:wARC VFC Component Description – El Alt - R5

Owned by Chaker Al-Hakim
Last updated: Apr 05, 2020
3 min read





1 High Level Component Definition and Architectural Relationships 





ONAP VF-C leverages ETSI NFV MANO architecture and information model as a reference, and implements full life cycle management and FCAPS of VNF and NS.

  • support NS and VNF lifecycle management based on ONAP modelling and workflows

  • support integration with multiple VNFMs via drivers, which includes vendors/specific VNFM (S-VNFM) and generic VNFM (G-VNFM)

  • support integration with multiple VNFs via providing an ONAP generic VNFM (G-VNFM)

  • support integration with multiple VIMS via Multi-Cloud, which includes open source and commercial VIMs

  • support microservice architecture and model driven resource orchestration and management

2. VFC-C API definitions

VFC provides the following interfaces:

Interface Name

Interface Definition

 Interface Capabilities

Interface Name

Interface Definition

 Interface Capabilities

VFCE-1

Portal/OSS Interface

An interface to allow for NS Lifecycle Management(ETSI SOL-005)

The NS/VNF package management function will be removed to modeling etsicatalog in Frankfurt release

VFCE-2

Service Orchestrator / Policy Interface

An interface to allow Service Orchestrator and Policy request NS Lifecycle Management ( ETSI SOL-005 )







The current VFC API documents can be found at:

https://onap.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submodules/vfc/nfvo/lcm.git/docs/platform/APIs/index.html (catalog  APIs will be removed from the page)

VFC consumes the following interfaces:

Interface Name

Interface Definition

 Interface Capabilities

Interface Name

Interface Definition

 Interface Capabilities

SDCE-6

SDC Interface

An interface to receive resource Templates from SDC design catalog

AAIE-1

Inventory Service Interface

 An interface to create, update, query, and delete resource information and relationships

MSBE-1

Micro Service Bus Interface

An interface for registration and discovery with the ONAP Micro Service Bus.

etsicatalogAPIE1~4

Modelling Tosca Parser Interfaces and catalog interfaces

An interface for the Tosca Parser from Modelling project to parse the NS and VNF Descriptors.

MCE-6

MultiCloud Interface

An interface for Virtual Network Resource Management and Vim assignment

DCAE-1

DCAE Interface

An interface to share FM/PM data for VNF FCAPS from the VNFs via the EMS Driver to VES Collector

OOFE-1

OOF Interface

An interface to get the VNF placement



3. Component Description:

This shows all VF-C components, where each component is a standalone microservice. These microservices include:

  • Network Service Lifecycle Manager (nslcm ) which is the core component of VF-C NFVO, mainly responsible for network service management.

  • Catalog is used for package management, including NS/VNF/PNF package management.

  • Resource Manager is used for the management of the instances that are created by VF-C and is also responsible for resource granting operations.

  • Specific Virtualised Network Function Manager (S-VNFM) Driver. VF-C currently has three vendor’s Specific VNFM drivera, including Nokia, Huawei, ZTE drivers, where each driver is a microservice.

  • Generic Virtualised Network Function Manager (G-VNFM) Drivers. VF-C can now have two generic VNFM drivers, the gvnfm driver and juju vnfm driver.

  • Workflow is comprised of 2 microservices, the vfc-workflow that provides the workflow management services and the vfc-workflow-engine which is the activiti workflow engine microservice.

  • Multivim-proxy, provide interfaces to forward virtual resource requests to MultiCloud for resource checking ( Vim Assignment ) and Network resource creation.

  • EMS Driver is used for VNF performance and alarm data collection and report to DCAE via the VES collector.

  • GVNFM provides the ONAP Generic Virtualised Network Function Manager capabilities.  GVNFM is composed of three microservices: vfc-vnflcm, vfc-vnfmgr and vfc-vnfres. The core microservice vfc-vnflcm is responsible for VNF life cycle management.

4. known system limitations

Now the component Redundancy and scaling depends on Kubernetes.

5. Used Models

VFC use the following models:

  • TOSCA  - VNF Descriptor/NS Descriptor  ETSI NFV SOL001  v2.4.1 & v2.5.1  

6. System Deployment Architecture

VFC consists of 15 container microservices:

  • vfc-nslcm - Network Service Lifecycle Management microservice

  • vfc-resmgr - The Resource Manager microservice

  • vfc-workflow - The Workflow Manager microservice

  • vfc-workflow-engine - The activiti workflow engine microservice

  • vfc-generic-vnfm-driver - The G-VNFM driver

  • vfc-juju-vnfm-driver - The juju G-VNFM driver

  • vfc-huawei-vnfm-driver - The Huawei S-VNFM driver

  • vfc-zte-vnfm-driver - The ZTE S-VNFM driver

  • vfc-nokia-vnfm-driver/vfc-nokia-v2vnfm-driver - The Nokia S-VNFM driver ( current 2 versions )

  • vfc-multivim-proxy - The microservice for interfacing with MultiCloud project

  • vfc-ems-driver - The Element Management System interfaces

  • vfc-db - The VF-C DB service

  • vfc-vnflcm - The G-VNFM VNF Lifecycle Management microservice

  • vfc-vnfmgr - The G-VNFM VNF Manager microservice

  • vfc-vnfres - The G-VNFM resource management microservice

7. New Release Capabilities

  • To be completed based upon VF-C Dublin release notes

8. References

  1.  VF-C Installation & User Guide: https://docs.onap.org/en/latest/submodules/vfc/nfvo/lcm.git/docs/platform/installation/index.html