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Hardware Platform Enablement In ONAP

Hardware Platform Enablement In ONAP

Owned by Alex Vul (Deactivated)
Last updated: Sept 19, 2018
6 min read

Overview

This is page is being used to track the realization of the Hardware Platform Awareness (HPA) functional requirement defined in support of VoLTE, vCPE and 5G use cases. The requirement calls for enablement of hardware platform feature awareness (HPA) inside the ONAP management platform, or means by which knowledge about underlying compute hardware platform capabilities is exposed to VNFs running on top of the platform in order to optimize, accelerate and/or otherwise augment their execution. In ONAP, HPA enablement focuses on discovery, health monitoring and configuration of hardware platform capabilities within the NFV infrastructure, and their consumption by the virtual network functions and network services deployed on top of the infrastructure.

More Information (Intel-specific)...

Business Requirements

This requirement is required in support of commercial VNF implementations, that are used as part of vCPE, VoLTE and 5G use cases, and require hardware assisted acceleration. This requirement is also needed by the ONAP Optimization Framework (OOF) project in order to optimize homing and placement of hardware assisted VNFs.

Scope

The scope of this requirement is limited to consumption of hardware platform capabilities for the purpose of VNF performance acceleration and optimization. Other uses of HPA are not in scope. 

Participating Companies

  • AT&T, Intel, Cloudify, China Mobile, Orange, ARM

Terminology Introduced

Term

Definition

Term

Definition

Hardware Platform Awareness (HPA)

The means by which the underlying NFV-I hardware platform capabilities are exposed to the network service orchestration and management functionality, for the purpose of fulfilling VNF instantiation-time hardware platform requirements.

HPA Enablement

The implementation of HPA awareness in ONAP.



Discussion Pages



Projects that enable HPA



Project

PTL



Project

PTL

1

VNFSDK

(impact)

@Chris Donley

@Lianhao Lu (Deactivated)

2

SDC

(impact)

@Michael Lando

3

SO

(impact)

@Seshu Kumar Mudiganti

4

AAI
(impact) 

@James Forsyth

5

Multi-Cloud

@Bin Yang

6

Policy

@Pamela Dragosh

7

OOF

@Sarat Puthenpura



Limitations









1

Specification of VNF's hardware platform capability requirements is limited to TOSCA based VNFD's.

2

Specification of VNF's hardware platform capability requirements using HEAT is not supported.

3

Supported capabilities are limited to the ones discoverable via OpenStack APIs.

4

Use of container based VNF placement is not supported.

5

Specification of capability requirements is bounded by the set of capabilities discovered in #2.

6

Implementation of southbound (Multi-Cloud) facing SO workflows is limited to HEAT only. 

7

Use of TOSCA based resource orchestration is a stretch goal.

8

There is no dynamic discovery of HPA capabilities.

9

HPA capabilities are not under monitoring.



Projects that make use of HPA



Project

PTL

Notes



Project

PTL

Notes

1

APP-C

@Randa Maher

There is no direct impact on APP-C, given that all instantiation actions are "outsourced" to the SO/OOF.

2

VF-C

@Yan Yang

Changes to VF-C will be required in order to incorporate use of HPA into instantiation and operation.

3

DCAE

@Lusheng Ji



Internal HPA Documentation



Project

PTL



Project

PTL

1

VNFRQTS

@Steven wright

External HPA Documentation

Organization

Contact

Organization

Contact

ETSI NFV SOL

@Alex Vul (Deactivated), Intel

@Thinh Nguyenphu (Unlicensed), Nokia

Bruno Chartras, Orange





HPA Casablanca Enhancements









Feature

Projects

Status

Notes

Support for vFW and vDNS use cases

In R2, only the vCPE SO workflow was enhanced to call OOF for homing decisions. In R3, SO workflows for vFW and vDNS will also call OOF for homing decisions.

SO

status:Default

Most of code will be in by Wednesday.

Test plan to ensure that both vFW and vDNS use cases are tested with HPA feature



Use of Multi-Cloud Service instead of SO for direct communication with OpenStack instances in cloud regions

In R2, as part of the vCPE workflow, SO bypassed the Multi-Cloud service and called OpenStack directly..  In R3, this will no longer be the case and SO will call the Multi-Cloud Service. Multi-Cloud service will, in turn, communicate with OpenStack instances within different cloud regions.

SO
Multi-Cloud

status:Default

Code being integrated late on Wednesday.

Test plan should ensure that SO is configured to work with Multi-Cloud Service.



Derivation of HEAT parameters from OOF homing decisions in the Multi-Cloud Service

In R2, vCPE HEAT template parameters and their values were generated by SO, based on OOF homing decisions because SO was calling Openstack directly. In R3, communication with OpenStack is moved to the Multi-Cloud Service and SO will no longer generate HEAT template parameters. Instead, the Multi-Cloud API will accept directives from OOF and SDN-C, passed as API call parameters.   Multi-Cloud service will generate HEAT template parameters based on these directives. 

SO
OOF
Multi-Cloud 

status:Default

Dependency on #2.

Test plan should ensure that HEAT parameters and values generated by Multi-Cloud are as expected.



SRIOV-NIC HPA feature support

SRIOV-NIC HPA feature is added in R3.

Multi-Cloud
SO 

status:Default

Dependency on #2 and #3.

Test plan should ensure that OOF makes right decisions and right Openstack flavor is selected.



Cloud-region and flavor selection enhancements in OOF

In R2, OOF always selected the first cloud region to satisfy all mandatory HPA requirements, even if multiple cloud regions were able to satisfy the requirements. In R3, OOF will use scoring to pick the right cloud region, such that the region with the highest score is always chosen.

