VNF Zero-day onboarding, instanciation and consumption

Today's approach to onboarding and deployment of VNF typical requires time and effort to account for certification and integration. When deploying new products consisting of multiple VNFs, efforts and complexity are multiplied.

The TMForum Catalyst "Enabled Digital Marketplace" explores a potential solution leveraging the concept of VNF packages that describes the fundamental elements of a VNF. When a VNF is well described, its onboarding and orchestration can be significantly accelerated even in complex service chain scenario.

In the May 2017 edition of TMForum Nice meeting, EXFO contributed a VNF package with fundamental metadata consisting of different artifacts such as dependencies, licensing and metrics meta model, all designed to accelerate onboarding and integration of the EXFO Active Virtual Verifier in a service chain. In this edition of the catalyst, a Business VoIP scenario was explored where Provider integrates different VNFs in order to produce a new product called "Assured VoIP Service":

• A Metaswitch Clearwater Core IMS component for authentication and user management
• An Oracle SBC
• IBM FM and Runbook system
• Persistent Systems Performance Dashboard and Analytics solution
• Symantec Security
• EnterpriseWeb foundation which provided Marketplace, VNF Catalog, Inventory and Orchestration
• EXFO's vVerifier VNF performed key capability:
• EXFO's vVerifier Rich API suite allows on-demand tests to be executed automatically in this case via simple REST calls.
•  At product delivery, when the service chain was completed, EXFO's vVerifier performed an API triggered End-to-End to call proving the proper deployment and configuration of the service chain. This validation step ensures that services can now be confidently delivered to the subscriber. 
• In troubleshooting mode, the EXFO's vVerifier can be used to troubleshoot signalling or transport performance and execute on+demand API driven test sequences to identify if degradation is at the connectivity, signalling or transport layer.

EXFO's vVerifier continuous performance monitoring provides the key visibility required for dynamic NFV environment, ensuring quality and performance throughout the service and infrastructure lifecycle. After deployment, EXFO's vVerifier assures the performance and quality of the service through continuous active performance monitoring, providing visibility over connectivity, IP performance, Signalling Performance and Media QoE. Test metrics are aggregated and integrated to an external Dashboard system

In live demonstration, the team was able to show a product designed and instanciated, including cross VNF integration such as performance monitoring dashboarding, via coordination of multiple VNF packages. This Catalyst was championned by Verizon, AT&T, Orange, Telstra, Vodafone and China Mobile as clearly shows an industry need to tackle the mounting challenge of onboarding and deploying VNFs faster and more efficiently.

By Thierno Diallo, Strategic Product Manager EXFO