OpenStack Foundation Report

Accelerating NFV
Delivery with OpenStack
Global Telecoms Align Around Open Source Networking Future

2016
CONTRIBUTORS
Russell Bryant, Senior Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat
Kathy Cacciatore, Consulting Marketing Manager, OpenStack Foundation
Stephen Gordon, Senior Technical Product Manager, Red Hat
Eric Ji, Senior Manager, Partner Marketing and Technology Alliances, Mirantis
Armando Migliaccio, Project Technical Lead (PTL) for OpenStack Neutron; Software Architect, HP Networking
Iben Rodriguez, NFVI Architect, OPNFV Consulting
Alan Sardella, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, OPNFV Project, Linux Foundation
Tapio Tallgren, Lead SW Architect in MBB Architecture, Nokia
Brandon Wick, Integrated Marketing Manager, OPNFV Project, Linux Foundation
Ashlee Young, Distinguished Architect, Huawei Technologies

NFV USER CONTRIBUTORS

Truman Boyes, CTO Office, Head of Networks, Bloomberg LP
Axel Clauberg, Vice President, IP and Optical Architecture, Deutsche Telekom
Toby Ford, OpenStack Board of Directors; AVP, Cloud Technology, Strategy and Planning, AT&T
Takayuki Kamei, NFV / OpenStack /Application Engineer, NTT Communications
Toshikazu Ichikawa, Senior Research Engineer, NTT Software Innovation Center
Jincheol Kim, Professional Research Scientist, Software Engineer and Data Scientist, SK Telecom
Fernando Oliveira, Fellow SDN/NFV/Cloud Architect, Verizon

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
 Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is
now synonymous with OpenStack. When
people say NFV, there is an implication that
they are talking about OpenStack.1

Executive Overview
Expensive. Proprietary. Inflexible. These were some of the pain points business leaders
experienced with traditional networking, and what prompted a consortium of network
operators to develop something new. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) allows
telecom and enterprise network operators to control their networking functionsphysical,
virtual and functional domainsusing commercial off-the-shelf hardware, and open
source software as a single control pane for management and orchestration.

Early on, telecommunications companies and networking vendors recognized the

potential for OpenStack as the platform for NFV, so they began working with vendors and
developers in the OpenStack community to optimize OpenStack software for NFV
use cases.

Both the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and Linux Foundation

collaboration project OPNFV have defined specifications and released reference platforms
for NFV that select OpenStack as the Virtualization Infrastructure Manager. Additionally,
OpenStack is the dominant choice for additional management and orchestration functions.

An independent evaluator2 tested the interoperability between four NFV infrastructure

platforms that use OpenStack and various virtualized network functions. While the
evaluator noted that interoperability is still a work in progress, especially with emerging
NFV technology, the majority of configurations surpassed the evaluators expectations with
a great result.

This paper describes NFV, its business value, and how OpenStack supports NFV. It details
specific projects, use cases, and the experience of major carriers and enterprises including
AT&T, Verizon, NTT Group, SK Telecom, and Bloomberg.

Although NFV is in its infancy, NFV on OpenStack offers an agile, scalable, and rapidly
maturing platform with compelling technical and business benefits for telecommunications
providers and large enterprises.

1 Dimensioning OpenStack Neutron for NFV Systems, Mark Lambe writing for SDx Central, September 2014.
https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/contributed/dimensioning-openstack-neutron-nfv-systems-mark-lam-
be/2014/09/.
2 http://img.lightreading.com/downloads/NIA-Test-Report-Final.pdf?p_redirone=yes&piddl_promo=.
Exploring NFV
What is Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)? takes on the responsibility of handling specific
Simply put, its a new way to define, create, and network functions that run on one or more virtual
manage networks by replacing dedicated network machines (VMs), on bare metal, or in containers,
appliances with software and automation. To on top of the physical networking infrastructure.
put it into context, its a continuation of the IT
mindshift away from physical hardware thats VNFs range from mobile deployments, where
inflexible, proprietary, and expensive. In an NFV mobile gateways (e.g. SGW, PGW, etc.) and
environment, a virtual network function (VNF) related functions (e.g. MME, HLR, PCRF, etc.)3

Figure 1. NFV functional overview

3 A fuller description of these mobile gateways and functions, which are part of the System Architecture Evolution, can be found
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Architecture_Evolution.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 4

 NFV and software-defined networking
(SDN) complement each other, but
solve different problems in different
environments across different domains.
MESSAGE ROUTER CDN SDN emerged to make network devices
programmable and controllable from a
central element. NFV aimed at accelerating
service innovation and provisioning using
standard IT virtualization technologies.
SDN requires new interfaces, control
DPI FIREWALL modules, and applications, while NFV
typically involves moving networking
applications to virtual machines or
containers that run on commodity
hardware. NFV is highly complementary
to SDN, but not dependent on it (or vice-
versa), although the two concepts and
EPC PE ROUTER solutions can be combined and potentially
greater value accrued.

are deployed as VNFs, to deployments with

virtual customer premise equipment (CPE),
SESSION BORDER WAN ACCEPERATION tunneling gateways (e.g. VPN gateways), firewalls
CONTROLLER or application level gateways and filters (e.g. web
and email traffic filters) to test and diagnostic
equipment (e.g. to monitor service level
agreements). 4

For a deeper exploration of NFV through the

original ETSI NFV white paper and a technical
overview of OPNFV, visit https://portal.etsi.org/
CARRIER GRADE NAT TESTER/QOE
NFV/NFV_White_Paper.pdf and https://www.
MONITOR
opnfv.org/software/technical-overview.

