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ONAP Beijing release targets deployment scenarios

With its ONAP Beijing release, the Linux Foundation turns its attention to what makes a system deployment ready to go: usability, stability and security, among others.

Jennifer English
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Published: 12 Jun 2018

Deployability is the name of the game with the Linux Foundation's latest Open Network Automation Platform architecture.

Central to the ONAP Beijing release are seven identified "dimensions of deployability," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager of networking and orchestration at the Linux Foundation. These seven deployability factors comprise usability, security, manageability, stability, scalability, performance and resilience.

By identifying these dimensions, the Linux Foundation expects to better address and answer questions regarding documentation, Kubernetes management, disruptive testing, multisite failures and lifecycle management transactions. The goal is better consistency among ONAP deployments, Joshipura said.

Other than the standardized support for external northbound APIs that face a user's operational and business support systems, the ONAP Beijing release had only a handful of architectural changes from the previous Amsterdam architecture, according to Joshipura. To that end, the ONAP Beijing release features four relevant MEF APIs taken from MEF's Lifecycle Service Orchestration architecture and framework.

An additional architectural tweak pinpointed the ONAP Operations Manager. OOM now works with Kubernetes and can run with any cloud provider, Joshipura said.

Arpit Joshipura, Linux Foundation Arpit Joshipura

"All the projects within ONAP can become Docker containers, and Kubernetes orchestrates all of them," he said. "It helps with management, portability and efficiencies in terms of VMs [virtual machines] needed to run them."

The ONAP Beijing release also introduced Multi-site State Coordination Services, which ONAP dubbed MUSIC. MUSIC coordinates databases and synchronizes policies for ONAP deployments in multiple locations, geographies and countries -- relevant for providers like Vodafone and Orange. The release also provided standard templates and virtual network functions (VNFs) integration and validation, regarding information and data modeling.

Functional enhancements for ONAP Beijing

In addition to architecture adaptions, the ONAP Beijing release made a series of functional enhancements that include change management, hardware platform awareness and autoscaling with manual triggers. For example, the system follows policy to automatically move VNFs or add VMs if a certain location has excess compute capacity. This capability helps scale the VNFs appropriately, Joshipura said.

ONAP expects to make its next release, Casablanca, available at the end of 2018. ONAP Casablanca will continue work on operational and business support systems, in addition to adding more cross-project integration related to microservices architecture, Joshipura said. Further, ONAP Casablanca will introduce a formal VNF certification program and standardize features to support 5G and cross-cloud connectivity.

Linux Foundation reacts to Microsoft's GitHub acquisition

Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub received a cautiously positive response from the Linux Foundation. Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, categorized the move as "pretty good news for the world of open source," highlighting Microsoft's expertise to make GitHub better. He did, however, stress Microsoft's growing need to earn the trust of developers, while also acknowledging the existence of other open source developer platforms, such as GitLab and Stack Overflow.

"As we all evaluate the evolution of open source from the early days to now, I suggest we celebrate this moment," Zemlin said about the purchase. "The multidecade progression toward the adoption and continual use of open source software in developing modern technological products, solutions and services is permanent and irreversible. The majority of the world's economic systems, stock exchanges, the internet, supercomputers and mobile devices run the open source Linux operating system, and its usage and adoption continue to expand."

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