This page will capture issues to be addressed in the overall architecture of OPNFV components.

policy_architecture.pptx

• Policies are reflected in two high-level goals
  • Ensure resource requirements of VNFs are applied per VNF designer intent
  • Ensure that generic policies are not violated, e.g. networks connected to VMs must either be public or owned by the VM owner
• Policies are distributed through two main means
  • As part of VNF packages, customized if needed by Service Design tools, expressing intent of the VNF designer and service provider, and possibly customized or supplemented by service orchestrators per the intent of specific tenants
  • As generic policies provisioned into VIMs (SDN controllers and cloud orchestrators), expressing intent of the service provider re what states/events need to be policy-governed independently of specific VNFs
• Policies are applied locally and in closed-loop systems per the capabilities of the local policy enforcer and the impact of the related state/event conditions
  • VIMs should be able to execute most policies locally
  • VIMs may need to pass policy-related state/events to closed-loop system, where those events are relevant to other components in the architecture (e.g. service orchestrator), or some additional data/arbitration is needed to resolve the state/event condition
• Policies are localized as they are distributed/delegated
  • High-level policies (e.g. expressing “intent”) can be translated into VNF package elements or generic policies, perhaps using distinct syntaxes
  • Delegated policy syntaxes are likely VIM-specific, e.g. Datalog (Congress), YANG (ODL-based SDNC), or other schemas specific to other SDNCs (Contrail, ONOS)
• Closed-loop policy and VNF-lifecycle event handling are somewhat distinct
  • Closed-loop policy is mostly about resolving conditions that can't be handled locally, but as above in some cases the conditions may be of relevance/forwarded to service orchestrators
  • VNF-lifecycle events that can't be handled by the VIM locally are delivered directly to the service orchestrator

General requirements for a policy architecture are below, with an assessment of the current state of support for these across major OPNFV components (1=poor, 5=excellent).