The benefits of NFV stem from the fact that it

runs on general purpose servers and switches
in virtual machines or containers and is built
with standard open APIs. NFV relies on open
source development and offers a wide range
BRAS DNS of networking capabilities dynamically and
adaptively. In general, the aim of NFV is to
offer agility, flexibility, and simplicity. The
Figure 2. Example physical network functions for VNF detailed operational and technical benefits
replacement that network operators expect from NFV
implementation include:

4 See https://www.opnfv.org/software/technical-overview.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 5

 Network flexibility via
programmatic provisioning

60%
Taking advantage of the open source
pace of innovationever-emerging
improvements in both the telecom and the
traditional IT space
of telecommunication
Full choice of modular drivers and plug-ins
professionals are
Accessibility via API, enabling faster time to
actively exploring NFV
market for new capabilities
Lower costs by replacing with COTS
hardware, better price/performance
Reduced power consumption
and space utilization
$11.6
Operational efficiency across datacenters
via orchestration: managing thousands of
billion
devices from one console
Visibility: automated monitoring,
troubleshooting and actions across
physical and virtual networks and devices
Boosts performance by optimizing
network device utilization
SLA-driven resource allocation $10.65
billion
(initial and ongoing)
QoS: performance, scalability, footprint,
resilience, integration, manageability
growth in the
Policy-driven redundancy
global NFV
Application level infrastructure support hardware,
On a business level, NFV users gain agility and software and
efficiency alongside CapEx, OpEx, power and services market.
space reductions, and also gain the potential for
additional service revenues.

NFV is a mainstream capability thats being

rapidly adopted by telecom operators. A 2015
Heavy Reading global survey commissioned $0.95
by OPNFV found that nearly 60 percent of billion
telecommunication professionals are actively
exploring NFV.5 Consulting firm IHS Infonetics
forecasts the global NFV hardware, software,
and services market will increase more than
tenfold to $11.6 billion in 2019 from $0.95 2014 2019
billion in 2014.6

5 https://www.opnfv.org/news-faq/press-release/2015/11/opnfv-and-heavy-reading-release-results-survey-evaluate-pro-
ject%E2%80%99s
6 NFV Market to Grow More than 5-Fold Through 2019, Says IHG, July 2015, 2015 IHS Inc. All rights reserved. http://www.
infonetics.com/pr/2015/NFV-Market-Highlights.asp.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 6

 OpenStack plays a key role in OPNFVin the community,
the projects, and the platform. We look forward to continued
collaboration as we move the industry closer to open source NFV.
Jonathan Bryce, Executive Director, OpenStack Foundation, January 2016

OPNFV, built on widespread developer projects will be developed as much as possible

collaboration across many telecommunications within the scope of such projectsOpenStack
providers and enterprises, is well-positioned to for example. The OPNFV community contributes
integrate the work of standards bodies, open developers and code to accelerate the features
source communities and commercial suppliers in OpenStack.
to deliver a functional, standard open source
NFV platform. OPNFV project members, including NFV is incorporated across the board within
AT&T, China Mobile, NTT DOCOMO, Telecom OpenStack. OpenStack NFV feature proposals
Italia, Vodafone, Ericsson, Huawei, Red Hat, and development are integral to all projects
Intel, CenturyLink, KT, Orange, SK Telecom, and and processes:
Sprint initially focused on the NFV infrastructure, Telecom users bring their requirements to
including the virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) the User Committee
and the virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM).
In December 2015, OPNFV expanded its scope to ETSI NFV ISG requests for OpenStack
include MANO in future releases. OPNFV offers features are published to their website
the industry end-to-end integration and bare The OPNFV and OpenStack communities
metal deployment of a modular platform for NFV. are in close contact, and processes are in
In addition to OpenStack, open source projects place to succinctly identify and advocate
OpenDaylight, Open vSwitch and KVM are used in NFV features7
the first release of the reference platform.

OPNFV has an upstream first philosophy which

states that necessary adaptations to the included

7 See https://wiki.opnfv.org/community/openstack for more information.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 7

Why OpenStack for NFV
The OpenStack platform provides the foundation complete with common security, identity services,
for the NFV architecture, which is essentially a APIs, and user interfaces. The open, modular
fit-for-purpose cloud for deploying, orchestrating and interoperable framework of the OpenStack
and managing virtual network functions. project offers telecoms and enterprises the
OpenStack enables multiple datacenter ability to design the NFV system of their choosing,
management from a single pane of glass, without unnecessary components.

