1.Research Motivation
1.1 What is acceleration?
NFV Acceleration deals with both hardware and software accelerations. It is provided by NFVI to meet some specific performance requirement of VNFs, which can be done by hardware, software or any combination thereof. At present, the core of accelerating technology is to find the appropriate design way of AAL( acceleration abstraction layer).
1.2 Why do we need acceleration in NFV?
We can consider this problem in three aspects:
1) We can consider this problem in three aspects;
2) We concern about the best performance per processor core/cost/watt/square foot, whatever the absolute performance metric is;
3) We want to reach maximum theoretical performance level.
1.3 What is acceleration management?
Because the type of NFV acceleration deployment varies from an integrated deployment to a disaggregated deployment.
In order to accommodate the possibility of a disaggregated deployment, we use acceleration management to ensure higher-level orchestration capabilities,utilization monitoring, and customer SLAs are supported.
1.4 Acceleration use case
1) Compute Acceleration?IFA 001: Page 14-24?
Page | Title | NFV Components | MANO | Accelerator |
14-15 | IPSec tunnels termination VNFC | VNFC,VNFD,VIM,Orchestrator | Nf-Vi -Instantiation and VNFD,VIM | look-aside, in-line, fast path, software |
15-16 | Next Generation Fire Wall (NGFW) Acceleration | NFVI, Software Architecture, Performance and Security | Local or remote API | NFVI Fast Path, In-Line, and Look-Aside Accelerators |
16-19 | Virtual Base Station (VBS) L1 Acceleration | VNF/VNFC,VIM,Compute Nodes,Networking Nodes,HWA Nodes | VBS VNF ,Operating configurations,Orchestrator and VIM ,VNF Manager and or VNF EMS | Two options:1.In-Line;2. Look Aside accelerator |
19-21 | Virtual Acceleration Interface for VNFs | NFVI,MANO,Software Architecture, Performance and Security | Match VNF's accelerator's requirements with NFVI's accelerator capabilities | Crypto -Public key and Symmetric Key, IPsec Protocol Accelerator, etc. |
22-23 | Transcoding | VNF/VNFC,VIM,NFVO,VNFM | Requirements of VNFM and NFVO,VNFD,VIM | Look-aside,In-line,Fast Path or Optimized SW Path |
24 | Deep Packet Inspection | VNF/VNFC,VIM,NFVO,VNFM | Some functions listed in the table | Look-Aside, Fast-Path, etc. |
2) Network Acceleration?IFA 001: Page 24-34?
Page | Title | NFV Components | MANO | Accelerator |
25 | Load Balancing and NAT | Compute Node, including an intelligent NIC with offload capability | Managing the vSwitch through a local API is required. This acceleration is transparent to the VNFs. | NFVI Fast Path, In-Line, and Look-Aside Accelerators |
26-29 | NFVI Virtual Networking Offload | VNF, VIM, Compute Node, Network Node, Storage Node, HWA Node | Items of MANO related aspects | Fast Path; based on OF based packet processor |
30-33 | NFVI Secure Overlay Offload | VNF, VIM, Compute Node, Network Node, Storage Node, HWA Node | Items of MANO related aspects | Fast Path; based on OF based packet processor |
33-34 | Dynamic Optimization of Packet Flow Routing | VNF, VIM, Infrastructure Network including Network Controller | The VIM requests the Network Controller to provide a logical switch dedicated to the VNF | Physical switches, virtual switches and other accelerator devices |
3) Storage Acceleration?IFA 001: Page 35-36?
Page | Title | NFV Components | MANO | Accelerator |
35 | NVMe™ Over Fabric Enabled Acceleration | VNF/VNFC/VNFD ,VIM,Compute Node,Storage Node/Virtual Storage | VNFD,VIM | In-Line Accelerator |
36 | High Performance Persistent Memory on Compute Node | Compute Node ,VNF Manager ,VIM ,Orchestrator | VIM and Orchestrator need to know about available capacity, location and mode of access of persistent memory. VIM has to maintain usage count. | Optimized Store |
1.5 Acceleration Management
In order to accommodate the possibility of a disaggregated deployment, we use acceleration management to ensure higher-level orchestration capabilities,utilization monitoring, and customer SLAs are supported.
2. Problem Statement
2.1 The description and issuance of acceleration requirement
1) Two kinds of technical route:
Technical Route | Pros | Cons | Maturity level |
Specify the model and release requirements for specific hardware/software,such as EPA/HPA ,etc. | Simple, easy to operate | It binds specific hardware/software to form chimneys, and is not conducive to platform generalization and resource pooling in consequence | It has been applied in practice |
Specify acceleration management function as well as performance index requirements, such as items described in IFA004. | Evolve the decoupling ability of appliance and platform independently | It relies on virtualised acceleration technology, and requires a third party or additional mechanisms to establish correlation matching knowledge of requirements description and platform characteristics | It has not been actually applied |
2) A hybrid version of two technical routes is currently included in IFA011
3) Related ONAP module include?VNF Modeling?VNF SDK?SDC?Mcloud
2.2 The discovery and monitoring of resource capability
1) Two kinds of solutions:
Solution Name | Pros | Cons |
Openstack Nova | It is applicable to instruction set expansion, DPDK and other computing nodes' internal hardware and software platform acceleration managementability, there are mature application cases | It is suitable for all types of acceleration capability discovery and state monitoring; It can be combined with Nova or complete the discovery and monitoring of computing nodes' internal hardware and software platform acceleration management ability independently. |
External resource scheduling–OpenstackCyborg | It cannot be applied to external acceleration capability management, and can not be applied to programmable acceleration capability management | Newcomer of OpenStack main version, the features /performance/stability need validation; Supported accelerationchip types are limited and end-to-end application case validation is not implemented. |
2) Related ONAP module include?Mcloud?A&AI?DCAE
2.3 Matching & scheduling of demand and capability
1) Concrete description way
Accurate matching? Optimal matching?
2) Abstract description way
Establishment, maintenance and application of knowledge database
3) Related ONAP module include: OOF?Policy
3. Proposals
3.1 Form an interest group
- Anybody interested in joining the thread? Please contact Lei Huang, email address: 18350830036@163.com
- We can form an interest group under usecase/architecture teamsidentify a target usecaseand develop a joint plan for C+ release.
3.2 Determine service scenarios
3.3 Confirm version plan
3 Comments
Shane Wang
I would like to join your discussion too, please include me, thanks.
Lei Huang
Hi Shane,we have established a wiki page Acceleration Management Interest Group Participants , you can add your name into the table list.
Margaret Chiosi
Now that I see this and saw the HPA project - i am not sure why this isn't just part of that? So we need to create a purpose of this BOF that is different from HPA.