Joel Obstfeld
Distinguished Engineer
Chief Architect’s Office
17 Dec 2013
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What is Network Functional Virtualization
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Components and challenges
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Use Cases
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NfV = Transition of network infrastructure services to run on virtualised compute platforms – typically x86
NfV Initiative
Initiative announced at
“SDN and OpenFlow World Congress”
, Darmstadt, Oct 2012
Industry Specification Group (ISG) group within ETSI
Initiative should be a 2 year effort
Not defining standards -deliver white papers and liaising with standards bodies
First ETSI meeting was held in January’13
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Use of cloud technology to support network functions
Management, Control and Data plane components
Open
Innovation
Software
Defined
Networks
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Not technically related to SDN
But may utilize SDN technology – APIs, Controllers
•
Primarily an SP play today
Some interest from SP-like enterprises
Network
Functions
Virtualisation
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Extract from ”Network Functions Virtualisation – Introductory White Paper
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NF: A Network Function (NF)
is a building block within an operator´s network infrastructure, which has well defined external interfaces and a well defined functional behaviour. In practical terms a Network Function is today often a network node
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VNF: A Virtual Network Function (VNF)
provides exactly the same functional behaviour and interfaces as the equivalent Network Function, but is deployed in a
virtualised
environment
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NFVI: The NFV-Infrastructure (NFVI)
is the totality of all hardware and software components which build up the environment in which VNF are deployed, managed and executed
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NFVO: The NFV-Orchestrator (NFVO)
is a software to operate, manage and automate the distributed NFV Infrastructure. The Orchestrator has control and visibility of all VNF running inside the NFV-Infra
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Enablers
Hypervisor and cloud computing technologies
Improving x86 h/w performance and scaling
Optimised packet processing SDKs and coding techniques, e.g. DPDK, Vector Processing
Network industry standardising on Ethernet
Network automation / orchestration
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Value Proposition
Reduction in CAPEX and OPEX
Faster service provisioning
Service agility
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Applications
Network Components
Network Services
Network Control Elements
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NFV removes the need for ‘Big Iron’ network devices
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Anything a physical network device can do, a VNF can do
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Just remove your physical device and replace with X86 +
VNF
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Management is so much easier!
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Virtualised Network
Functions
Classification
+
Redirection
Function
Policy
Server
Orchestration
CPE
IP edge
Customer
Premise
Distributed DC
(standalone or on-box)
WAN
Overlay tunnel
Centralised DC
Compute
Required components and location of components will vary by use
All use cases result in => Compute + VNFs + DC virtualization + Orchestration
Re-direction use cases => Policy Server + WAN Overlay
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Data Centre
Virtualization
+
Service chaining
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Centralised vs. Distributed… Scale vs Management complexity
Centralized services – can run in centralised data centres – does it scale?
Distributed services – need to be distributed further out in the network – what is the management overhead?
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Control/Management plane vs. Data/User plane services
Control Plane Services – deal with signalling and management
Examples include DNS, OSS, DHCP, Route Reflector
Data Plane Services – forwarding/manipulation of user packets
Examples include DPI, NAT, CGN, BRAS, GiLAN services
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Redirected traffic vs. routed traffic service –> how the traffic gets to the service?
Redirected – a network device identifies a flow(s) and redirects it from its normal path
Routed – the traffic will naturally routed through the service
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VNF Definition : Provides exactly the same functional behaviour and interfaces as the equivalent Network
Function, but is deployed in a virtualised environment
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Service Evaluation criterion:
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•
•
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Packet Performance
Infrastructure versus service
Deviation from ‘standard’ server builds
Economics / practicality of on-boarding service
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Characteristic
Throughput (BW)
Performance (pps)
Power efficiency (Gbps/W)
General Purpose
CPU
Low
Low
Low
Integration
Flexibility
System development cost & time
Low
High
Low
Custom ASIC /
NPU
High (10x)
High (10x)
High
High
Medium
High
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Virtual Machine
Bare Metal
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NFV Group looking for maximum flexibility
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Compute Technology
Hypervisor and ‘Generic’ Virtual Machines preferred – avoid custom device drivers
Bare metal acceptable – needed for performance reasons
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NIC Mapping
Major bottleneck for packet performance therefore focus of research
Pass-through and SR-IOV technologies
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High Capacity Plumbing:
(L0-3 : e.g. IPv4/v6, MPLS, VPNs, ACLs, optical)
High throughput / BW
Many flows needing isolation, significant traffic management needed
Stateless functions
Mostly predictable traffic
Low compute + High BW
è
è
Good fit for NPU
Poor fit for x86/CPU
Interface-specific functions (2-stage forwarding)
Network Services:
(L4+ : e.g. DPI, vFW, CGN, DDOS, BNG, mobility, …)
Variable throughput
Variable # of flows (traffic management)
Stateful functions
No interface-specific functions
Yes (%)
Good fit for x86/CPU
High Compute
+ Low BW
No (%)
Poor fit for x86/CPU
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Portal / APIs
Orchestration Controller
REST
Nova
Elastic Services Control
Glance Quantum
OpenStack
REST
Network control
Various
Virtual Services
Compute
Virtual
Network
Physical
Network
Storage
Flexible options for portal integration i.e.
