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This project proposal has been renamed to NetReady. Please find the updated wiki here: https://wiki.opnfv.org/project_proposals/netready
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NFVReadyNeSs (NFV Ready Networking Services)
nfvreadyness
OPNFV provides an infrastructure with different SDN controller options to realize NFV functionality on the platform it builds. As OPNFV uses OpenStack as VIM, we need to analyse the capabilities this component offers us. The networking functionality is provided by a single component called Neutron, which hides the controller under it, let it be Neutron itself or any supported SDN controller. As NFV wasn't taken into consideration at the time when Neutron was designed we are already facing several bottlenecks and architectural shortcomings while implementing our use cases.
The NFVReadyNeSs project aims at evolving OpenStack networking step-by-step to find the most efficient way to fulfill the requirements of the identified NFV use cases, taking into account the NFV mindset and the capabilities of SDN controllers.
The goal of the NFVReadyNeSs requirements project is to investigate how the current Openstack networking architecture needs to be evolved in order to ensure that NFV-related use cases can be flexibly and efficiently supported. To this end, the proposed requirements project will collect requirements from relevant NFV cases, perform a gap analysis based on the requirements and the current Openstack networking architecture, propose architectural solutions and evaluate them.
It is a goal of the proposed project to identify relevant NFV use cases and their requirements in the first phase of the project. The following list shows examples of potentially relevant use cases. This list is neither complete nor exclusive and will be reviewed and extended in the first phase of the project:
Initial observations reveal the following list of challenges when attempting to implement NFV-related use cases in the current Openstack networking architecture. A full list of challenges will be the result of a detailed gap analysis based on the requirements of the identified use cases and the current Openstack networking architecture.
The NFVReadyNeSs project focuses on addressing the limitations within OpenStack in order to open up an easier and more efficient way of addressing telecom specific use cases and making the platform NFV ready by enabling a more flexible integration of SDN controllers.
Edge Computing use case for Cloudlet Handoff: Cloudlet Handoff across two sites with network connections either L2 and/or L3 similar to L3 VPN diagram above. This is not same as live migration of VM across two Data Centers with applications within those VMs who need to restart from one site to another without context.
But having Cloudlet as pre-instantiated VM instances from pre-identified low footprint images like say a 4 or 8 GB VM (base images) at two or more connected hosts/hypervisors/sites(clusters) with cloudlets (network + application) context data being transmitted as part of Handoff from one instance of cloudlet VM to another with all context being transferred as an delta image or blob. (the terminology used in Cloudlet is Overlay for context saving as images and computing disk and memory deltas. The network context saved as part of delta changes when we resume the merged overlay and base images at the new VM and that is where we have options to do through Neutron L2 or L3 and to make this happen we need possibly changes to Nova-Neutron or Nova-Neutron-SDN interactions, very similar to VPN use cases for Network ReadyNeSs. [Refer for Cloudlet for OpenStack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudlet ]
The planned stages of the project are the following:
The primary scope of the project is not focusing on implementation work, but it includes prototyping activity as well. The scope of the implementation work within the project is limited to provide the support for and fulfill the requirements defined by the identified NFV use cases.
The project is intended to focus on the API layer of both the networking service in OpenStack and the SDN controllers in OPNFV's scope evaluating their best way of integration into OpenStack in order to efficiently fulfill NFV needs and the given requirements. Gluon is considered one prototyping activity out of a potential set of alternatives and hence not decided to be the preferred solution/implementation before finishing the evaluation phase.
The project aims to identify and evaluate the possible solutions that can fulfill the requirements with following statements and criterias:
The project does not have a proposed architecture at this point. The provided outcome has to fulfill the requirements specified above. It is also important to state that the project does not have a necessary interest in creating a new component in OpenStack. The final architecture of the solution has to be chosen by the results of the evaluation process.
For evaluating the alternatives in consideration the project is intended to use the OPNFV labs and CI infrastructure.
The outcome of the project, that is the requirements document and the complementary prototyping code, will be hosted in public repositories.
The prototyping activities are meant to supplement the gap analysis within the project scope. Hence, they are initially not targeted for a release in OPNFV. Once a prototyped solution has technically matured and is accepted in the upstream Openstack community, it will be integrated in OPNFV. At this stage, corresponding integration in the testing projects such as Functest and Yardstick will be done.
Testing should leverage the integration effort that has been done in OPNFV so far to support different choices of available SDN controllers. The project will need to investigate the possibilities to extend the tested platform with the prototypes under evaluation.
The project can consider an integration point with the OPNFV SFC project to run existing functional tests to evaluate the prototypes/validate the solution. As the project focuses on finding an efficient way to integrate SDN controllers into OpenStack the created functional tests shall validate this aim.
The project will produce a document that captures the use cases, requirements and work to fufill our needs. The final solution should be integrated into OpenStack, which means that the related documentations should be added to OpenStack and referenced from OPNFV documentations.
There is no known OPNFV project or project proposal that covers the activities described for this project. There are related projects in OPNFV which however do not share a common scope.
SFC: While service chaining is one of the use cases in the scope of this project, there is no overlap with the existing SFC project in OPNFV. The SFC project aims at integrating the upstream OpenDaylight SFC project to make it available in the OPNFV platform. In contrast, the goal of the proposed NFVReadyNeSs project is to investigate how the Openstack networking API can be evolved in order to support use cases such as service chaining more flexibly.
SDNVPN: While L3VPN is one of the use cases in the scope of this project, there is no overlap with the existing SDNVPN project in OPNFV. The goal of the SDNVPN project is to ensure the integration of the OpenStack BGPVPN API and the ODL backend driver to make it available in the OPNFV platform. It does not cover a gap analysis to identify how to evolve the Openstack networking API.
OEC: While VM Handoff for Edge Computing is proposed in Cloudlet under OEC, it is limited due to OpneStack Nova-Neutron interactions and need the ability to enhance the same with flexibility with evolution of SDN and WAN technologies. The VM Handoff for Cloudlet is being considered as a use case for NFVReadyNeSs to addrees the same in OPNFV. You can refer to OEC at http://www.openedgecomputing.org/.
The project has a dependency on OpenStack, which means it has to follow the release cycle and process with all activities that affect projects which are part of OpenStack Big Tent. In case of creating new OpenStack project(s) the release cycle will be a constarint only after the project is included in Big Tent.
The networking APIs should follow the existing standardization guidelines if any.
The project will produce documentation to identify requirements and architecture during the C-release. The earliest OpenStack release to add our solution to is Newton, which means the D-release of OPNFV.
The project will follow the OPNFV and OpenStack release schedules.
Project Name: NFVReadyNeSs (nfvreadyness)
Repo name: nfvreadyness
Lifecycle State: proposal
Primary Contact: georg.kunz@ericsson.com
Project Lead: TBD
Jira Project Name: nfvreadyness
Jira Project Prefix: [nfvreadyness]
mailing list tag [nfvreadyness]
Committers:
georg.kunz@ericsson.com
ildiko.vancsa@ericsson.com
nikolas.hermanns@ericsson.com
bh526r@att.com
ashlee@wildernessvoice.com
Link to TSC approval:
Link to approval of additional submitters: