Internet DRAFT - draft-unify-nfvrg-challenges
draft-unify-nfvrg-challenges
NFVRG R. Szabo
Internet-Draft A. Csaszar
Intended status: Informational Ericsson
Expires: July 16, 2016 K. Pentikousis
EICT
M. Kind
Deutsche Telekom AG
D. Daino
Telecom Italia
Z. Qiang
Ericsson
H. Woesner
BISDN
January 13, 2016
Unifying Carrier and Cloud Networks: Problem Statement and Challenges
draft-unify-nfvrg-challenges-03
Abstract
The introduction of network and service functionality virtualization
in carrier-grade networks promises improved operations in terms of
flexibility, efficiency, and manageability. In current practice,
virtualization is controlled through orchestrator entities that
expose programmable interfaces according to the underlying resource
types. Typically this means the adoption of, on the one hand,
established data center compute/storage and, on the other, network
control APIs which were originally developed in isolation. Arguably,
the possibility for innovation highly depends on the capabilities and
openness of the aforementioned interfaces. This document introduces
in simple terms the problems arising when one follows this approach
and motivates the need for a high level of programmability beyond
policy and service descriptions. This document also summarizes the
challenges related to orchestration programming in this unified cloud
and carrier network production environment. A subsequent problem is
the resource orchestration. This is handled separately in
[I-D.caszpe-nfvrg-orchestration-challenges] and will be merged in the
next iteration of this document.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on July 16, 2016.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terms and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5. Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.1. Orchestration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.2. Resource description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5.3. Dependencies (de-composition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.4. Elastic VNF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.5. Measurement and analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8. Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1. Introduction
To a large degree there is agreement in the network research,
practitioner, and standardization communities that rigid network
control limits the flexibility and manageability of speedy service
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
creation, as discussed in [NSC] and the references therein. For
instance, it is not unusual that today an average service creation
time cycle exceeds 90 hours, whereas given the recent advances in
virtualization and cloudification one would be interested in service
creation times in the order of minutes [EU-5GPPP-Contract] if not
seconds.
Flexible service definition and creation start by formalizing the
service into the concept of network function forwarding graphs, such
as the ETSI VNF Forwarding Graph [ETSI-NFV-Arch] or the ongoing work
in IETF [I-D.ietf-sfc-problem-statement]. These graphs represent the
way in which service end-points (e.g., customer access) are
interconnected with a set of selected network functionalities such as
firewalls, load balancers, and so on, to deliver a network service.
Service graph representations form the input for the management and
orchestration to instantiate and configure the requested service.
For example, ETSI defined a Management and Orchestration (MANO)
framework in [ETSI-NFV-MANO]. We note that throughout such a
management and orchestration framework different abstractions may
appear for separation of concerns, roles or functionality, or for
information hiding.
Compute virtualization is central to the concept of Network Function
Virtualization (NFV). However, carrier-grade services demand that
all components of the data path, such as Network Functions (NFs),
virtual NFs (VNFs) and virtual links, meet key performance
requirements. In this context, the inclusion of Data Center (DC)
platforms, such as OpenStack [OpenStack], into the SDN infrastructure
is far from trivial.
In this document we examine the problems arising as one combines
these two formerly isolated environments in an effort to create a
unified production environment and discuss the associated emerging
challenges. Our goal is the definition of a production environment
that allows multi-vendor and multi-domain operation based on open and
interoperable implementations of the key entities described in the
remainder of this document.
2. Terms and Definitions
We use the term compute and "compute and storage" interchangeably
throughout the document. Moreover, we use the following definitions,
as established in [ETSI-NFV-Arch]:
NFV: Network Function Virtualization - The principle of separating
network functions from the hardware they run on by using virtual
hardware abstraction.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
NFVI PoP: NFV Infrastructure Point of Presence - Any combination of
virtualized compute, storage and network resources.
NFVI: NFV Infrastructure - Collection of NFVI PoPs under one
orchestrator.
VNF: Virtualized Network Function - a software-based network
function.
VNF FG: Virtualized Network Function Forwarding Graph - an ordered
list of VNFs creating a service chain.
MANO: Management and Orchestration - In the ETSI NFV framework
[ETSI-NFV-MANO], this is the global entity responsible for
management and orchestration of NFV lifecycle.
Further, we make use of the following terms:
NF: a network function, either software-based (VNF) or appliance-
based.
SW: a (routing/switching) network element with a programmable
control plane interface.
DC: a data center network element which in addition to a
programmable control plane interface offers a DC control interface
LSI: Logical Switch Instance - a software switch instance.
CN: an element equipped with compute and/or storage resources.
UN: Universal Node - an innovative element that integrates and
manages in a unified platform both compute and networking
components.
3. Motivations
Figure 1 illustrates a simple service graph comprising three network
functions (NFs). For the sake of simplicity, we will assume only two
types of infrastructure resources, namely SWs and DCs as per the
terminology introduced above, and ignore appliance-based NFs for the
time being. The goal is to implement the given service based on the
available infrastructure resources.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
fr2 +---+ fr3
+->o-|NF2|-o-+
| 4 +---+ 5 |
+---+ | V +---+
1-->o-|NF1|-o----------->o-|NF3|-o-->8
2 +---+ 3 fr1 6 +---+ 7
Figure 1: Service graph
The service graph definition contains NF types (NF1, NF2, NF3) along
with the
o corresponding ports (NF1:{2,3}; NF2:{4,5}; NF3:{6,7})
o service access points {1,8} corresponding to infrastructure
resources,
o definition of forwarding behavior (fr1, fr2, fr3)
The forwarding behavior contains classifications for matching of
traffic flows and corresponding outbound forwarding actions.
Assume now that we would like to use the infrastructure (topology,
network and software resources) depicted in Figure 2 and Figure 3 to
implement the aforementioned service graph. That is, we have three
SWs and two Points of Presence (PoPs) with DC software resources at
our disposal.
+---+
+--|SW3|--+
| +---+ |
+---+ | | +---+
1 |PoP| +---+ +---+ |PoP| 8
o--|DC1|----|SW2|------|SW4 |---|DC2|--o
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
[---SP1---][--------SP2-------][---SP3----]
Figure 2: Infrastructure resources
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
+----------+
| +----+ |PoP DC (== NFVI PoP)
| | CN | |
| +----+ |
| | | |
| +----+ |
o-+--| SW |--+-o
| +----+ |
+----------+
Figure 3: A virtualized Point of Presence (PoP) with software
resources (Compute Node - CN)
+----------+
| +----+ | UN
| | CN | |
o-+--+----+--+-o
| | SW | |
| +----+ |
+----------+
Figure 4: Universal Node - an innovative element that integrates on
the same platform both compute and networking components
In the simplest case, all resources would be part of the same service
provider (SP) domain. We need to ensure that each entity in Figure 2
can be procured from a different vendor and therefore
interoperability is key for multi-vendor NFVI deployment. Without
such interoperability different technologies for data center and
network operation result in distinct technology domains within a
single carrier. Multi-technology barriers start to emerge hindering
the full programmability of the NFVI and limiting the potential for
rapid service deployment.
We are also interested in a multi-operation environment, where the
roles and responsibilities are distributed according to some
organizational structure within the organization. Finally, we are
interested in multi-provider environment, where different
infrastructure resources are available from different service
providers (SPs). Figure 2 indicates a multi-provider environment in
the lower part of the figure as an example. We expect that this type
of deployments will become more common in the future as they are well
suited with the elasticity and flexibility requirements [NSC].
Figure 2 also shows the service access points corresponding to the
overarching domain view, i.e., {1,8}. In order to deploy the service
graph of Figure 1 on the infrastructure resources of Figure 2, we
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
will need an appropriate mapping which can be implemented in
practice.
Figure 3 shows the structure of a PoP DC that presents compute and
network resources while Figure 4 shows the structure of the Universal
Node (UN), an innovative element that integrates on the same platform
both compute and networking components and that could be used in the
infrastructure as an alternative to elements depicted in Figure 2 for
what concerns network and/or compute resources.
In Figure 5 we illustrate a resource orchestrator (RO) as a
functional entity whose task is to map the service graph to the
infrastructure resources under some service constraints and taking
into account the NF resource descriptions.
fr2 +---+ fr3
+->o-|NF2|-o-+
| 4 +---+ 5 |
+---+ | V +---+
1-->o-|NF1|-o----------->o-|NF3|-o-->8
2 +---+ 3 fr1 6 +---+ 7
||
||
+--------+ \/ SP0
| NF | +---------------------+
|Resource|==>|Resource Orchestrator|==> MAPPING
| Descr. | | (RO) |
+--------+ +---------------------+
/\
||
||
+---+
+--|SW3|--+
| +---+ |
+---+ | | +---+
1 |PoP| +---+ +---+ |PoP| 8
o--|DC1|-----|SW2|-----|SW4|----|DC2|--o
+---+ +---+ +---+ +---+
[---SP1---][--------SP2-------][---SP3----]
[-------------------SP0-------------------]
Figure 5: Resource Orchestrator: information base, inputs and output
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
NF resource descriptions are assumed to contain information necessary
to map NF types to a choice of instantiable VNF flavor or a selection
of an already deployed NF appliance and networking demands for
different operational policies. For example, if energy efficiency is
to be considered during the decision process then information related
to energy consumption of different NF flavors under different
conditions (e.g., network load) should be included in the resource
description.
Note that we also introduce a new service provider (SP0) which
effectively operates on top of the virtualized infrastructure offered
by SP1, SP2 and SP3.
In order for the RO to execute the resource mapping (which in general
is a hard problem) it needs to operate on the combined control plane
illustrated in Figure 6. In this figure we mark clearly that the
interfaces to the compute (DC) control plane and the SDN (SW) control
plane are distinct and implemented through different interfaces/APIs.
For example, Ic1 could be the Apache CloudStack API, while Ic2 could
be a control plane protocol such as ForCES or OpenFlow [RFC7426]. In
this case, the orchestrator at SP0 (top part of the figure) needs to
maintain a tight coordination across this range of interfaces.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
+---------+
|Orchestr.|
| SP0 |
_____+---------+_____
/ | \
/ V Ic2 \
| +---------+ |
Ic1 V |SDN Ctrl | V Ic3
+---------+ | SP2 | +---------+
|Comp Ctrl| +---------+ |Comp Ctrl|
| SP1 | / | \ | SP3 |
+---------+ +--- V ----+ +---------+
| | +----+ | |
| | |SW3 | | |
V | +----+ | V
+----+ V / \ V +----+
1 |PoP | +----+ +----+ |PoP | 8
o--|DC1 |----|SW2 |------|SW4 |----|DC2 |--o
+----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
[----SP1---][---------SP2--------][---SP3----]
[---------------------SP0--------------------]
Figure 6: The RO Control Plane view. Control plane interfaces are
indicated with (line) arrows. Data plane connections are indicated
with simple lines.
In the real-world, however, orchestration operations do not stop, for
example, at the DC1 level as depicted in Figure 6. If we (so-to-
speak) "zoom into" DC1 we will see a similar pattern and the need to
coordinate SW and DC resources within DC1 as illustrated in Figure 7.
As depicted, this edge PoP includes compute nodes (CNs) and SWs which
in most of the cases will also contain an internal topology.
In Figure 7, IcA is an interface similar to Ic2 in Figure 6, while
IcB could be, for example, OpenStack Nova or similar. The Northbound
Interface (NBI) to the Compute Controller can use Ic1 or Ic3 as shown
in Figure 6.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
NBI
|
+---------+
|Comp Ctrl|
+---------+
+----+ |
IcA V | IcB:to CNs
+---------+ V
|SDN Ctrl | | | ext port
+---------+ +---+ +---+
to|SW |SW | |SW |
+-> ,+--++.._ _+-+-+
V ,-" _|,,`.""-..+
_,,,--"" | `. |""-.._
+---+ +--++ `+-+-+ ""+---+
|SW | |SW | |SW | |SW |
+---+ ,'+---+ ,'+---+ ,'+---+
| | ,-" | | ,-" | | ,-" | |
+--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+
|CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN|
+--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+
Figure 7: PoP DC Network with Compute Nodes (CN)
In turn, each single Compute Node (CN) may also have internal
switching resources (see Figure 8). In a carrier environment, in
order to meet data path requirements, allocation of compute node
internal distributed resources (blades, CPU cores, etc.) may become
equivalently important.
+-+ +-+ +-+ +-+
|V| |V| |V| |V|
|N| |N| |N| |N|
|F| |F| |F| |F|
+-+ +-+ +-+ +-+
| / / |
+---+ +---+ +---+
|LSI| |LSI| |LSI|
+---+ +---+ +---+
| / |
+---+ +---+
|NIC| |NIC|
+---+ +---+
| |
Figure 8: Compute Node with internal switching resource
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
Based on the recursion principles shown above and the complexity
implied by separate interfaces for compute and network resources, one
could imagine a recursive programmatic interface for joint compute,
storage and network provisioning as depicted in Figure 9.
+---------+
|Service |
|Orchestr.|
+---------+
|
|
V U
+-------------------+
| Unified Recurrent |
| Control (URC) |
+-------------------+
/ | \
/ V U \
| +---------+ |
U V | URC | V U
+---------+ | | +---------+
| URC | +---------+ | URC |
| | / | \ | |
+---------+ +--- V ----+ +---------+
| | +----+ | |
| | |SW3 | | |
V | +----+ | V
+----+ V / \ V +----+
1 |PoP | +----+ +----+ |PoP | 8
o--|DC1 |----|SW2 |------|SW4 |----|DC2 |--o
+----+ +----+ +----+ +----+
[----SP1---][---------SP2--------][---SP3----]
Figure 9: The RO Control Plane view considering a recursive
programmatic interface for joint compute, storage and network
provisioning
In Figure 9, Ic1, Ic2 and Ic3 of Figure 6 have been substituted by
the recursive programmatic interface U to use for both compute and
network resources and we find also the Unified Recurrent Control
(URC), an element that performs both compute and network control and
that can be used in a hierarchy structure.
Considering the use of the recursive programmatic interface U and the
Unified Recurrent Control, the PoP DC Network structure with Compute
Nodes view changes as reported in Figure 10.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
NBI
|
+---------+
| URC |
+---------+
+----+ |
U V | U:to CNs
+---------+ V
| URC | | | ext port
+---------+ +---+ +---+
to|SW |SW | |SW |
+-> ,+--++.._ _+-+-+
V ,-" _|,,`.""-..+
_,,,--"" | `. |""-.._
+---+ +--++ `+-+-+ ""+---+
|SW | |SW | |SW | |SW |
+---+ ,'+---+ ,'+---+ ,'+---+
| | ,-" | | ,-" | | ,-" | |
+--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+
|CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN| |CN|
+--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+ +--+
Figure 10: PoP DC Network with Compute Nodes (CN) considering the U
interface and the URC element
4. Problem Statement
The motivational examples of Section 3 illustrate that almost always
compute virtualization and network virtualization are tightly
connected. In particular Figure, 3 shows that in a PoP DC there are
not only compute resources (CNs) but also network resources (SWs),
and so it illustrates that compute virtualization implicitly involves
network virtualization unless we consider the unlikely scenario where
dedicated network elements are used to interconnect the different
virtual network functions implemented on the compute nodes (e.g.: to
implement Flexible Service Chaining). On the other hand, considering
a network scenario made not only of just pure SDN network elements
(SWs) but also of compute resources (CNs) or SDN network nodes that
are equipped also with compute resources (UNs), it is very likely
that virtualized network resources, if offered to clients, imply
virtualization of compute resources, unless we consider the unlikely
scenario where dedicated compute resources are available for every
virtualized network.
Furthermore, virtualization often leads to scenarios of recursions
with clients redefining and reselling resources and services at
different levels.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
We argue that given the multi-level virtualization of compute,
storage and network domains, automation of the corresponding resource
provisioning could be more easily implemented by a recursive
programmatic interface. Existing separated compute and network
programming interfaces cannot easily provide such recursions and
cannot always satisfy key requirement for multi-vendor, multi-
technology and multi-provider interoperability environments.
Therefore we foresee the necessity of a recursive programmatic
interface for joint compute, storage and network provisioning.
5. Challenges
We summarize in this section the key questions and challenges, which
we hope will initiate further discussions in the NFVRG community.
5.1. Orchestration
Firstly, as motivated in Section 3, orchestrating networking
resources appears to have a recursive nature at different levels of
the hierarchy. Would a programmatic interface at the combined
compute and network abstraction better support this recursive and
constraint-based resource allocation?
Secondly, can such a joint compute, storage and network programmatic
interface allow an automated resource orchestration similar to the
recursive SDN architecture [ONF-SDN-ARCH]?
5.2. Resource description
Prerequisite for joint placement decisions of compute, storage and
network is the adequate description of available resources. This
means that the interfaces (IcA, IcB etc. in Figure 6 and Figure 7)
are of bidirectional nature, exposing resources as well as reserving.
There have been manifold attempts to create frameworks for resource
description, most prominently RDF of W3C, NDL, the GENI RPC and its
concept of Aggregate Managers, ONF's TTP and many more.
Quite naturally, all attempts to standardize "arbitrary" resource
descriptions lead to creating ontologies, complex graphs describing
relations of terms to each other.
Practical descriptions of compute resources are currently focusing on
number of logical CPU cores, available RAM and storage, allowing,
e.g., the OpenStack Nova scheduler to meet placement decisions. In
heterogeneous network and compute environments, hardware may have
different acceleration capabilities (e.g., AES-NI or hardware random
number generators), so the notion of logical compute cores is not
expressive enough. In addition, the network interfaces (and link
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
load) provide important information on how fast a certain VNF can be
executed in one node.
This may lead to a description of resources as VNF-FGs themselves.
Networking resource (SW) may expose the capability to forward and
process frames in, e.g., OpenFlow TableFeatures reply. Compute nodes
in the VNF-FG would expose lists of capabilities like the presence of
AES hardware acceleration, Intel DPDK support, or complex functions
like a running web server. An essential part of the compute node's
capability would be the ability to run a certain VNF of type X within
a certain QoS spec. As the QoS is service specific, it can only be
exposed by a control function within the instantiated VNF-FG.
5.3. Dependencies (de-composition)
Salt [SALT], Puppet [PUPPET], Chef [CHEF] and Ansible [ANSIBLE] are
tools to manage large scale installations of virtual machines in DC
environments. Essentially, the decomposition of a complex function
into its dependencies is encoded in "recipes" (Chef).
OASIS TOSCA [TOSCA] specification aims at describing application
layer services to automate interoperable deployment in alternative
cloud environments. The TOSCA specification "provides a language to
describe service components and their relationships using a service
topology".
Is there a dependency (decomposition) abstraction suitable to drive
resource orchestration between application layer descriptions (like
TOSCA) and cloud specific installations (like Chef recipes)?
5.4. Elastic VNF
In many use cases, a VNF may not be designed for scaling up/down, as
scaling up/down may require a restart of the VNF which the state data
may be lost. Normally a VNF may be capable for scaling in/out only.
Such VNF is designed running on top of a small VM and grouped as a
pool of one VNF function. VNF scaling may crossing multiple NFVI
PoPs (or data center)s in order to avoid limitation of the NVFI
capability. At cross DC scaling, the result is that the new VNF
instance may be placed at a remote cloud location. At VNF scaling,
it is a must requirement to provide the same level of Service Level
Agreement (SLA) including performance, reliability and security.
In general, a VNF is part of a VNF Forwarding Graph (VNF FG), meaning
the data traffic may traverse multiple stateful and stateless VNF
functions in sequence. When some VNF instances of a given service
function chain are placed / scaled out in a distant cloud execution,
the service traffic may have to traverse multiple VNF instances which
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
are located in multiple physical locations. In the worst case, the
data traffic may ping-pong between multiple physical locations.
Therefore it is important to take the whole service function chain's
performance into consideration when placing and scaling one of its
VNF instance. Network and cloud resources need mutual
considerations, see [I-D.zu-nfvrg-elasticity-vnf].