OOF

status:Default

Test plan should cover to ensure that the right region with best score is selected in case of multiple regions.

Missing E2E integration testing, can be done after M4



Support for vCPE use case

In R2, vCPE orchestration was only possible using SO and HEAT templates. In R3, vCPE orchestration will also be possible using VF-C and partially ETSI NFV SOL001 v0.6.0 compliant TOSCA templates. As part of this change, VF-C (NSLCM) will be enhanced to communicate with OOF and use OOF supplied recommendations for placement.

VF-C
SDC
Policy



Test plan should ensure that vCPE use case is tested using both VF-C and SO. In either case, the same OpenStack flavor and cloud region should be selected for VNF placement.





HPA telemetry and HPA state based placement decisions

Stretch goal, may not happen in R3 time frame



status:Default









HPA Functionality Enablement Plan

Functionality

MVP

Projects Involved

Availability

Status

Functionality

MVP

Projects Involved

Availability

Status

1

Modeling of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNFD information model and TOSCA data models.

Yes

Modeling Subcommittee

R3

status:Committed



2

Specification and validation of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNF package (TOSCA).

Yes

VNFSDK

R3

status:Committed

3

Use of VNFD supplied hardware platform requirements at on-boarding time to verify that infrastructure is capable of supporting VNF instantiation and operation.

No

SDC

R3

status:stretchstatus:R3

4

Translation of VNFD supplied VNF hardware platform requirements into HPA related OOF homing and placement policies.

Yes

SDC, Policy

R3

status:committed

5

Manual specification of HPA related OOF homing and placement policies based on hardware platform requirements.

Yes

Policy

R2

status:Done

6

Use of VNF hardware platform requirements as constraint policies for optimized homing and resource placement of VNF components during VNF instantiation.

Yes

OOF, SO, Policy

R2

status:Done

7

Use of hardware platform telemetry in determination of the VNF instance health.

No

AAI, DCAE

R4

status:scheduled

8

Use of hardware platform telemetry to enhance OOF homing and placement decisions.

No

Multi-Cloud, AAI, OOF

R3

status:committed

9

Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for operation and remediation of running VNF instances.

No

VF-C, APP-C

R3

status:delayedstatus:r4

10

Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for VNF autoscaling.

No

Scaling FR

R3

status:delayedstatus:r4

11

Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for VNF change management.

No

Change Management FR

R3

status:delayedstatus:r4

12

Discovery of hardware platform capabilities exposed by different VIMs.

Yes

Multi-Cloud

R2

status:Done

13

Modeling and persistence of discovered platform capabilities in the AA&I database.

Yes

Multi-Cloud, AAI

R2

status:Done

14

SRIOV Discovery.

No

Multi-Cloud

R3

status:commited

15

SRIOV Day 0 Configuration.

No

TBD

R3

status:committed

16

VF-C/HPA integration.

No

VF-C

R3

status:committed





Casablanca Test Plan (DRAFT)

Please see this link: HPA & Cloud Agnostic Intent - R3 Test Plan (In Progress)

Assumptions

VolTE and vCPE use cases will be used to validate the function of HPA end-to-end. The HPA test plans for Casablanca make the following assumptions with respect to function of ONAP components affected by HPA enablement functional requirement.

  1. There are no changes to the HPA capability discovery process.

  2. There are no changes to how discovered HPA capabilities are persisted in AAI.

  3. There are no changes to specification of HPA constraint policies used by OOF.

  4. Existing VoLTE and vCPE tests are sufficient to perform the end-to-end HPA testing.

Based on the above assumptions, the scope of the testing effort is limited to the following:

VNF On-Boarding (VNFSDK/SDC)

Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

101

Format and content of the VNFD, as supplied via the CSAR file are unaffected by VNF on-boarding.

status:To be done

102

HPA requirements are unaffected by VNF on-boarding.

status:To be done

103

On-boarding of VNFs with HPA requirements fails if appropriate ONAP components  (e.g. HPA requirement interpreter plugin) are not found.

status:To be done

104

HPA requirement validation errors result in termination of the VNF on-boarding process.

status:To be done

VNF Design (SDC)



Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

201

VNFs with TOSCA-encoded VNFDs can be used to build network services.

status:To be done

202

VNFD and all of its content, HPA requirements included, remain immutable.

status:To be done

VNF Distribution (SDC/SO/Policy)

Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

301

Policy and SO components are able to register as SDC distribution clients.

status:To be done

302

VNFD can be distributed through the SDC distribution framework.

status:To be done

303

HPA requirement parsing errors result in termination of the VNF distribution process.

status:To be done

VNF Instantiation (SO/VF-C/OOF)

Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

401

VNFs with TOSCA-encoded VNFDs can be instantiated using VF-C.

status:To be done

402

VNFs with TOSCA-encoded VNFDs can be instantiated using SO.

status:To be done

403

The same VNF package can be used with all ONAP orchestrators.

status:To be done

404

HPA requirements are consistently interpreted by all orchestrators.

status:To be done

SR-IOV NIC Support

Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

501

VNFs including SR-IOV NIC requirements with TOSCA-encoded VNFDs can be instantiated using VF-C.

status:To be done

502

VNFs including SR-IOV NIC requirements with TOSCA-encoded VNFDs can be instantiated using SO.

status:To be done

HPA Service Assurance (Platform Telemetry)

Test ID

Test Description

Status

Test ID

Test Description

Status

601



status:To be done

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