SDC is the OpenECOMP visual modeling and design tool. It creates internal metadata that describes assets used by all OpenECOMP components, both at design time and run time.
SDC manages four levels of assets:
- Resource: a fundamental capability, implemented either entirely in software, or as software that interacts with a hardware device. Each Resource is a combination of one or more Virtual Function Components (VFCs), along with all the information necessary to instantiate, update, delete, and manage the Resource. A Resource also includes license-related information. There are three kinds of Resource:
- Infrastructure (the Cloud resources, e.g., Compute, Storage)
- Network (network connectivity functions & elements); example: a Virtual Network Function (VNF)
- Application (features and capabilities of a software application); example: a load-balancing function
- Service: a well formed object comprising one or more Resources. Service Designers create Services from Resources, and include all of the information about the Service needed to instantiate, update, delete, and manage the Service
- Product: includes one or more Services packaged with commercialization attributes for customer ordering, billing, and issue resolution. Products are created by Product Managers, and can have one or more "category" attributes assigned by Product Strategists.
- Offer: bundling of Products with specific Marketing configurations for selling to customers
The key output of SDC is a set of models containing descriptions of asset capabilities and instructions to manage them. These models are stored in the SDC Master Reference Catalog for the entire enterprise to use.
There are four major components of SDC:
- The Catalog is the repository for assets at the Resource, Service and Product levels. Assets are added to the Catalog using the Design Studio.
- The Design Studio is used to create, modify, and add Resource, Service, and Product definitions in the Catalog.
- The Certification Studio, available in a future release, is used to test new assets at all levels. It will be used for sandbox experimentation, and will include support for automated testing.
- The Distribution Studio is used to deploy certified assets. From the Distribution studio, new Product assets, including their underlying Resources and Services, are deployed into lab environments for testing purposes, and into production after certification is complete. In a future release, there will be a way to export Product information to external Business Support Systems for customer ordering and billing.
<<TODO: the following paragraph requires expert review; for example, are Heat Templates really Information Artifacts rather than Deployment Artifacts?>>
“The definitions of assets include Information Artifacts and Deployment Artifacts. Information Artifacts can be provided by the vendor when a VNF is on-boarded to SDC. The artifacts describe the characteristics of the asset and the companion supporting documents as to how it works, and how to manage it once it is deployed.
Once VNFs are on-boarded, the information provided by the vendor is translated into SDC internal resource models. The service provider will use SDC to further enrich the resource model to meet provider’s environment, and additionally compose resources into service models and product models. The model includes not only the description of the asset but also references to ECOMP functions needed for lifecycle management of the asset. The tested models will then be distributed to ECOMP execution environment as Deployment Artifacts.
The Deployment Artifacts include the asset definition (a Resource or Service or Product model) with instructions to ECOMP for creation and management of an instance of the asset in the network. SDC is evolving the support of various Deployment Artifacts – including Heat Templates for cloud infrastructure creation, YANG XML files for state data manipulated by the Network Configuration Protocol, TOSCA for specifying cloud infrastructure, vendor provided scripts, or BPMN/BPEL for specifying business processes and the interconnections in a service-oriented architecture.”
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The definitions of assets include Information Artifacts and Deployment Artifacts. Information Artifacts provide all of the information that anyone viewing the Resource/Service/Product would need to understand what the asset does, how it works, how to create an instance of it in the network, and how to support it once it is deployed. Deployment Artifacts provide the information files, instruction files, templates, or executable files needed to create an instance of the asset in the network. Deployment Artifacts can include Heat Templates for cloud infrastructure creation, YANG XML files for state data manipulated by the Network Configuration Protocol, TOSCA for specifying cloud infrastructure, or BPMN/BPEL for specifying business processes and the interconnections in a service-oriented architecture).
The <<DocRef: OpenECOMP User Guide>>, under the section "Design", describes how to use the SDC.
See the <<DocRef: SDC Demo Guide >> for a specific example of how to onboard a Virtual Network Function, using SDC.