Why OpenStack is synonymous with NFV:

Proven architecture for largest public clouds, which are available to masses on COTS hardware
(closest comparable implementation)

Standardized interfaces between NFV elements and infrastructure

Pluggable architecture with documented APIs, UIs, shared services, operations, automation
options for VNFs and other function integration

All popular open source and commercial network plug-ins and drivers

Proven telecom and enterprise implementations: AT&T, China Mobile, SK Telecom, Ericsson,
Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, Bloomberg, and more

Outstanding global community contributing to rapid pace of innovation, working on unique

NFV requirements from users, related communities and standards developing organizations

OpenStack Neutron networking project mature and in production use in most all installations

NFV features in every release since 2013

Network/element deployment automation, rollout efficiency

Resource pools cover all network segments

Broad industry support

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 8

Figure 3: ETSI NFV Specification Model with OPNFV Arno Release Subset (dotted box)

OpenStack is identified as one main component This early open source implementation aims
in the ETSI NFV architectural framework. to accelerate the development of VNFs and
As a reference implementation of the ETSI other NFV components by defining a consistent,
NFV specification, the OPNFV project has functional stack that developers will adopt as a
implemented OpenStack for the Virtualization de facto standard. Arno also provides telecoms
Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components in the and enterprises with a base for integration and
first release, Arno (releases are named for rivers), testing, enabling faster iteration in the future.
on the lower right side of Figure 3.
The next release, Brahmaputra8, slated for
It should be noted that the ETSI NFV diagram February 2016 delivery, is planned as the first
wasnt meant to be a formalized architectureits lab-ready release, incorporating numerous
a model. This is why Figure 4 (Arno) doesnt look enhancements in areas such as installation,
exactly like an implementation of Figure 3 (ETSI installable artifacts, continuous integration,
spec), although it is. improved documentation, and sample test
scenarios. The project is evolving towards lab-
With the release of Arno, OPNFV has taken the readiness for the testing and interoperability
first step toward implementing the vision of of NFV functionality and use cases. In addition
NFV that ETSI first described. The first release to support for more virtual networking
focuses on the VIM and NFVI with five projects. solutions, Brahmaputra plans also include

8 OPNFV Brahmaputra Release Page, https://wiki.opnfv.org/releases/brahmaputra.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 9

support for multi-site data centers, additional The next section will describe the OpenStack
fault management, and upgradeability projects key to NFV, including the why and
and deployment solutions. It will include how. It will also provide recently incorporated
approximately 30 projects, demonstrating examples of NFV features and plans for
effective interworking with several upstream the future.
communities. Brahmaputra will include the
Liberty release of OpenStack; OpenStack remains
the sole VIM platform.

Figure 4: OPNFV Arno Instantiation with Open Source Software

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 10

Telecom Requirements
for NFV with OpenStack
Today, in ETSI NFV and OPNFV, OpenStack is OpenStack has continually addressed carrier-
fundamental to the Virtualized Infrastructure grade performance, scalability, and resiliency
Manager (VIM). The VIM is the part of the requirements. All projects are charged with
Management and Orchestration (MANO) function prioritizing features for scalability, resiliency,
that controls the assignment of virtualized manageability, modularity and interoperability in
compute, storage and network resources from the Mitaka release and beyond.9 The OpenStack
the NFVI to support the VNFs. The primary Technical Committee has begun the conversation
OpenStack projects involved are to further define a consistent scaling framework
based on user expectations. All projects will
OpenStack Compute (code named Nova) implement features with regard to this common
for managing virtual or bare metal servers. framework as well.
A related projectMagnumuses Nova
instances to run application containers.
OpenStack Block Storage (code named Performance
Cinder) for virtual storage, supporting The performance requirement is largely about
practically any storage back end high-performance packet processing: how to get
OpenStack Networking (code named a packet off the network, into a VM, processed
Neutron) providing virtual networking. quickly and back out again on the network.
One of the available techniques is to give VMs
From this point forward, well use the ubiquitous direct physical access to the network via SR-IOV.
code names for each OpenStack project. Newer DPDK-accelerated Open vSwitch for fast packet
projects are only known by their code names. processing and multi-queue vhost-user with
There are too many NFV-enhancing features in accelerated virtual switches are also supported
OpenStack to list. Primary telecom requirements in Neutron.
will be accompanied by a few examples of the A set of related enhancements allows operators
features OpenStack includes today and future to define flavors, and application owners to
plans. Telecom environments and NFV have define image properties, which between them
stringent requirements in the areas of scaling, control things like vCPU topology, vCPU to pCPU
performance, and faster and more deterministic pinning, the placement of applications in relation
responses to failures, as well as IPv6 and many to NUMA nodes and making huge pages available
more specific features. The requirement for to the applications.
deterministic responses refers to predictable
performance, including how to avoid the vagaries In the future we can expect real-time
of the hypervisor and host OS scheduler affecting enablement for Cloud Radio Access
performance-sensitive applications. Networks and further performance tuning

9 Watch key Project Technical Leaders (PTLs) cover planned Mitaka features for their projects in video interviews accessible at
this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKqaoAnDyfgpMle_oc7rRrjvQ80pDA1jF.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 11

