One of the projects Fairbanks is working on at this moment, is implementing Open Source Management and Orchestration (MANO) to the OpenStack platform of one of our customers. Although this customer is a service provider, we see a lot of attention from the (tele)communication service provider (CSP) market building up around MANO. As it allows CSPs to move from traditional, legacy networking services to cloud native network functions and benefit from reduced CAPEX and OPEX, and DevOps agility.

With this blog I would like to share some basic information about Open Source MANO.

The Context of Open Source MANO and NFV Orchestration

Open Source MANO is delivering an open source management and orchestration stack aligned with ETSI NFV Information Models. The MANO layer is responsible for orchestration and complete lifecycle management of hardware resources and virtual network functions (VNFs). Better said, the MANO layer coordinates NFV infrastructure resources and maps them to various Virtual Network Functions or VNFs within a NFV partitioning. Since it is open source, as is OpenStack, MANO can rapidly innovate NFV’s thanks to its community, which constantly feeds it use cases.

NFV can be broadly split into three parts:

1.The NFV Infrastructure and Virtual Infrastructure Management. The first part is the NFV infrastructure (NFVI), which hosts virtual machines and/or containers and connects them together with virtual links (VLs). For the purposes of this white paper, the virtual infrastructure management systems (VIMs) and WAN infrastructure management systems (WIMs) that control the creation of virtual machines (VMs), containers and virtual links, are also included in the infrastructure. In this case, OpenStack is used at the VIM) layer to give a standardized interface for managing, monitoring and assessing all resources within the NFV infrastructure.

2.Virtual Network Functions, Network Services and Network Slices. The second part is composed of the Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) themselves including the interconnected composition of VNFs into Network Services (NSs) and the composition and sharing of NSs to form network slices. The VNFs are interconnected compositions of specific VMs and/or containers which are hosted on the NFVI.

3.Management and Orchestration (MANO). The third part is the management and orchestration system which controls the lifecycle of the VNFs, NSs, and network slices, controls and maintains their configuration, and monitors their in-life health and performance.

So, why Open Source MANO?

In short, it is about the rapid introduction of new automated services. Currently CSPs are undergoing a significant change in their infrastructures, on their journey to becoming digital service providers (DSP). New infrastructures such as MANO, support a new generation of services that underpin many of the developments in 5G, but are also able to support existing services more cost-effectively. This transformation is not primarily about the latest technology at each layer of the infrastructure, but rather brings automation, openness, and agility to the service creation and delivery layer, as well as allowing intelligent insights into customer- and infrastructure behaviour. This transformation will also facilitate new business models and create new opportunities in the evolving value chain of services to end users.

Integration with your current cloud platform

Due to the variety of VIM APIs available and the requirement to be open to future types of technologies, Open Source MANO provides a plugin model for the calls needed for the IaaS services required by Open Source MANO to instantiate and manage a NS/NSI. As of today, ETSI OSM already supports out-of-the-box (i.e. with no need of integration):

• OpenStack based solution;
• VMware VIO 4 and above;
• VMware vCloud Director;
• Amazon Web Services (AWS);
• OpenVIM.

Service integration

Off course you will need an Open Source MANO distribution that is stable, secure, supported, and easy to operate. Fairbanks can support you with the complete setup and support of an Open Source MANO configuration integrated within or without OpenStack. If you have questions about this blog or about further Open Source MANO details, please let me know.