Design and Deployment of an Open Management and Orchestration Platform for Multi-site NFV Experimentation

Abstract

Management and orchestration of virtual resources and functions, commonly referred to as MANO, are key functionalities of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) environments. This paper describes the design and deployment of the NFV MANO platform of 5TONIC, the open research and innovation laboratory on 5G technologies founded by Telefonica and IMDEA Networks. This NFV MANO platform provides 5TONIC trials and experiments with access to a functional production-like NFV environment, enabling experimentation with novel NFV products and services. As a relevant feature, the platform is capable of incorporating external sites to complement the portfolio of software and hardware resources that can be made available for experimentation activities. The 5TONIC MANO platform has been designed and built using open-source technologies. The research carried out during its design and deployment has resulted in a contribution already made to its upstream projects, regarding the automated configuration of virtualized network functions. Finally, we explored the scalability properties of the 5TONIC MANO platform, and we experimentally validated its functional capacity to orchestrate multi-site experiments.