of the hypervisor and network (by Nova and As PayPals Anand Palmisani puts it, [PayPal]...
Neutron respectively) as well as the guest used the new and improved Nova Cells service
configuration. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/ for the first time to increase availability and
VirtDriverGuestCPUMemoryPlacement scalability. For the uninitiated, the Nova Cells
lists the key things that can help optimize service adds scaling and geographic distribution
compute performance. capabilities without the complicated database
or MQ clustering of Zones. They also allow
While it would seem natural that Network operators to separate host scheduling from
Functions Virtualization comes under networking, cell scheduling.10
and thus Neutron, in fact, much of the work
involves Nova. Nova manages the life cycle of OpenStack continues to incorporate high
compute instances in an OpenStack environment. availability and resiliency functionality in every
Responsibilities include spawning, scheduling release. Most recently, the Liberty release
and decommissioning of machines on demand. includes these network-specific examples:
Most of Nova is relevant to NFV use cases. For
example, the scheduler is crucial for performance Router high availability (L3 HA / VRRP) when
and resiliency. It must launch new instances layer 2 population (l2pop) is enabled
fast, both initially and especially in reaction to VPNaaS reference drivers with HA routers
fault detection.
Networks used for VRRP traffic for HA
routers may now be configured to use
Scalability, High Availability a specific segmentation type or physical
network tag.
and Resiliency
An OVS agent may be restarted without
Traditionally, telecoms emphasize the need affecting data plane connectivity.
for carrier grade infrastructure, demanding
extremely high reliability for each infrastructure Event alarms trigger an action when an
component. One of the architectural tenets of event is received.
cloud platforms (including OpenStack) is that But these enhancements may not reassure every
both scalability and reliability are achieved via company thats considering NFV on OpenStack.
massive horizontal scale. This is a new approach An independent view of OpenStacks role in NFV
for many telecoms in that it pushes more of the availability, entitled Is Carrier-grade NFV Really
HA requirement up to the application. In cloud Important?11, addresses and debunks common
environments, an individual host cannot in and beliefsthat users must architect HA with
of itself provide five nines of uptime, but an redundant components and VNFs, and enhance
application with many instances across many the platform to maintain state during failures.
hosts in a distributed cloud can. Recognizing that The author, Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corp.,
failures are bound to occur, the NFV conversation concludes that OpenStack does exactly what it
on OpenStack has to focus on resiliency claims to do, but VNF developers need to build
monitoring, fault detection and response. HA into their VNFsjust as other cloud-aware
developers build HA into their apps. Theres
Cells (groups of hosts) management for
a good example of this in Project Clearwater.
geographic scaling is a Nova component. Cells
Clearwater is an open source implementation
enable the deployment of larger OpenStack
of IMS (the IP Multimedia Subsystem) designed
clouds by providing a way to group together
for massively scalable deployment in the
resources to be managed more easily.
cloud. Clearwater combines the economics of
Administrators can partition existing resources
over-the-top style service platforms with the
into cells and the system will know where to
standards compliance expected of telecom-grade
find them.

10 How PayPal Runs the Worlds Largest Private OpenStack Cloud, December 8, 2015, http://blog.appformix.com/how-paypal-
runs-the-worlds-largest-private-openstack-cloud?awesm=awe.sm_eN70t.
11 http://blog.cimicorp.com/?p=2372

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 12

 Recognizing that failures are bound to occur, the
NFV conversation on OpenStack has to focus on
resiliencymonitoring, fault detection and response.

communications network solutions, and its cloud- Rest API for storing and querying metrics
oriented design makes it extremely well suited and historical information. Most monitoring
for deployment in an NFV environment. solutions use special transports and
protocols, such as CollectD or NSCA
Resiliency is implemented in other, multiple ways (Nagios). In Monasca, http is the only
as well. Bloomberg, a large network operator protocol used. This simplifies the overall
and OpenStack NFV user, is moving away from design and also allows for a much richer
synchronizing states to less stateful and more way to describe the data via dimensions.
autonomous functions across many computers,
Multitenant and authenticated
to spread resiliency throughout the environment.
They are deploying many small firewall and load Metrics defined using a set of (key, value)
balancer VNFs as opposed to fewer large ones. pairs called dimensions
This provides better SLAs at a higher level. The Real-time thresholding and alarming (single
trade-off is management of more systems but the and compound alarms) on metrics
approach reduces risk.
Compound alarms
For the OPNFV reference platform, Doctor is the Monitoring agent supporting built-in
fault management and maintenance project. The system and service checks and Nagios
goal of Doctor is to build a fault management checks and statsd.
and maintenance framework for high availability
of network services on top of virtualized
infrastructure. The key feature is immediate Multisite
notification of unavailability of virtualized Telecoms require an NFV infrastructure
resources from VIM, to process recovery of VNFs distributed across multiple geographical
on them. locations. The platform must be able to support
application-level redundancy across different
The Doctor community affects this mission
datacenters, network management across
primarily in OpenStacks Monasca project
multiple sites, and between physical and virtual
reflecting OPNFVs upstream first approach.
infrastructure, multisite image replication, and
Monasca is a high performing, scalable, reliable
global and per-site quota management.
and fault-tolerant Monitoring as a Service
(MONaaS) solution that scales to service provider Multiple connected OpenStack deployments
levels of metrics throughput. Performance, as VIMs and high availability among them are
scalability and high availability have been required for a distributed, multi-geography NFV
designed in from the start. infrastructure. The OPNFV Multisite Virtualized
Infrastructure project focuses on enhancements
Monasca can process hundreds of thousands
to the OpenStack Nova, Cinder, Neutron, Glance
of metrics/second and can offer data retention
(Image Service), Ceilometer (Telemetry), and
periods of greater than a year with no data loss
Keystone (Identity) projects, so that OpenStack as
while still processing interactive queries. Other
the VIM is able to support multi-site NFV clouds.
key features include:
Learn more about the OPNFV Multisite project at
https://wiki.opnfv.org/multisite.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 13

In current data centers, deployment of a service chain is
through static, complex, and rigid configurations since
they are tightly coupled with physical network topology
and physical resources.

