Contents

1       Overview.. 1

2       Pain points and Traditional CaaS limitations 1

3       XGVELA Architecture. 3

3.1         Proposed XGVELA Architecture 3

4       Analysis of XGVELA requirements Survey. 4

4.1         Top Challenges in building the Architecture and Release Planning. 4

4.2         Requirements and features required. 4

5       Use cases of Telco PaaS. 5

5.1         5G Private Network. 6

5.2         Edge Services deployment 6

6       Conclusion. 6

7       Annex. 6

1        Overview

Note: Explain the Background of Why and When for XGVELA

During 2020 many operators started deploy 5G using Cloud Infrastructures, the commercial traffic hosted on NFVi also increased primarily due to increased capacity requirements triggered by large capacity requirements and increased automation needed to deliver critical Telecom services during 2020 Covid-19 crisis.

However, with CNF adoption comes new challenges which are not pre-existent in Kubernetes world viz

• The traffic model in 5G services are shifting from B2C to B2X model which requires more agile and flexible deployment scnerios with regard to CNF selection and capacity expansion

• The O&M requirements of CNF need to manage together with VNF using coherent architectures

• Delivery model of Cloud Infrastructure need to shift from IaaS to XaaS

2        Pain points and Traditional CaaS limitations

Note: Explain the current experience with CaaS and its limitations

Based on CNF deployments and early experience gained by Operators in 2020 below are main limitations faced to commercialize 5G and other Telco services

• The Standardization and Specifications: The ETSI specs on containers are a bit lacking compared to containerized platforms due to this reason there seems an air gap to fulfill requirements for Telco services on cloud platforms. It requires a two-prong approach

  • Fasten the ETSI work on container specs specially IFA and SOL specs

  • From Open source code to architecture a middle PaaS layer to cover the gaps between Cloud Layer and Telco Network Function layer

• Cloud Delivery model and platform services: The CNF’s are modular but still thick enough which means advantages of portable and immutable infrastructure is very difficult to achieve. It incldues

  • Traditional IaaS models means the CNF need to include number of duplicated features specially on observability and O&M rather relying on capabilities of platform

  • Traditional NFVI based cloud still has lot of impediments to implement Telco DevOps primarily due to lack of standardization on Operations model, a PaaS model is expected to solve this issue

• SDK and PaaS development features: Flexibility to build applications for different use cases or same applications with differentiated features for different use cases need capabilities on SDK’s which support application developer to build applications and manage them easily

• Testing of new features: Today operators face a unique challenge to manage hybrid networks including both PNF and the VNF’s deployed recently, luckily with frameworks like Kubevirt it is possible today to deploy VM on containerized platform. A need for testing features needed by different applications requires a new approach of both tools and features promised by XGVELA

• Release Managmeent and Day2 enhancements: Flexibility to build applications for different use cases or same applications with differentiated features for different use cases need capabilities on both SDK’s and Testing frameworks which are lacking in containerized cloud platforms today

• Forking of Open Source: Year on Year experience of open source and building the right delivery model for commercial use has shown Telco community some key lessons

  • Silo vendors fork code and use it in closed fashion

  • Hardened bugs never go upstream and become CNCF or Open Infra standard

This paper is XGVELA community effort to identify potential problems and challenges faced by Telco operators today and to list down requirements that will set as a base line for both (a) reference architectures and (b)specifications that will deliver the waves to define and deploy such a futuristic platform that can support application developers to build new and unique features needed by future 5G and Edge applications and at the same time offer a set of capabilities to design, deploy and test them and hence to commercialize CNF applications quickly with both  highly conformance and reliability with most efficient TTM.

It is also noteworthy to say that in recent years there has been a number of studies done under different initiatives however there is not a lot of information readily available around how should CSPs define and build such platforms. Similarly, it is encouraging to build such platforms using as Open-source approach and XGVELA is Linux Foundation answer for this question.

This paper is an attempt to share end user community perspective on this important topic , what are the challenges, key considerations, models & references as well as opportunities when CSPs would want to build such platforms.

XGVELA group was created by LFN (Linux Foundation) to share views, challenges, and best practices between user organizations, highlighting new areas of opportunity for the community.

Being the voice of end users, it is important to support the vision of ONAP and its adoption in the industry and at the same time contribute test cases and requirements that delivers maximum value to the industry as a whole.

3        XGVELA Architecture

3.1        Proposed XGVELA Architecture

Note: Analyze the current status of XGVELA Architecture.

The Current Agreed XGVELA architecture is as follows

Observations

1. There needs to be a clear SLA/KPI between PaaS layer and NF to validate and test CNF

2. The Testing stack should cover both Infra and App layer end to it , such a holistic architecture should support integrate Orchestration and Application with the XGVELA PaaS capabilities

3. All Plugins should comply to a standard Specs such as CRD’s to ensure their introduction do not lead to a lockin

4. Test architecture is missing

4        Analysis of XGVELA requirements Survey

4.1        Top Challenges in building the Architecture and Release Planning

XGVELA end user survey is targeted around following building following capabilities which are mainly required for commercializing 5G CNF’s which most Telco’s are deploying and testing today

1. Fast Development of Applications

2. Support hybrid environment i.e VM and Containers and future Unicorns

3. Telco DevOps

4. Integration of CNF’s in the live environment including BSS and OSS systems

5. Testing of Services

6. Logging

7. O&M requirements specially for Enterprise and vertical segments

4.2        Requirements and features required

Following are the Key requirements of the proposed Architecture

5        Use cases of Telco PaaS

5.1        5G Private Network

[TBD]

5.2        Edge Services deployment

[TBD]

6        Conclusion

7        Annex