5.5. Measurement and analytics
Programmable, dynamic, and elastic VNF deployment requires that the
Resource Orchestrator (RO) entities obtain timely information about
the actual operational conditions between different locations where
VNFs can be placed. Scaling VNFs in/out/up/down, VNF execution
migration and VNF mobility, as well as right-sizing the VNFI resource
allocations is a research area that is expected to grow in the coming
years as mechanisms, heuristics, and measurement and analytics
frameworks are developed.
For example, Veitch et al. [IAF] point out that NFV deployment will
"present network operators with significant implementation
challenges". They look into the problems arising from the lack of
proper tools for testing and diagnostics and explore the use of
embedded instrumentation. They find that in certain scenarios fine-
tuning resource allocation based on instrumentation can lead to at
least 50% reduction in compute provisioning. In this context, three
categories emerge where more research is needed.
First, in the compute domain, performance analysis will need to
evolve significantly from the current "safety factor" mentality which
has served well carriers in the dedicated, hardware-based appliances
era. In the emerging softwarized deployments, VNFI will require new
tools for planning, testing, and reliability assurance. Meirosu et
al. [I-D.unify-nfvrg-devops] describe in detail the challenges in
this area with respect to verification, testing, troubleshooting and
observability.
Second, in the network domain, performance measurement and analysis
will play a key role in determining the scope and range of VNF
distribution across the resources available. For example, IETF has
worked on the standardization of IP performance metrics for years.
The Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) could be employed,
for instance, to capture the actual operational state of the network
prior to making RO decisions. TWAMP management, however, still lacks
a standardized and programmable management and configuration data
model [I-D.cmzrjp-ippm-twamp-yang]. We expect that as VNFI
programmability gathers interest from network carriers several IETF
protocols will be revisited in order to bring them up to date with
respect to the current operational requirements. To this end, NFVRG
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
can play an active role in identifying future IETF standardization
directions.
Third, non-technical considerations which relate to business aspects
or priorities need to be modeled and codified so that ROs can take
intelligent decisions. Meirosu et al. [I-D.unify-nfvrg-devops]
identify two aspects of this problem, namely a) how high-level
network goals are translated into low-level configuration commands;
and b) monitoring functions that go beyond measuring simple metrics
such as delay or packet loss. Energy efficiency and cost, for
example, can steer NFV placement. In NFVI deployments operational
practices such as follow-the-sun will be considered as earlier
research in the data center context implies.
6. IANA Considerations
This memo includes no request to IANA.
7. Security Considerations
TBD
8. Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the UNIFY team for inspiring
discussions and in particular Fritz-Joachim Westphal and Catalin
Meirosu for their comments and suggestions on how to refine this
draft.
This work is supported by FP7 UNIFY, a research project partially
funded by the European Community under the Seventh Framework Program
(grant agreement no. 619609). The views expressed here are those of
the authors only. The European Commission is not liable for any use
that may be made of the information in this document.
9. Informative References
[ANSIBLE] Ansible Inc., "Ansible Documentation", 2015,
<http://docs.ansible.com/index.html>.
[CHEF] Chef Software Inc., "An Overview of Chef", 2015,
<https://docs.chef.io/chef_overview.html>.
[ETSI-NFV-Arch]
ETSI, "Architectural Framework v1.1.1", Oct 2013,
<http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/
NFV/001_099/002/01.01.01_60/gs_NFV002v010101p.pdf>.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
[ETSI-NFV-MANO]
ETSI, "Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Management
and Orchestration V0.6.1 (draft)", Jul. 2014,
<http://docbox.etsi.org/ISG/NFV/Open/Latest_Drafts/
NFV-MAN001v061-%20management%20and%20orchestration.pdf>.
[EU-5GPPP-Contract]
5G-PPP Association, "Contractual Arrangement: Setting up a
Public- Private Partnership in the Area of Advance 5G
Network Infrastructure for the Future Internet between the
European Union and the 5G Infrastructure Association", Dec
2013, <http://5g-ppp.eu/contract/>.
[I-D.caszpe-nfvrg-orchestration-challenges]
Carrozzo, G., Szabo, R., and K. Pentikousis, "Network
Function Virtualization: Resource Orchestration
Challenges", draft-caszpe-nfvrg-orchestration-
challenges-00 (work in progress), November 2015.