Service Function Chaining attachment of these service VMs to Neutron

network ports. In the Liberty release, Neutron
Service Function Chaining (SFC) is a mechanism was extended with the experimental SFC
for overriding the basic destination-based project networking-sfc. Features of networking-
forwarding that is typical of IP networks. A simple sfc are:
example of a service chain would be to force all
traffic from point A to point B to go through a Creation of Service Function Chains
firewall even though the firewall is not literally consisting of an ordered sequence of
between point A and B from a routing table Service Functions. SFs are virtual machines
perspective. A more complex example is an (or potentially physical devices) that
ordered series of functions, each implemented in perform a network function such as
multiple VMs, such that traffic must flow through firewall, content cache, packet inspection,
one VM at each hop in the chain but uses a or any other function that requires
hashing algorithm to distribute different flows processing of packets in a flow from point
across multiple VMs at each hop. A to point B.
Reference implementation
In current data centers, deployment of a service with Open vSwitch
chain is through static, complex, and rigid
configurations since they are tightly coupled Flow classification mechanism (ability to
with physical network topology and physical select and act on traffic)
resources. The introduction of new services Vendor neutral API
into a network usually requires the
reconfiguration of most (if not all) network Modular plugin driver architecture.
elements. The physical chain must be redefined Detailed, subject-to-change documentation is
for NFV with automatic setup according to service available at http://docs.openstack.org/developer/
chain requirements. Scaling-out the network of networking-sfc/.
these service functions to handle added load
or scaling-in to reduce the resource usage is an
integral part of an SFC solution. Addressing the Rest of MANO:
NFVO and VNFM
In OpenStack, there are two steps in creating a
service chain. First, services VMs, such as firewall In December 2015, OPNFV elected to expand
VMs, need to be created and connected to a the scope of projects as needed to facilitate NFV
Neutron network via Neutron ports. After that, deployments.12 For instance, the community will
selected traffic flows need to be steered through now incubate and propose projects on additional
an ordered sequence of these service VM ports. topics, including MANO (the heart and brains of
NFV). In addition to the VIM, covered earlier, NFV
Prior to OpenStacks Liberty release OpenStack MANO includes:
already supported creation of service VMs and

12 See the blog describing the removal of scope constraints at https://www.opnfv.org/news-faq/blog/2015/12/opnfv-board-re-

moves-scope-constraints.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 14

Figure 5: OpenStack Tacker addresses ETSI NFV MANO NFVO and VNFM functions

NFV Orchestrator: Responsible for Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), with Service
onboarding of new network services (NS) Function Chaining. It is based on the ETSI MANO
and virtual network function (VNF) packages; Architectural Framework and provides a fully
NS life-cycle management; global resource functional stack to orchestrate VNFs end-to-
management; validation and authorization end (Figure 5). Tacker provides a VNF Catalog
of network functions virtualization to on-board VNF Descriptors (written using
infrastructure (NFVI) resource requests OASIS TOSCA NFV standards) and provides APIs
VNF Manager: Oversees life-cycle for Life-Cycle Management of VNFs along with
management of VNF instances; coordination capabilities like VNF monitoring, auto-scaling and
and adaptation role for configuration and self-healing. Tacker plans to expand to NFVO
event reporting between NFVI and E/NMS capabilities like Network Service Descriptors
(element or network management system). (NSD) and Forwarding Graph Descriptor (VNFFGD)
support in upcoming cycles. Tacker utilizes
The OpenStack Tacker project addresses the
OpenStack Compute (Nova), Neutron and Heat to
NFVO and VNFM. Tacker is building an Open
execute the VNF life-cycle:
NFV Orchestrator with an integrated general
purpose VNF Manager to deploy and operate

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 15


OpenStack NFV deployments are the wave
of the future.13

Tacker API deploys VNF Congress: Policy-as-a-Service. Provides

from the VNF Catalog governance as a service across any
collection of cloud services in order to
Instantiates one or more VMs described in
monitor, enforce, and audit policy over
TOSCA NFV template
dynamic infrastructure. Wiki: https://wiki.
Tacker facilitates configuration injection into openstack.org/wiki/Congress.
VNFs and provides a loadable framework for
Mistral: Workflow service. Allows
KPI monitoring and healing
description of complex business processes
Terminate VNF will delete all VMs and other (workflows) as a set of tasks and task
resources associated with VNF instance relationships, such that Mistral handles
state management, correct execution
Tacker has many supporters and developers in
order, parallelism, synchronization and high
the OPNFV community and is projected to be an availability. Mistral also provides flexible
option in a future OPNFV release. Although there task scheduling. Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.
are no definitive plans at this time, the Tacker PTL org/wiki/Mistral.
says the OPNFV C-release could integrate nicely
with Tackers OpenStack Mitaka release. There Neutron: an OpenStack project to provide
are several technical Tacker presentation videos networking as a service between interface
from the November 2015 OPNFV Summit. devices (e.g., vNICs) managed by other
Openstack services (e.g., Nova). Neutron
Watch the Tacker presentation and offers flexibility and choice with drivers
demo at https://www.youtube.com/ and plug-ins from numerous leading
watch?v=EfqWArz25Hg. For more information telecom vendors so users do not have
on Tacker, visit https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/ to worry about altering their APIs or
Tacker. modifying code if they decide to switch the
underlying implementation technology.
This paper covers Neutron features for
Other Key OpenStack Projects NFV performance (above). 88 percent
of OpenStack users have implemented
Several additional OpenStack projects Neutron. For more information, please
support NFV implementations. Here are the visit http://docs.openstack.org/developer/
ones to watch. neutron/.
Astara: Provides integrated network Neutron Stadium subprojects: An official
service orchestration (routing, firewall, load set of Neutron subprojects, the Stadium
balancing, VPN) for connecting and securing includes many NFV-related projects and
multitenant OpenStack environments. Wiki: maintains support for most popular drivers
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Astara and plug-ins. See the full list at http://
governance.openstack.org/reference/
Blazar (previously Climate): Reservation-
projects/neutron.html.
as-a-Service, including resource reservation,
reservation update and give me an offer/ Senlin: A clustering service and libraries
best effort reservation, and reservation for the management of groups of
scheduling. Provides solution to homogeneous objects exposed by other
requirements from OPNFV Promise project. OpenStack services. Wiki: https://wiki.
Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Blazar. openstack.org/wiki/Senlin.

