Basic Overview of Telco – PNFs, VNFs, CNFs and VMware Telco Cloud Automation

Basic overview of Telco PNFs, VNFs, and CNFs: –

PNFs: –

Olden days, All the Telco Network Functions (ex: – Firewall, Router …etc.) were Hardware Based (PNFs – Physical Network Functions).

PNFs are based on specific Hardware with Specific Software Linked to Hardware vendors. More dependency on Hardware Vendors.

One Hardware dedicated to one role.

Difficulty to manage and difficulty to scale.

VNFs: –

Due to difficulties with the Traditional PNFs infra. VNFs were introduced to reduce the cost and Hardware vendor dependency…. etc.

VNFs – Virtual Network functions.

Virtual Network Functions are software-based over Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS).

You can run multiple network functions on single Hardware.

VNFs are easy to manage, scale and cost-effective compared to PNFs.

CNFs: –

CNF is the most recent technology.

CNFs – Cloud/Container Native Network Functions.

VNFs have been deployed as VM. Each VM will have its own Operating System (OS). Every VM OS will consume some amount of resources based on OS. But In a container-based platform on top of a single OS, we can deploy multiple network functions.

CNFs will utilize resources most effective way compared to VNFs

You can run CNFs on any platform without dependency on an undelaying platform.

CNFs are easy to scale up /scale down based on requirements.

CNFs will provide more Agility, Scalability & resilience compared to VNFs.

VMware Telco Cloud Automation Overview: –

VMware Telco cloud Automation has two components services

1. VMware Telco cloud Automation Manager (TCA-M).
2. VMware Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane (TCA-CP).

TCA-M and TCA-CP work together to provide VMware Telco cloud Automation Service.

Telco Cloud Automation Manager provides Orchestration and management services for telco clouds.

Telco cloud Automation Control Plane provides the infrastructure abstraction for placing workloads.

TCA-CP will support the following VIM Types: –

VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Director, Openstack, Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, VMware Cloud on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and IBM Cloud.

TCA-CP will register with single VIM. Each VIM required a dedicated TCA-CP.

EX: If you’re using two vCenters, Require two TCA-CPs. Each vCenter required a dedicated TCA-CP.

One TCA-M will support 25 TCA-CPs.

Using TCA, you can deploy CaaS infrastructure. And You can deploy and manage the life cycle (Day 0 to Day 2) of VNFs and CNFs.

Ex: – Sample CNF-based VMware Telco Infra Architecture.

Source of the image – VMware

Overview of The Above Architecture Diagram: –

Datacenters – Central, Regional, and Edge/Cell/Aggregation Site Datacenters.

On Central, the Regional datacenter runs Core functions, and Edge/Cell/Aggregation sites run RAN functions.

Central Datacenter: –

One vCenter is deployed on Management Domain, and One vCenter is deployed on Workload Domain. VMware vSAN Configured on Both Domains.

TCA Manager and TCA-CP deployed on Management Domain.

Another TCA-CP was deployed on Workload Domain because each vCenter required a dedicated TCA-CP.

NSX and VRO deployed on Both domains. (NSX is optional; you can also use VDS. VRO is a mandatory tool for running advanced operations like Workflows and Cluster Automation)

VRLI deployed on the Management domain. (Its Log monitoring tool, if you want to monitor VMware infra, VRLI is required)

Using TCA Console, the Tanzu Management cluster was deployed in Management Domain. Two workload clusters were deployed on the workload Domain (For Deploying multiple Tanzu workload clusters, a Tanzu management cluster is required. We can deploy and manage multiple Tanzu workload clusters using a Single Management cluster. On the Tanzu Management Cluster, we don’t deploy any CNFs. We will deploy CNFs on Tanzu Workload Clusters only)

On Workload Cluster1, two node pools are created – Signaling and Media. On the Media Node pool, Two CNFs are deployed, and on the Media Node pool, one CNF is deployed. (Based on your requirements, you can create multiple node pools on workload clusters. Node pool means the group of worker nodes. Ex: – Suppose you want to run two types of CNFs (media and Signaling). One CNF (Media) may require Kernel version 2.1, and another CNF (Signaling) may be required 2.2. You can’t run two CNFs on the same node. So, you can create two node pools on the cluster, one node pool with kernel 2.1 and another one is 2.2. You can deploy one of them on the kernel 2.1 node pool and another one in the 2.2 kernel node pool)

Workload Cluster2 also created multiple node pools on Workload and deployed different Core CNFs.

