This is page is being used to track the realization of the Hardware Platform Awareness (HPA) functional requirement defined in support of VoLTE, vCPE and 5G use cases. The requirement calls for enablement of hardware platform feature awareness (HPA) inside the ONAP management platform, or means by which knowledge about underlying compute hardware platform capabilities is exposed to VNFs running on top of the platform in order to optimize, accelerate and/or otherwise augment their execution. In ONAP, HPA enablement focuses on discovery, health monitoring and configuration of hardware platform capabilities within the NFV infrastructure, and their consumption by the virtual network functions and network services deployed on top of the infrastructure.
Business Requirements
This functionality is required in support of commercial VNF implementations that are used as part of vCPE, VoLTE and 5G use cases.
Participating Companies
- AT&T, Intel, Cloudify, China Mobile, Orange, ARM
Scope
The scope of this initiative is to enable consumption of hardware platform capabilities for the purpose of VNF performance acceleration and optimization. Other uses of HPA are not in scope.
Provided Functionality
- Modeling of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNFD information model.
- Specification of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNF template (TOSCA).
- Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies at on-boarding time to verify that infrastructure is capable of supporting VNF instantiation and operation.
- Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for optimized homing and resource placement of VNF components during VNF instantiation.
- Use of hardware platform health information in determination of the VNF instance health.
- Use of VNF hardware platform dependencies as constraints for operation and remediation of running VNF instances.
- Discovery of hardware platform capabilities exposed by different VIMs.
- Modeling and persistence of discovered platform capabilities in the AA&I database.
Architecture & Design Considerations
This proposal does not require changes to the ONAP architecture and makes use of the existing ONAP management components. The following diagram identifies the ONAP components affected by this project:
ONAP Project Dependencies
Project | Dependencies |
---|---|
VNFSDK | Specification of VNF hardware platform requirements and dependencies as part of the VNF descriptor. |
SDC | Infrastructure validation during VNF on-boarding, based on ingested VNF hardware dependencies. Propagation of ingested VNF hardware platform dependencies. |
POLICY | Definition of HPA centric constraint policies as they apply to VNF instantiation, VNF resource optimization and VNF instance operation. |
SO | Use of hardware platform requirements as input into the resource homing and optimization process. |
OOF | Use of hardware platform requirements as constraints for VNF component homing and resource placement. |
DCAE | Use of hardware platform telemetry in determination of network service and VNF instance health. |
APP-C | Use of hardware platform requirements as constraints for VNF instance operation and remediation. |
VF-C | Use of hardware platform requirements as constraints for VNF instance operation and remediation. |
AAI | Modeling and persistence of hardware platform capabilities as part of the inventory information. |
Multi-VIM | Dynamic discovery of hardware platform capabilities during VIM on-boafding and operation. |
Alignment with external standards and specifications
This project is dependent on use of the folliowing information and data model specifications:
- ETSI NFV IFA011 v2.3.1 - VNFD Information Model
- ETSI NFV SOL001 - VNFD TOSCA Data Model
- OASIS TOSCA SImple YAML Profile v1.2
- OASIS TOSCA NFV Profile (WD5)
Dependencies on other open source projects
None.