13 Brocade Talks Real-World OpenStack NFV Deployments, October 2015 https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/featured/open-

stack-nfv-brocade-demofriday-sign-up/2015/10/.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 16

NFV to OpenStack
Requirements Processes
NFV requirements, similar to others, are Working Group. Requirements are also initiated
introduced in various ways: by user request, by the OpenStack ecosystem, often based on
the ETSI NFV ISG or OPNFV community. The relationships with and Request for Proposals
tables below show these requirements become (RFPs) from telecom clients. These requirements
OpenStack blueprints, which are used to track the generally mirror the requirements from ETSI NFV
implementation of significant features. or OPNFV, as the requesting companies begin
implementing the standard framework.

OpenStack Users and Ecosystem Here are examples of telecom and ecosystem
submitted requirements:
OpenStack users submit requirements via
the OpenStack User Committee or Operators

DESCRIPTION SUBMITTED BY OPENSTACK PROJECT BLUEPRINT STATUS

Support multiple IPv6 Comcast Neutron https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Complete

prefixes and addresses neutron/+spec/multiple-ipv6-prefixes
for IPv6 network

Processor core affinity Verizon Nova https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Pending

for a VM nova/+spec/virt-dedicated-cpus-placement- approval
policy

Resource reservation NTT Nova Reservation https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Blueprint- Passed to

API nova-planned-resource-reservation-api Blazar project
Blazar https://blueprints.launchpad.net/blazar Varies

NUMA topology Red Hat and Nova https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Complete

awareness Intel on behalf nova/+spec/virt-driver-vcpu-topology
of Telefnica

VLAN-aware VMs and Ericsson Neutron and Nova https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Started,

support Neutron trunk neutron/+spec/vlan-aware-vms planned for
ports in Nova Mitaka

Support failure Huawei Monasca https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ New

correlation monasca/+spec/suppot-failure-correlation

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 17

ETSI NFV ISG for public review. The gaps result in OpenStack
blueprints, which initiate and track OpenStack
The ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ISG) feature and project development through
submitted formal requirements14 to OpenStack completion. Here are examples of how ETSI
in 2014, but has since made the process more requirements are integrated into OpenStacks
open, publishing specification drafts and gaps15 open design processes:

ETSI NFV SPEC OPENSTACK

NFV ENTITY DESCRIPTION OPENSTACK BLUEPRINT STATUS
IDENTIFIER PROJECT

MANO Virtual Vi-Vnfm and VDU in PCI Passthrough SR-IOV Nova https://blueprints.launchpad. Complete
Machine VNF Descriptor support net/nova/+spec/sriov-pf-
Descriptor passthrough-neutron-port
VIM & MANO Vi Vnfm and Service NUMA and IO locality Nova https://blueprints.launchpad. Approved
Virtual Machine VNF & Infrastructure net/nova/+spec/sriov-pf-
Descriptor DescriptorSeMa passthrough-neutron-port
Vi-VNFM, Virtualized resource Operations comprising the Blazar Blazars blueprints at https:// Varies
NFVO-Vi management management of resource blueprints.launchpad.net/
reservations blazar

OPNFV Community requirements are assimilated into one or more

OpenStack projects. OpenStack and OPNFV are
The OpenStack community receives NFV broader in scope than one another, yet there is
requirements via collaboration with OPNFV and a large intersection between them. The OPNFV
directly from telecoms involved in the project. requirements and development processes are
OPNFV can serve as an intermediary for telecoms very much like OpenStacks. Many community
that might not be contributing code upstream members work on both projects. Here are
to OpenStack, yet want to share requirements examples of features defined, submitted and
and collaborate in a familiar language. These usually worked on by the OPNFV community:

OPNFV SUBMITTING OPENSTACK STATUS (AS OF

DESCRIPTION OPENSTACK BLUEPRINT
PROJECT PROJECT JAN. 2016)

Doctor Change the state of compute Nova https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Complete

service "down" immediately nova/+spec/mark-host-down
Doctor Multiple blueprints for anomaly Monasca https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Varies
detection and sensor monitoring monasca/
Promise Implement support of volume Blazar https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Approved, under
reservation blazar/+spec/basic-volume-plugin evaluation
Multisite Expose quiesce/unquiesce API Nova https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ In progress for
nova/+spec/expose-quiesce-unquiesce-api Mitaka
Copper Multiple blueprints for event- Congress https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Varies
driven policy engine congress/
ONOS Add a Neutron/ML2 plugin for Neutron https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ Complete
ONOS neutron/+spec/onos-neutron-interaction

14 https://wiki.openstack.org/w/images/c/c7/NFV(14)000154r2_NFV_LS_to_OpenStack.pdf
15 ETSI NFV Drafts, http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/nfv.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 18