[I-D.cmzrjp-ippm-twamp-yang]
Civil, R., Morton, A., Zheng, L., Rahman, R.,
Jethanandani, M., and K. Pentikousis, "Two-Way Active
Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) Data Model", draft-cmzrjp-
ippm-twamp-yang-02 (work in progress), October 2015.
[I-D.ietf-sfc-problem-statement]
Quinn, P. and T. Nadeau, "Service Function Chaining
Problem Statement", draft-ietf-sfc-problem-statement-13
(work in progress), February 2015.
[I-D.unify-nfvrg-devops]
Meirosu, C., Manzalini, A., Steinert, R., Marchetto, G.,
Papafili, I., Pentikousis, K., and S. Wright, "DevOps for
Software-Defined Telecom Infrastructures", draft-unify-
nfvrg-devops-03 (work in progress), October 2015.
[I-D.zu-nfvrg-elasticity-vnf]
Qiang, Z. and R. Szabo, "Elasticity VNF", draft-zu-nfvrg-
elasticity-vnf-01 (work in progress), March 2015.
[IAF] Veitch, P., McGrath, M. J., and Bayon, V., "An
Instrumentation and Analytics Framework for Optimal and
Robust NFV Deployment", Communications Magazine, vol. 53,
no. 2 IEEE, February 2015.
[NSC] John, W., Pentikousis, K., et al., "Research directions in
network service chaining", Proc. SDN for Future Networks
and Services (SDN4FNS), Trento, Italy IEEE, November 2013.
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
[ONF-SDN-ARCH]
ONF, "SDN architecture", Jun. 2014,
<https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/
sdn-resources/technical-reports/
TR_SDN_ARCH_1.0_06062014.pdf>.
[OpenStack]
The OpenStack project, "Openstack cloud software", 2014,
<http://openstack.org>.
[PUPPET] Puppet Labs., "Puppet 3.7 Reference Manual", 2015,
<http://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/3.7/reference/>.
[RFC7426] Haleplidis, E., Ed., Pentikousis, K., Ed., Denazis, S.,
Hadi Salim, J., Meyer, D., and O. Koufopavlou, "Software-
Defined Networking (SDN): Layers and Architecture
Terminology", RFC 7426, DOI 10.17487/RFC7426, January
2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7426>.
[SALT] SaltStack, "Salt (Documentation)", 2015,
<http://docs.saltstack.com/en/latest/contents.html>.
[TOSCA] OASIS Standard, "Topology and Orchestration Specification
for Cloud Applications Version 1.0", November 2013,
<http://docs.oasis-open.org/tosca/TOSCA/v1.0/os/
TOSCA-v1.0-os.html>.
Authors' Addresses
Robert Szabo
Ericsson Research, Hungary
Irinyi Jozsef u. 4-20
Budapest 1117
Hungary
Email: robert.szabo@ericsson.com
URI: http://www.ericsson.com/
Andras Csaszar
Ericsson Research, Hungary
Irinyi Jozsef u. 4-20
Budapest 1117
Hungary
Email: andras.csaszar@ericsson.com
URI: http://www.ericsson.com/
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft UNIFY Challenges January 2016
Kostas Pentikousis
EICT GmbH
EUREF-Campus Haus 13
Torgauer Strasse 12-15
10829 Berlin
Germany
Email: k.pentikousis@eict.de
Mario Kind
Deutsche Telekom AG
Winterfeldtstr. 21
10781 Berlin
Germany
Email: mario.kind@telekom.de
Diego Daino
Telecom Italia
Via Guglielmo Reiss Romoli 274
10148 Turin
Italy
Email: diego.daino@telecomitalia.ite
Zu Qiang
Ericsson
8400, boul. Decarie
Ville Mont-Royal, QC 8400
Canada
Email: zu.qiang@ericsson.com
URI: http://www.ericsson.com/
Hagen Woesner
BISDN
Koernerstr. 7-10
Berlin 10785
Germany
Email: hagen.woesner@bisdn.de
URI: http://www.bisdn.de
Szabo, et al. Expires July 16, 2016 [Page 19]