This section describes how to design, develop, and submit a Virtual Network Function for use as a Network Resource in the OpenECOMP environment.

The primary audiences for this documentation are

VNF providers: creators of VNFs (executables and related configuration files)
Acceptance personnel: thse tasked with certifying VNFs (approving them to run in OpenECOMP environments)
Service Designers: those who combine Virtual Functions (including VNFs) into Services in OpenECOMP
DevOps: those who deploy, operate, and monitor OpenECOMP Services containing VNFs

There are three stages in the life cycle of a VNF, shown here:

Figure 1. VNF complete life cycle stages

Reference Documents for VNF Providers

There are four reference documents for VNF Providers, summarized here.

<<DocRef: VNF Guidelines for Network Cloud and OpenECOMP>>

<<DocRef: VNF Cloud Readiness Requirements for OpenECOMP (formerly: "Common Requirements...">>

design requirements (API versioning, decomposition, reliance on open source database, packet size limitations)
resiliency requirements
security requirements

<<DocRef: VNF Management Requirements for OpenECOMP>>

requirements imposed by the targeted network cloud infrastructure, including the hypervisor
identification requirements for the VNF and its components
configuration management requirements
- a VNF must provide a Device YANG model
- a VNF must implement a NETCONF server; the required NETCONF API's are referenced, and the supplier must demonstrate mounting the NETCONF server on OpenDaylight
monitoring and operations requirements
- format of messages (event records)
- frequency of reporting
- security
licensing requirements

<<DocRef: VNF Heat Template Requirements for OpenECOMP>>

provides recommendations and standards for building Heat templates compatible with OpenECOMP

Example VNFs Included with OpenECOMP

The example VNFs distributed with OpenECOMP are:

The Demos page describes how to design and operate Services using these VNFs.