Production Ready in 2016
OpenStack for NFV will be production ready current requirements and the company is also
in 2016 based on development blueprints of contributing to OpenNFV, OpenDaylight,
documented telecom, OPNFV and ETSI NFV and ONOS. 16
requirements. Having said that, the worlds
largest communications companies and AT&T is well on its way to implementing a
enterprise network operators are implementing common infrastructure for all VNFs, and the
NFV with OpenStack today because of compelling first VNFs are in production with many soon
benefits. Here are a few examples. Others include to follow. By 2020, AT&T plans to virtualize
China Mobile, Telus Communications, Telecom and control more than 75 percent of its network
Italia, Wells Fargo, and Telefnica. using this new software-defined architecture to
meet the growing demands of data- and video-
hungry users.
AT&T
In the last eight years, data traffic on the AT&T Verizon
network has increased a staggering 100,000
percent, driven primarily by video. Keeping up The amount of Verizons traffic is exploding,
by using more sophisticated, complex routers, generally driven by demand for video and cloud
switches and other vertically scaled gear just services. Contrary to popular belief, the network
isnt feasible for much longerperformance, itself delivers a low ROI because carrier networks
inefficiency and cost are huge issues. are built for peak usage, and as such are over-
provisioned most of the time.
AT&Ts next generation network emulates the
function of complex hardware with software Verizon is taking NFV very seriously, seeing it
that runs on standard off-the-shelf hardware. as a way to build lower-cost network agility and
Powered by SDN and NFV technologies, AT&T can flexibility without support staff for proprietary
add capacity faster and push out upgrades at the network functions. It is building a company-wide
speed of the Internet. common OpenStack platform for running VNFs
(Virtual Network Functions), as well as other
John Donovan, the companys senior executive internal applications. Production is around
vice president of technology and network the corner.
operations, said there are now millions of AT&T
wireless subscribers connected to virtualized Verizon counts on OpenStack because:
network servicesmany will be relying on It offers de facto implementation of a VIM
the AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC), which is (Virtual Infrastructure Manager)
based on OpenStack. AT&Ts internal tools
and the customer-facing applications share A critical mass of vendors are porting and
the same code in the cloud. OpenStack is the developing applications (VNFs) targeted
most important of the SDN projects to AT&Ts at OpenStack

16 Half of AT&Ts networks are controlled by open-source SDN code, Richard Chirgwin writing for The Register, January 2016.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/08/att_expanding_sdn/.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 19

 Integrators have developed the necessary Infrastructure Manager, but also as the MANO
deployment expertise using OpenStack components NFV Orchestrator and VNF Manager
using Heat and early stage projects Tacker and
OpenStack is a common environment that
reduces vendor dependencies Mistral. They also tested commercial MANO
products. The conclusions on MANO are that
OpenStack components are being tuned the commercial solutions are difficult to use
to the needs of carriers, a trend that is completely, and introduced vendor lock-in
essential to Verizons ongoing efforts and flexibility issues. Conversely, OpenStack
Fixes can be pushed upstream so patches advantages are openness, flexibility and
do not have to be retrofitted again and interoperability for VNFs.
again, so Verizon can focus on innovatin.
NTT Group won the OpenStack Superuser
Note that Verizons test lab is built on Kilo, which Award in part due to its in-depth testing of NFV,
is one release behind the current Liberty release. identifying places for improvement, submitting
Verizon acknowledges all the improvements they user stories and blueprints, and contributing
can now take advantage of in the areas of high upstream to fill these gaps (see the table of
availability, SR-IOV and DPDK support, NUMA requirements submitted and resolved by
memory and scheduling, and SSD as cache. OpenStack telecoms in a prior section). These
videos are available for more detail on NTT
Communications NFV PoC and other production
NTT Group implementations of OpenStack:
NTT Communications is the long-distance &
international communications and ICT solution NTTs Journey with OpenStack: https://www.
provider company of Nippon Telephone and youtube.com/watch?v=Cu-MF8k7G_A
Telegraph Corporation (NTT), headquartered NTT Communications: NFV Service
in Japan and the third-largest communications Federation Across Heterogenous Sites:
company in the world by revenue. It desires NFV https://youtu.be/IsqwpsIERys
platforms that can federate NFV services between
NTT Communications: Enhancement of
distributed heterogeneous sites: Carrier network, OpenStack Networking for Carrier Cloud
clouds and user sites. NTT Communications Platform: https://www.youtube.com/
deployed a large proof of concept, built with the watch?v=u1VKXUO0LcE
same architecture and topology as its commercial
ISP backbone and cloud services. Gohan: An Open Source Service
Development Engine for SDN/NFV
NTT Communications plans to launch OpenStack- Orchestration: https://www.youtube.com/
based NFV services with VNFs to their enterprise watch?v=CEkhGUxD2oM
customers, including managed network functions Delivering an End-to-End Automated and
like firewall and load-balancer. Customers can Carrier Class NFV (Network Functions
use the VNF vendors features, for example Virtualization) Use Case: https://www.
rules, since vendor-native APIs will be exposed. youtube.com/watch?v=uwX27wsWPww
Customers will be able to change their own
network topology by attaching and detaching NTT
Communications-managed VNFs. Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom (DT) is embracing
They tested deployment, orchestration,
OpenStack as the optimum platform for NFV.
interoperability to disparate distributed sites,
DT understands the need to avoid specialized
monitoring of commercial VNFs: vFirewall,
hardware made obsolete by new paradigm
vRouter, vDPI, WAN Acceleration/Optimization,
services. NFV allows DT to deploy virtual network
URL filter, and DDoS detection and mitigation.
functions and scale them up and down quickly,
They not only tested OpenStack as the Virtualized
without new investments in hardware.

