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WHAT: OVP

             It stands for "OPNFV Verification Program", initiated by Linux Foundation networking (NFN) under OPNFV community for improving the adoption of cloudified (VIM/NFVi) network functions (VNF/CNF) in telco industry, which is witnessing the digital transformation in 'current generation'. It forms the Compliance and Verification Committee (CVC) for governing this vision.


WHO: CVC

             Compliance and Verification Committee (CVC) is governing the end-end process from: test case requirements to: providing the badging by working across the horizon by collaborating with different players OPNFV, ONAP communities and cloudified network functions vendors & telco operators. They have successfully constructed the OVP architecture by leveraging different components and tools from those players.

WHY: Boost Telco Digital Transformation adoption

             In last decade, When OpenStack community brought the production ready cloudification of information technology (IT) available over internet/intranet, many IT  vendors have realized the business value of this cloud platform - cloud Operating System - reduced the capital expense (CAPEX) and operating expense (OPEX) to an greater extend. At the same time-line, consumer market has evolved from 'feature mobile' into 'smart mobile', which is uplifted the human life value. This is a paradigm shift in both technology and life and mobile became 'data-centric' while it was 'voice-centric' and Communication Technology (CT) - telco industry has witnessed this paradigm shift and became an important need for CT to support this transition - digital transformation. In programmer style, earlier CT & IT industries were in 'association' relationship, while now it has been becoming 'inheritance/composition' relationship "CT on top of IT", the collaboration called as ICT industry.          

             As part of this digital transformation. ICT industry started to manufactures the network function using cloudification technologies, i.e., Virtual Network Function (VNF) using OpenStack, Container Network Function (CNF) using Kubernetes and virtualization includes Network Function Virtualized Infrastructure (NFVi). In theory, these VNF and CNF should work seamlessly on "any" OpenStack and Kubernetes distro, respectively - as heterogynous adoption. But due to various practical reasons, every vendor happened to manufacture as combined VNF + VIM/NFVi and/or CNF + Kubernetes - became homogenous adaption that is one vendor's VNF will work perfectly with ONLY theirs VIM/NFVi and does not work seamlessly with another vendor's VIM/NFVi and vice-versa. This became a difficult situations for operator to adopt the digital transformation faster.      

             So Linux foundation has introduced the OPNFV verified program (OVP) to streamline the heterogynous adoptions by certifying vendor's VNF & VIM/NFVi based on defined badging requirements. And OVP has already certified many vendor's VIM/NFVi https://nfvi-verified.lfnetworking.org/ . And also streamlined the process for VNF badging https://vnf-verified.lfnetworking.org/ .

            

ECO-SYSTEMS: Real Handshake - Give & Take

             OVP ecosystem involves collaboration across different open source communities under LFN, includes ONAP, OPNFV and CNTT.

    

OPNFV

             Provides required testing frameworks and test cases for NFVi (OpenStack) and VNF functional and performance test cases. Current following projects participate actively:

Dovetail: Provides the OVP badging platform for running required test cases, produce results and submit those results to OVP portal, which helps to perform the review process and reports the certified VNF/NFVi products.

Functest: Provides the required test cases for NFVi testing.

Bottleneck: Provides required test cases for load testing

VSPerf: Provides required test cases for performance testing.

ONAP

             Provides required testing frameworks and test cases for VNF compliance and validation testing by using ONAP as MANO. Current following projects participate actively:

VNFSDK/VNF Test Platform (VTP): Provides the test platform to execute the test cases implemented in various run-time by providing required domain model for test case, test suite, scenario, execution & results, test artifacts and environments. This platform enabled the feature to adopt the results into OVP native format.

Also it provides REST API, which is integrated in ONAP SDC for performing design time compliance testing, specific to a given operator while VSP is on-boarded.

VNFSDK: Provides required test cases for TOSCA based VNF compliance testing using ETSI SOL004/001

VVP: Provides the required test cases for HOT (HEAT) based VNF compliance testing using ONAP VNFREQS.

CLI: Provides required ONAP commands for performing VNF validation testing.

CNTT

             Initially organized early in 2019, the Common Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure Telecom Taskforce (CNTT) was initially created in response to rapid changes in how networking applications are being designed, built and managed, plus a growing recognition of a perceived functional gap between the previous standard infrastructure models and the architectures needed to support Network Function Virtualization (NFV) applications. Organizationally the Common Telco Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) project, jointly hosted by GSMA and the Linux Foundation, operates as an open committee responsible for creating and documenting an industry aligned Common NFVI Framework. The CNTT group was created with the intent that it would create the NFVI framework, and eventually morph into an on-going project under the auspices of the GSMA and the Linux Foundation umbrellas. The final on-going operational form of the group will be determined as the project evolves. OVP’s VNF and NFVI compliance testing for establishing baseline conformance and offering interoperability.

Common NFVI Benefits

By providing a pre-defined environment with common capabilities, applications are able to be developed and deployed more rapidly. In addition, the common infrastructure can be optimized for various workloads, such as IT (Information Technology), VNF, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and other future workload types as new technologies emerge. The benefits of this approach are:

  • Configuration automation over customization
    • By abstracting the infrastructure capabilities as much as possible, operators are able to use common infrastructure platforms across all VNF vendors.
    • Maintaining a consistent infrastructure allows for higher levels of automation due to a reduced need for customization of the various components.
    • Overall, the intention is to reduce the total cost of ownership for operators and development costs for vendors
  • Onboarding and certification
    • By defining abstracted infrastructure capabilities, and the metrics by which they are measured, the onboarding and certification process for both NFVI and VNFs can be standardized, reducing development time for the VNF developers and deployment and operational management costs for the operators standing up the NFVI environments.
    • Supply chain, procurement and assurance teams can then use these metrics to more accurately assess the most efficient / best value vendor for a given environment and network services requirement.
  • Better utilization
    • Properly mapping VNFs to flavors to the underlying infrastructure, brings the potential for more efficient utilization, than needing to create specific configurations for each type of application in the infrastructure.

In conclusion, to serve the stated objective building a common NFVI infrastructure that is able to take advantage of true cloud models for the more rapid development and deployment of SDN NFV applications, the Common Telco NFVI is documentation of a reference model, a select set of architectures and a set of validation and testing suites, so that there is a more consistent model infrastructure for developers and vendors of SDN software and applications to build to.

OVP Certification Flow

  1. VNF Vendorssubmit the VNF into OVP Lab for Conformance
  2. As part of OVP lab, already required test cases, test tools, eco-system like MANO and appropriate certified NFVi to be setup. This lab could either OVP 3rd party labor provided by VNF vendors.
  3. Once testing is completed, test results will be submitted to the OVP portal for CVC community review along with additional information such as product name, documentation links, primary company contact information, etc.
  4. LFN CVCcommunity team reviewers will review the results submitted and will approve or reject it based the details provided.
  5. If reviewer rejected it, then step 2 and 3 will be ran again to address the review comments. Otherwise once reviewer approved it, corresponding VNF will be published into OVP VNF Portal with OVP badge.
  6. LFN staff will provide the certificate badge graphics and graphical usage guidelines.
    The OVP portal will reflect LFN's disposition and assignment of the certified VNF badge.

Now VNF is ready and Telco Operators can start consume it.

Discliamer: I have written this introduction based on my involvement in OVP since ONAP casablana version and please help me to improve and leave your comments on comments section. Thank you



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