The Linux Foundation’s long-awaited open source platform for NFV (network functions virtualization) has made its debut, backed by a wide range of operators and vendors. It is hoped that the broadly supported initiative, dubbed OPNFV (Open Platform for NFV) will help avoid fragmentation by uniting the industry around a core open set of specs, and it will also be important to have an NFV platform living alongside important standards for SDN (software defined networking), since for many operators these two will be part of the same overall, and difficult, transition.
Among mobile operators, virtualization is widely seen as a nearer term strategy, at least for certain parts of the network such as the packet core, than full-blown SDN. However, general consensus is that the full benefits of virtualization will only be achieved as part of an SDN transition, even if that takes 10 years to achieve. The ETSI set of specifications for network function virtualization, NFV, has been an important factor behind operators’ unexpectedly intense interest in near-term deployments – giving them the confidence of a widely supported set of specs which have been carrier-driven and tailored for telcos’ specific needs. So it is very logical that the Linux Foundation, which hosts the most important open source platforms for SDN – OpenStack and OpenDaylight – should have a related activity for NFV, helping to bring these two worlds together.
Virtualization implements some or all network functions as virtual machines running on off-the-shelf hardware, saving on the cost of ownership of a string of dedicated one-function boxes. It also creates tunnels between those VMs so they can be reconfigured on the fly without affecting the whole system, adding to flexibility and allowing new instances of VMs to be deployed or taken down rapidly.
SDN can be implemented entirely separately, but has specific benefits for virtualization, such as the ability to manage huge numbers of VMs from the cloud. SDN separates the control and data planes, centralizing all the control of the huge number of VMs machines on standard servers and allowing the behavior of the network to be freely programmable, using standard interfaces and common developer tools.
Open source platforms are important to both technologies, in order to prevent them being hijacked by vendor interests and semi-proprietary implementations (already something of a risk in NFV), and to encourage innovation. So it is also important that these open source initiatives should explore and understand the links between the two movements.
The OPNFV Project will define an open source, carrier-grade reference architecture based on the ETSI specs for NFV, in order to validate the performance and interoperability of new products and services, and so accelerate their introduction. It will focus on integrating multiple open source components and conducting perpetual performance testing. It will not develop new standards of its own but work to create a tightly integrated platform based firmly on the existing NFV specs. The rapid acceptance of those specs, and the fact they were defined under the auspices of a standards body, not a vendor group, have helped to keep ETSI’s work at the heart of most of the various NFV groups which are springing up, and that unity will be an important factor in driving adoption.
Among the founding ‘platinum’ supporters of the new initiative are a mixture of traditional wireless vendors and IT giants, as well as operators. The suppliers include Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Juniper, NEC, Nokia Networks and Red Hat. Prodip Sen of HP (formerly a Verizon director) takes a board position, as does Margaret Chiosi of AT&T. Other operators in the platinum group include China Mobile, NTT Docomo, Telecom Italia and Vodafone – though surprisingly, not Telefonica, which has been one of the most active NFV triallists in the early stages, nor BT and Verizon, both leading lights of the ETSI NFV SIG.
Silver level founding members are 6WIND, Alcatel-Lucent, ARM, Broadcom, CableLabs, Cavium, CenturyLink, Ciena, Citrix, ClearPath, ConteXtream, Coriant, Cyan, Dorado Software, Ixia, Metaswitch, Mirantis, Orange, Sandvine, Sprint and Intel’s Wind River.
On the operator side, the line-up which highlights the convergence of fixed and mobile networks around common approaches such as NFV. That has the knock-on effect of broadening the R&D base as well as promoting the potential for truly converged IP-based architectures.
“Open source code has been proven to accelerate innovation and time to market for new technologies,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The Open Platform for NFV will bring together providers, cloud and infrastructure vendors, developers and users alike to define a new type of reference platform for the industry, integrating existing open source building blocks with new components and testing that accelerates development and deployment of NFV.”
