The core slicing feature introduced in the Guilin release included the functionality to instantiate 5G core NFs as part of the slice order scenario. The 5G core dummy Helm charts and the CDS CBA packages created as part of the use case demonstration accepted the S-NSSAI as an input to configure the 5G core NFs.
However, there are several other parameters that would also be required to be configured after the 5GC NFs are instantiated. Typical parameters include –
- PLMN
- List of TACs
- List of DNNs
- Certain QoS parameters
- Any other
By design it is expected that there would be no need to change the core NSSMF code to support configuration of additional parameters in the 5GC NFs. It is expected that CDS CBA package could be designed to resolve the required parameters and then use the resolved values to configure the NFs. Some of the values could be resolved from NSI and NSSI service instances from the AAI.
However for two scenarios as below, the approach still needs to be decided –
- DNN configuration – Since DNN is not part of any slicing data, it needs to be seen how to obtain this value and use it for the slicing scenarios (Same applies for QoS parameters)
- Configuration of UPF IPs in SMF and configuration of SMF IPs in AMF – The CNF instantiations in ONAP currently may not support this. It would be advisable that the 5G core NFs – AMF and SMF use the NRF to discover the poll of NFs that they are supposed to manage
As part of this release we are planning to extend the CDS CBA blueprint to include some additional parameter apart from S-NSSAI to be configured in the NF.