)
Monolithic software
(20K Subscriber capacity )
core core core core core core
core core core core core core
core core core core core core
core core core core core core
1KSubscriber
capacity
Challenge - How to manage large units of miniaturize
workloads
VNF Type First Generation Micro VNF
vBNG 10K Subscriber 1000 Subscriber
vSBC 150,000 Session 1000 Session
vEPC 100,000 Subscriber 1000 Subscriber

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 Basic unit is container/dockers
 Containers within POD communicated
on localhost
 OVS bridge can be setup across the
Nodes, PODs can be bridged
 Containers managed through Master,
through JSON based file
 Container Images can be replicated,
spawned , destroyed based on the
policy and configuration
 OVS Integration as backend switch
infrastructure
 ETSI MANO reference architecture,
Master can interface with MANO layer
for VNF configurations and policy
Management
Quick look on Micro service components
6
Node 1
Node 100
apiserver
Scheduler
Master
Kubelet
Proxy
POD 1 POD 2
Container -1
Container -2
1 2
Network
Kubernetes (v 1.0) supports clusters up to 100 nodes with 30
pods per node and 1-2 containers per pod.
POD N
1 2
Container -3
Virtual Infrastructure
Manager (VIM)
VNF
Manager
MANO Layer
Replication
Controller

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 Lets reduce the functional capacity of the VNFs to
lower levels i.e. from 50K session system to 1K
session system.
 Imagine the platform requirements for 1K VNF
– A system easily can replicate the state information (
Session, dynamically learned information )
– Resource foot (memory, CPU) print reduces
significantly.
– Initialization time reduces significantly
 Imagine that hosting platforms maintain fully
initialized VNFs
– VNFs can be assigned on demand
– VNFs can be removed from the system
– VNFs can be moved
7
Case for Micro VNFs (1/3) 1
1
1
1 1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
Host standby
Micro VNFs (
no calls)
Deployed VNF ( active calls )
1 1
1
Kubernetes and LXC based engine

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 Lego block construction for vCPE
– L2 pipeline (Label -Red)
– L2 VPN ( Label -Green)
– IPSEC VPN ( Label -Yellow)
– NAT ( Label –Blue )
 Kubernete can manage each
labels of fixed units
– If any label used , it replicates them
– If any label is more, it destroys
them
 Service chains can be used for
connectors
Case for Micro VNFs – Disaggregate and Manage (2/3)
8
Kubernetes and LXC based engine

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 Lego block construction for
vEPC ( Evolved Packet Core)
– Disaggregated Control Plane
– Disaggregated Data Plane
 Disaggregated Data plane
plane
• PGW ,SGW DP Nodes on single
container(collapsed mode)
• Disaggregated container for PGW,
SGW.
• Tested DP binaries and verified end-
to-end data transfer for Intel DPDK
,ODP paradigms on Containers.
• Integration with EPC CP and
enodeB
Case for Micro VNFs – Disaggregate and Manage (3/3)
9
SYS 1- Containers SYS -2 Containers
EPC Instance CC-11
MME SGW
PGW HSS
Simulators
Simulator
eNodeB+UE
Simulator
UE/PDN Load
Generator
EPC Instance CC12
MME SGW
PGW HSS
DP instance –C21
Collapsed DP for
PGW and SGW
DP instance –C22
DP for PGW
vEPC can easily scale out /in out with multiple control plane and data plane instances
DP instance –C23
DP for SGW
Trunk Bridge
/OVS

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 Containers - Dockers, Rockets, LXC are
rapidly evolving, mostly focused towards
enterprise devops requirements
 NFV deployments requires enhancements
to networking , multi interface support,
improvement to address assignments
 Integration of NFV middleware DPDK,
ODP with container systems
 MANO Layer Integration with Container
Orchestration system requires deeper
interactions
Status
10

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