Streamline your Network Operations using GitOps with VMware Telco Cloud Platform

In the rapidly evolving telecommunication landscape, agility, scalability, and reliability are crucial to meet the demands of 5G. As Communication Service Providers (CSPs) move away from traditional vertical stacks to horizontal cloud-native architectures, there is a level of complexity in managing the lifecycle of network infrastructure and network functions. In this dynamic environment, GitOps has been emerging as a transformative paradigm – enabling continuous delivery and operations. 

While Git is a version control system used for tracking changes in configurations and manifests, GitOps, on the other hand, is an operational methodology that uses Git as a single source of truth for declarative lifecycle management of infrastructure, applications, and network functions. GitOps extends the software development practices and standards to service delivery and operations, enabling the platform and application engineers to version, audit, and roll back changes easily. 

Recognizing its technological importance, Broadcom offers GitOps as an integral capability of VMware Telco Cloud Platform to manage the lifecycle of cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and infrastructure customizations. The CSPs would manage the configurations and manifests of the CNFs in Git repositories and GitOps would synchronize that to the target CaaS cluster. The GitOps capability of Telco Cloud Platform is backed by ArgoCD, one of the most-widely used, feature-rich GitOps tools. By adopting this capability, CSPs can transform how they manage the network infrastructure and services, with advantages such as: 

1. Version Control: All the network function configurations and infrastructure customizations (implemented using Dynamic Infrastructure Policies in Telco Cloud Platform) are implemented with versioning in place that can assist the rollbacks, modifications, audits, and collaboration to a greater extent. 
2. Automated and Declarative Lifecycle Management: CSPs can declaratively define the single source of truth for infrastructure customizations and configuration of CNFs in a Git repository and it will automatically be applied to the CaaS cluster. Any modifications to it will also be synchronized. This enforces consistent state of CNFs across multiple environments. 
3. Improved Operational Efficiency and Faster Service Time-to-Market: GitOps accelerates the service deployment by automating the lifecycle management of the CNFs, supporting highly scalable configuration with hundreds of CNFs. The declarative model used by GitOps reduces the risk of human errors when compared to the imperative model. New releases, patches, or network reconfiguration can be implemented faster and with better efficiency, enabling the agility required for 5G use-cases such as URLLC and network slicing. 
4. Enhanced Security and Compliance: With GitOps, immutable, auditable, and traceable workflows are implemented. All changes to the network function configurations in the Git repository are reviewed, approved, and recorded before implementation, enabling CSPs to better meet regulatory requirements and internal compliance standards. 
5. Simplified Consistent Operations: With declarative lifecycle management approach of GitOps, CSPs can simplify the operations by a vast degree compared to imperative lifecycle management approach as it only includes defining the desired end state instead of explicitly implementing the step-by-step procedure. In addition, day 2 operations such as scaling, upgrades, etc. are as simple as modifying a few lines in the configuration file.
6. Self Healing: By definition, the declarative approach of GitOps ensures the desired state of the network functions is adhered to and reverts any manual changes applied directly to the CaaS cluster.

Let’s walk through the process of customizing the infrastructure as per the CNF requirements and deploying the CNF using GitOps capability of Telco Cloud Platform. To do that, we have to compose two artifacts – CNF intent and Dynamic Infrastructure Policy (DIP) intent. DIP intent describes the infrastructure customizations required by the CNF. CNF intent includes the location and details of the CNF to be deployed and a reference to the DIP intent. The multi-source feature of GitOps capability allows CSPs to host the artifacts and intents in separate Git repositories – for eg. CNF & DIP intents in Git repository A, network function artifacts in Git repository B, and values file in Git repository C. The CNF considered for this exercise is Open5GS.

The process of deploying the CNF along with the necessary infrastructure customizations includes: 

1. Compose the DIP intent required for the CNF. A sample DIP intent with real-time linux kernel and a secondary interface for the CaaS cluster nodes:

name: open5gs-dip
kind: dip
version: 1
nodePools:
- np1
config:
   nodeConfiguration:    
       kernel:      
          kernelType:        
             name: linux-rt        
             version: 6.1.62-2.ph5    
       network:      
          devices:        
             - deviceType: vmxnet3          
               networkName: net10          
               resourceName: N3         
               interfaceName: N3       	    
               count: 1  
               isSharedAcrossNuma: false          
               derivedFromCsar: false    
       iommuEnabled: false

2. Compose the CNF intent. A sample CNF intent with the Git repository hosting the helm charts and values files:

name: open5gs
kind: cnf
provider: Open5GS
productName: Open5GS
version: "2.7.5"
releaseDate: 2025-05-19T23:20:50.52Z
manifests:  
  - name: open5gs    
    sourceRepo: tcp-gitops
    sourceRepoRevision: HEAD   
    path: charts/open5gs   
    valuesRepo: tcp-gitops  
    valuesRepoRevision: HEAD    
    valuesFiles:      
        - config/values.yaml
namespace: open5gs
dip:  
    name: open5gs-dip  
    version: 1

3. Clone the Git repository where you intend to host the intent files and CNF manifests.

4. Upload the DIP intent, CNF intent, helm charts and values file to the Git repository.

5. Log into VMware Telco Cloud Automation and click “Register” in the Partner Systems tab under Infrastructure section, furnish all the details and click Next.

6. In the VIM associations window, select the CaaS workload cluster that needs to be associated with the Git repository. Click “Finish”.

7. Click the “Create new” button in the Configuration tab under GitOps section, select the workload cluster, configure GitOps by specifying the repositories to monitor for CNF intent, DIP intent, and CNF manifests, and click Save. This generates the GitOps configuration.

8. Once the GitOps configuration is created, it verifies the DIP intent, CNF intent, and manifest repositories.

9. Since the manifests are already uploaded to the Git repository, the customization of infrastructure is triggered automatically.

10. Once the infrastructure customization is completed successfully, CNF deployment is triggered.

11. Once the CNF is deployed successfully, the status of the CNF changes to “Success”. 

12. You can log into the CaaS workload cluster and verify the Open5GS core services are up.

This exercise clearly highlights the advantages of using the GitOps capability of Telco Cloud Platform to manage the lifecycle of the platform customizations and network functions – simplified operations with improved efficiency, fully automated lifecycle operations, and faster service time-to-market. Of course, there could be prospects to further optimize your network operations and improve the total cost of ownership – as Broadcom explores the potential of extending the Git-based operations to ETSI and Workflow Hub artifact management. Stay tuned for more details!

For more information about the GitOps capability of the Telco Cloud Platform, please visit the documentation here.