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)...
- https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/openstack-epa-feature-breakdown-and-analysis
- https://docs.openstack.org/nova/pike/admin/cpu-topologies.html
- https://networkbuilders.intel.com/network-technologies/enhancedplatformawareness
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 |
|---|---|
| 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. |
Enabled HPA Functionality
| Functionality | MVP | Projects Involved | ONAP Release | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Modeling of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNFD information model and TOSCA data models. | Yes | Modeling Subcommittee | R2 | DROPPED |
| 2 | Specification and validation of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNF package (TOSCA). | Yes | VNFSDK | R2 | DROPPED |
| 3 | Use of hardware platform requirements (VNFD) at on-boarding time to verify that infrastructure is capable of supporting VNF instantiation and operation. | No | SDC | R3 | PLANNED |
| 4 | Translation of VNF hardware platform requirements (VNFD) into OOF homing and placement policies. | Yes | SDC, Policy | R2 | DROPPED |
| 5 | Manual specification of OOF homing and placement policies based on hardware platform requirements (Policy Portal). | Yes | Policy | R2 | DONE |
| 6 | Use of VNF hardware platform requirements as constraints for optimized homing and resource placement of VNF components during VNF instantiation. | Yes | OOF, SO, Policy | R2 | DONE |
| 7 | Use of hardware platform health information in determination of the VNF instance health. | No | AAI, DCAE | R3 | PLANNED |
| 8 | Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for operation and remediation of running VNF instances. | No | VF-C, APP-C | R3 | PLANNED |
| 9 | Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for VNF autoscaling. | No | Scaling FR | R3 | PLANNED |
| 10 | Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for VNF change management. | No | Change Management FR | R3 | PLANNED |
| 11 | Discovery of hardware platform capabilities exposed by different VIMs. | Yes | Multi-Cloud | R2 | DONE |
| 12 | Modeling and persistence of discovered platform capabilities in the AA&I database. | Yes | Multi-Cloud, AAI | R2 | DONE |
| 13 | SRIOV Discovery. | No | Multi-Cloud | R3 | PLANNED |
| 14 | SRIOV Day 0 Configuration. | No | TBD | R3 | PLANNED |
| 15 | VF-C/HPA integration. | No | VF-C | R2/R3 | GREEN |
Discussion Pages
Projects That Enable HPA
| Project | PTL | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | VNFSDK | |
| 2 | SDC | |
| 3 | SO | |
| 4 | AAI (impact) | |
| 5 | Multi-Cloud | |
| 6 | Policy | |
| 7 | OOF |
Projects that document HPA guidelines, use cases, requirements & test cases
Project | PTL | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | VNFRQTS |
`Projects that make use of HPA
Project | PTL | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | APP-C | There is no direct impact on APP-C, given that all instantiation actions are "outsourced" to the SO/OOF. | |
| 2 | VF-C | Changes to VF-C will be required in order to incorporate use of HPA into instantiation and operation. | |
| 3 | DCAE |
Legend:
- N/A
- COMMITTED
- IN PROGRESS
- TBD
R2 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. |