The OPNFV’s founding document, seen by LightReading during the summer, points to a pragmatic approach, saying: “The over-all design should be modular, to allow for the existence of proprietary components. Initially, the focus will be on two critical components: NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM).” So proprietary, as well as open source, components will be able to gain OPN compliance certification, but the reference hardware will be based on off-the-shelf elements.
The first release of specifications from the ETSI NFV SIG is scheduled for the fourth quarter and OPNFV supporters insist that work will be complemented, not sidelined, by the new initiative. The SIG will “remain the main hub of influence for NFV-related activities” focusing on “use cases, requirements, and architectural aspects that define what is needed”, says the launch document. Meanwhile, the OPNFV’s main role will be to take those requirements and specs, and develop the reference implementations and the testing and integration systems as well as trying to unify open source efforts and guard against fragmentation.
The recently elected chairman of ETSI’s NFV ISG, Steven Wright of AT&T, commented:
“I congratulate the OPNFV founders on the formation of this new open source community supporting NFV. The NFV ISG’s mission is to facilitate the industry transformation and development of an open, interoperable, ecosystem through specification, implementation and deployment experience. The ISG recognizes the value of open source implementations to converge industry requirements and facilitate the development of the NFV ecosystem.”
Importantly, the new group will also be a vehicle to cooperate with, and share ideas with, other relevant open source communities, particularly OpenStack, Open vSwitch and OpenDaylight. Zemlin said it would be important to build on the work of those projects, and avoid duplication of effort, even though the new body would be quite different in intent.
He explained that OpenStack and the others are “upstream projects” focused on specific components, while OPNFV is looking at underlying architecture, making it more akin to an open source operating system project like Fedora, providing an underlying free platform that can be “productized” for commercial deployment by different vendors.
“This group wants to focus on NFV specifically and on creating a carrier-grade environment,” Zemlin told LightReading. “That involves integrating a collection of open source components together but it also has a much broader scope in terms of looking at things like hardware acceleration and service chaining all of the things you need in an NFV environment, which are broader than the scope of any of the individual components that are part of open source projects.”
The OpenDaylight Project itself has also made a significant announcement this week, launching its second open source release for control of both SDN and NFV, called Helium. This adds 11 new features and protocols, all provided by network infrastructure vendors, to the previous Hydrogen release. Helium integrates multivendor protocols, applications and technologies to create an interoperable platform. New additions include an optimized user interface called dlux and deeper integration with OpenStack features such as Load Balancing-as-a-Service.
Neela Jacques, executive director of the OpenDaylight Project, said: “The OpenDaylight Community is iterating, shaping and defining a de facto standard for SDN and NFV through code creation. They’ve taken on the monumental task of bringing together all the disparate technologies, thoughts and ideas around SDN and forming it into a cohesive platform. Helium brings us one step closer to having one common platform the entire industry can standardize on.”
Meanwhile, yet another body, the Metro Ethernet Forum, is trying to have its influence over SDN and NFV, and has announced plans to develop service orchestration, APIs and service model definitions. These would help to provision new services dynamically across multiple virtualized networks, but the MEF, like most of the rising number of NFV-oriented industry efforts, is insistent that it will complement NFV, not seek to sideline it. The MEF had a joint board meeting with the ESTI NFV SIG during the summer in order to work out areas of cooperation and differentiation. The MEF will be firmly focused on the service orchestration layer, sitting above the NFV infrastructure, according to the body’s president, Nan Chen. The Forum’s orchestration will use services from NFV’s own management and orchestration layer, MANO.
“MEF is working on layered abstraction to automate network-as-a-service starting with the Carrier Ethernet layer,” Chen said. “NFV and SDN are concerned with network elements and functions and controls within the network infrastructure, but they are not concerned with bandwidth connectivity services which an individual or business can actually purchase. MEF is layering the service orchestration on top of NFV and SDN to provide service manageability.”