Realizing network function virtualization management and orchestration with model based open architecture

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has published a Group Specification document outlining Network Function Virtualization Management and Orchestration (NFV-MANO) systems, advocating an open environment for the purpose of integrating multiple vendor solutions into one NFV ecosystem. To align with this initiative, there is a need to transform the specification into real products with the necessary components and interfaces following the ETSI reference architecture. To support this effort, in this article we share our experience in the exploration of further refining and developing internal components of the ETSI NFV-MANO functional blocks with identified open integration interfaces. We focus on the detailed analysis of the life cycle management of the Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), which is the most fundamental and important functionality of NFV-MANO. Based on our analysis, we propose an abstract VNF Manager Integration Interface (VNFM Integration Interface) at the southbound of VNFM, to integrate with various clouds and systems to complete the life cycle management of the VNFs. In order to achieve advanced VNF life cycle management such as auto-scaling, a model-based monitoring solution is adopted for monitoring the VNFs across multiple layers of NFV architecture. To serve as a proof of concept, we automatically deploy and scale a sample VNF using the proposed software architecture and interfaces. With the prototyping experience using the VNF model as a plugin, to integrate with traditional virtualization and physical infrastructure hierarchy as a full topology model, we evaluate using a model-based monitoring system Dell Foglight™ for realizing NFV monitoring functionalities as part of NFV-MANO architecture framework.