Custom portal, admin portal
Top-level workflow-based orchestration capabilities i.e. cross-domain
Virtual Service lifecycle management i.e. VM instantiation/termination
More complicated network requirements than possible with Quantum
Provides both virtual machine orchestration and (simple) network orchestration
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Classification
+
Redirection
Function
Policy
Server
Orchestration
Internet
Svc #1
Svc #2
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Overlay
Network
Virtualised services
+ service chaining
Redirector overrides the default packet forwarding to re-directing user traffic to a services infrastructure
Typically lives close to the IP edge of the network, e.g. PE, BNG, P-GW, CMTs
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Under control of customer-aware policy function
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Primarily required for data plane services
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Service Chains
DNS
Service 1
DPI
Video opt
NAT
LB
DNS
DPI
Service 2
NAT
DNS
Simple Service Chains
Redirection function
Default Service
Internet
Complex Services and Service Chains
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How to steer traffic through a one or more service entities composed at SW speed?
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Critical for non-routed data plane services
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Important for control plane services
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Physical service path or carried in packet metadata?
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VLAN1 VLAN2 VLAN3 VLAN4
VLAN6 VLAN7
Switch
6
5
4
Service
Redirection
VLAN5
Internet
VLAN8
Virtual Router
Switch
VXLAN
HDR
3
2
1 vPATH
Original Frame
Internet
Service
Redirection
Virtual Router
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Service ordering determined by n/w structure
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Service Path information
Service ordering by info in user packet
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Virtualized SP and 3 rd party applications / appliances
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Virtualized gateways (PE, P-GW, BNG)
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Virtualized Mobile Services infrastructure
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rd
Orchestration
Internet
CPE
IP edge
Streamer
NGN
DNS
Content
Ingestion
DHCP
Radius
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Centralised DC
SP
infrastructure
applications running on virtualized compute resources
Centralised or distributed
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Examples:
BGP Route-reflectors, Radius servers, Policy servers, DHCP servers, DNS, OSS / BSS, IMS subsystem components..
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Third party applications: Third party CDN and caching capabilities
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Very popular concept, already deployed by many SPs
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Policy
Server
Orchestration
NGN
CPE vBNG
IP edge vBNG vBNG vBNG
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Customer
Premise
Centralised DC
Replacement of real IP Edge device with code executing on virtualized x86 platform
Examples BNG, CMTS, Mobile components…
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Two vBNG examples shown, many potential variations on theme
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Cost vs complexity
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Management scale challenge vs single-point of control
Internet
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S
R
P
Q
I
12
*
L
C
0
Z
X
F
E
Y
#
GGSN/
PGW
VO
A-‐SBC
DPI Firewall
Enterprise
FW
Video Only
IMS User
Android User
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Physical Appliances are complex to design because of mismatched capacities, diverse resiliency strategies, incompatible networking
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Re-configuration (adding capacity or adding an appliance) is also difficult
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No agility because the service chains are “hard-wired” to the APN and there is no programmability; reconfiguration requires manual operations
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Cloud Orchestration and Management
Signal
12
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5
8
0
3
9
6
Z
#
GGSN/
PGW
Web
Proxy
VO
VO
A-‐SBC
NAT
FW
FW
DPI
FW
§
Simple reconfiguration of service chains via SDN and virtualization tools
§
§
è better vertical scaling
è horizontal scaling (adjusting capacity)
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Simplified cost model based on subscriber count + base cost of commodity hardware
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Need better solutions for fault tolerance and high availability based on hypervisor tools!
Cisco Confidential
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Real performance of x86 running a full WAN routing/switching function
Large tables, ACL, QoS, policing
PPS, packet delay, packet loss under x86 and various hypervisors
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Impact and performance of hypervisors for applications
Low latency packet services
CPU QoS – not just packet QOS
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Orchestration techniques for NFV – absolutely key!
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What is the impact of NFV on n/w design?
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What are the real economics of NFV?
Cisco Confidential
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© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Movement of Network functions to the cloud has significant potential
Control, services and data plane components
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NFV is not applicable to all network applications
Service functions
✔
High performance forwarding
✗
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NFV is an architecture rather than simply virtualizing functions
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© 2013 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential
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