Regional Datacenter: –

Like the central data center, TCA Manager is not deployed in the Regional datacenter. Only TCA-CP is deployed. Because we can deploy/manage the Reginal Datacenter infra using the Central Datacenter TCA manager.

Edge/Cell/Aggregation sites: –

Only workload cloud clusters will be deployed on Edge/cell/Aggregation sites. Management cluster will be deployed in the Regional datacenter.

Using Central datacenter TCA Manager, you can deploy and manage Regional and Edge/Cell/Aggregation sites.

In 5G, Most of the Network functions are based on CNF.

My VMware Telco Environment: –

Single ESXi – 8.0a.

vCenter – 8.0a.

TCA Manager – 2.1.1.

TCA Control Plane – 2.1.1.

Harbor – 2.6.

AVI – 22.1.2.

VRO – 8.8.

Tanzu OVA template – photon-3-kube-v1.22.9. Based on the TCA version, you need to download Tanzu OVA. Suppose you want to use a different Kubernetes version; you need to download an additional OVA file based on your requirement.

My Deployment Overview: –

Deployed only Mandatory TCA components on Single ESXi, Using TCA designed sample nginx and AVi Ako CNF, onboarded and instantiated on workload cluster. I instantiated CNF by using TCA.

1. ESXi 8.0a Deployed on Physical Server.
2. vCenter 8.0a VM deployed on ESXi Host .and Created Datacenters, Cluster, VDS …etc.
3. VRO deployed because TCA required VRO for running advanced operations like Workflows and Cluster Automation. (In my env, I deployed sample nginx and Avi CNF, both CNFs not having any workflow. In my Deployment not Use VRO But Deployed and integrated with TCA).
4. Harbor – TCA will support – Harbor, Nokia CBAM, and Aws repositories. In repositories, we will store HELM Charts and Container Images.
5. TCA Manager deployed and configured.
6. TCA Control Plane deployed and registered with vCenter. And TCA CP integrated with TCA Manager.

You can follow the below guides to the setup Basic TCA Environment. In general Telco vendor will provide CNF as a CSAR file. We need to onboard the CSAR file. My environment designed my own Nginx (Own docker image) and AKO (AVI LB operator) CNF, onboard and instantiated.

Basic Overview of Telco (PNFs, VNFs, CNFs) and VMware Telco Cloud Automation – https://kdinesh.in/tca/

1. VMware ESXi deployment – https://kdinesh.in/esxi/
2. VMware vCenter Installation guide – https://kdinesh.in/vcenter/
3. VMware vRealize orchestrator (VRO) Installation – https://kdinesh.in/vro/
4. VMware AVi installation – https://kdinesh.in/avi/
5. Harbor Installation – https://kdinesh.in/harbor/
6. VMware Telco Cloud Automation Manager and Control Plane Deployment and Configuration – https://kdinesh.in/vmware-telco/
7. VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) CaaS Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Management Cluster Deployment – https://kdinesh.in/tca-2/
8. VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) Deploying CaaS Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Workload Cluster – https://kdinesh.in/tca-3/
9. VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) Designing Sample CNF (Nginx and AVI ako operator),On-boarding and Instantiate CNF on Tanzu Workload Cluster using TCA – https://kdinesh.in/tca-4/
10. VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) Network Function Service Design, Onboarding, and instantiate – https://kdinesh.in/tca-5/