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 20

Deutsche Telekom is well on its way to NFV in Create more business opportunities with
production. In March 2015, it announced its first an agile, flexible, and programmable
production NFV workload running OpenStack, a infrastructure
cloud VPN service available in Croatia, Slovakia Evolve more diversely, opening the company
and Hungary. Deutsche Telekom supports to various business and technology options.
OpenStack 100 percent, and contributes
requirements and code to help advance NFV
features more rapidly. Bloomberg LP
Telecoms arent the only organizations to
benefit from NFV. The financial services
SK Telecom
industry is proving the relevance of NFV for
SK Telecom, the largest wireless carrier in South large enterprises. Bloomberg has been running
Korea, is moving toward Chief Technology OpenStack in production for more than three
Officer Dr. Alex Jinsung Chois vision of the all-IT years providing self-service and rapid delivery to
telecom infrastructure, which is to operate all more than 3,500 developers. Bloomberg
of the telecom network functions on the cloud is implementing SDN and NFV to allow
core in their software-defined data center. When programmatic networking and to lower costs.
complete, all components in the core networks in
data centers and local network operation centers OpenStack SDN and NFV capabilities allow
will be running as virtualized network functions in every computer to participate in network
OpenStack cloud infrastructure. scaling. Today, Bloomberg has implemented
DNS in software, Firewall-as-a-Service and Load
Currently, SKT is focusing on virtualization of Balancing-as-a-Service, with much more to come.
the traditional Telecom network functions such Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) hardware is one of
as IMS and EPC for elastic scale-out and control many physical appliances that will be replaced
for service traffic explosion. These VNFs will be and virtualized with NFV software. Others include
used for providing customer-specific, dedicated Customer Premise Equipment (CPE), CDNs, WAN
multi-tenant telecom services with orchestrated acceleration, Network Address Translation (NAT),
service chaining. The VNFs will also be used for Tester/Quality of Experience monitors, Provider
enhancing service quality and reliability with Edge (PE) routers (these sit at regional levels, e.g.
elastic VNF resource management and load Japan), and more.
balancing control.
In addition to the benefits others have
SKTs Network R&D Center succeeded in established, Bloomberg has a few unique
deploying parts of the operating IMS services as observations:
vIMS in its commercial operation environment
with OpenStack and is currently operating them More servers running networking functions
successfully. It will also commercialize more require management, but not specialists for
parts of the IMS services to vIMS soon, and put it each specific physical appliance.
into production. Next up is vEPC. The companys Automation further reduces the
Network-IT Convergence R&D Center is operator effort.
establishing the foundational NFV infrastructure
In the financial markets industry, a specific
with OpenStack as an advanced VIM and NFVO
agility advantage is that modern networking
with advanced VNF controls.
allows Bloomberg to make application
SK Telecom expects to realize these benefits from decisions based on in-packet inspection with
NFV using OpenStack: application protocols, such as FIX, a market
data protocol.
Reduce service downtime and cost, and
improve network utilization by using
automation

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 21

How To Get Involved
There are many ways to get involved, based on your needs and interest in contributing.17181920

NEED AUDIENCE APPROACH

Strategic level involvement Users or potential users Join the User Committee list

Articles, interviews and news Anyone Read OpenStack Superuser publication18

Operational insight Operators and admins Join the Operators List

Specific vendor direction Anyone Engage with your vendors for roadmap,
tested and verified offerings

Actual use case details Architects Review videos from the recent OpenStack
summits

Networking, general discussions Anyone Join a nearby OpenStack User Group,

attend meetups, or talk to your local
OpenStack Ambassador19

Contributing to any OpenStack projects Potential contributors and developers How to Contribute wiki20

Technical NFV information OpenStack enthusiasts and developers #openstack-nfv IRC channel on irc.
freenode.net.

Technical OPNFV information OPNFV project members and interested parties OPNFV OpenStack Community wiki21

17 http://superuser.openstack.org/
18 All found at https://www.openstack.org/community/.
19 https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/How_To_Contribute
20 https://wiki.opnfv.org/community/openstack

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 22

Summary
As indicated by major telecommunications based on the ETSI NFV specification, OpenStack
companies, ETSI NFV, OPNFV, and large is at the heart of most offerings. OpenStack
enterprise network providers, OpenStack is the enjoys the support of more than 550 companies,
best fit infrastructure for NFV implementations. many of which are incorporating OpenStack into
With support, requirements and community their NFV solutions. Visit them in the OpenStack
collaboration from all relevant sources, and its Marketplace at https://www.openstack.org/
open source nature, ongoing rapid innovation for marketplace/ or at https://www.openstack.org/
NFV users is guaranteed. foundation/companies/.

There are many ways to directly influence and

contribute to OpenStack. Whether you choose
to implement a solution based on the OPNFV
framework, a vendor solution, or build it in-house

www.openstack.org Accelerating NFV Delivery with OpenStack 23

OpenStack is a registered trademark in the Unites States and in other countries.
IHS is a registered trademark of IHS Inc. 2016 IHS Inc. All rights reserved.
All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

www.openstack.org