Here I will brush up on a Network Function Virtualization implementation(NFV) example, i.e., CloudBand.

CloudBand is the Nokia platform for NFV. CloudBand delivers an integrated NFV environment based on the ETSI/MANO architecture and includes the infrastructure, management and orchestration engine that optimizes, automates and abstracts operational tasks for carrier network services.

A portfolio optimized for ETSI NFV MANO

The CloudBand portfolio – CloudBand Infrastructure Software, CloudBand Application Manager, and CloudBand Network Director has been optimized for NFV management and orchestration (MANO). This reduces complexity and ensures applicability in single and multi-vendor infrastructures. It is available to the customers as a complete MANO solution or as individual products in a multi-vendor deployment.

The below three CloudBand products fall under OSS/BSS, which manages end-to-end customer facing and resource facing services across Physical Network Functions(PNFs) and VNFs(CloudBand).

CloudBand Infrastructure Software (CBIS)

CloudBand Infrastructure Software is OpenStack(Iaas) aligned and provides multi-purpose NFV infrastructure (NFVI) and virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM) support. It virtualizes and manages compute, storage, and network resources. It enables VNFs to run and ensures that they meet strict robustness, performance, and security requirements.

CloudBand Application Manager (CBAM)

CBAM automates VNF lifecycle management and cloud resource management, and its standards based APIs make it easy to work with any vendor’s VNF, Element Management System (EMS), Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) and NFV Orchestrator (NFVO).

CloudBand Network Director (CBND)

CloudBand Network Director is an NFV resource and network service orchestrator. It manages virtual resources across geo-distributed NFV infrastructure nodes. It visualizes and automates the lifecycle of network services in the virtual domain, decomposing them into VNFs and virtual links(VLs).

To get a better understanding of the CloudBand w.r.t the NFV MANO architecture, refer to the below picture;

A fully deployed “business service” comprises of various Physical Network functions interconnected by network service. Further to this, for a business service to run successfully the “network service” need to be implemented which is the point where the CBND is used to manage the network service to decompose it to VNFs and VLs. The VNFs, basically virtualized tasks formerly carried out by proprietary dedicated hardware are instances of several applications running on various VMs. These VNFs are linked together in a process called service chaining.

Here the role of CBAM would be to manage the lifecycle of various VNFs. Finally, the CBIS virtualizes and manages compute, storage, and network resources.

Conclusion

CloudBand is aligned with the ETSI NFV framework.CloudBand’s three products are optimized to fit the NFVI/VIM, VNFM and NFVO roles. The modular design lets customers flexibly decide between deploying only what’s needed to get started (such as the NFVI/VIM), a completely integrated MANO stack (encompassing NFVI, VIM, VNFM, NFVO), or select individual items for multivendor deployments.

Sources :
Workplace Learning