Momentum. It’s an amazing thing. It keeps your network modernization projects moving, it keeps your transformation rocketing forward, and it keeps you rolling down the path to a ubiquitous 5G network.
The opposing forces of inertia and friction, though, are the enemy of momentum. Friction interferes with rapid deployment of the platforms and systems that form the basis of your 5G plans.
Inertia can be even worse: Transformational projects get stuck in the systemic structures of the past, the minutia of change, or the quicksand of complexity. Monolithic stacks, single-system RAN environments, and spotty automation can stop momentum in its tracks.
Cloud-native technology for 5G is intended to overcome friction, inertia, and interference so you can modernize legacy platforms and roll down the path of change with relative ease. Carrier-grade Kubernetes infrastructure coupled with advanced load balancers keep containerized network functions operating at speed and at scale. Automation and orchestration smooth the path to easy management of containers, infrastructure, and networking. And optimization efficiencies add performance boosters to low-latency RAN workloads.
The latest releases of VMware Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition, VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN, and VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Director Edition introduce new capabilities and features to put inertia, friction, and interference in their place: The rear-view mirror.
The following latest releases are now generally available:
- VMware Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition 2.2
- VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN Release 1.5
- VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Director Edition Release 2.2
Here’s a quick summary of their enhancements.
VMware Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition 2.2
Carrier-grade Kubernetes infrastructure: VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer supports external load balancing for network functions running on Kubernetes workload clusters.
IPv6 support for Tanzu Kubernetes clusters running on VMware vSphere now lets you manually deploy VMware Tanzu Kubernetes management and workload clusters in an IPv6 networking environment. For more information, see the documentation for IPv6 Networking on vSphere.
Carrier-grade CNF and VNF automation and orchestration: New CaaS and infrastructure automation enhances Kubernetes upgrades and cluster observability. It also adds infrastructure automation support for vSphere 7.0 Update 2, lets you deploy secondary Multus networks through late binding, and improves integration with VMware Cloud Director.
VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 1.5
When it comes hosting to RAN workloads on a hypervisor, you get the frictionless upside of strong security, centralized management, high availability, and effortless automation, with no risk to performance and no impact on latency.
VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 1.5 taps optimizations implemented on the VMware ESXi hypervisor to meet the performance requirements of low-latency RAN workloads. By using VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3c and the new real-time flavor of Photon OS known as Photon RT, this release delivers optimizations to meet latency requirements for RAN workloads. To find out more about our RAN performance tests and results, see our previous blog post or download our white paper.
This release of VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN also includes the following enhancements for infrastructure automation:
- Tool for patching ESXi-BIOS and applying firmware updates and host profiles: The Host Profiles feature automates BIOS or firmware configuration and the PCI functionality of ESXi hosts to ease operations and speed up the time it takes to launch new cell sites.
- Supports Intel’s Mount Bryce driver so that multiple DUs can use its accelerator as a virtual function (VF) for Forward Error Correction (FEC) offload. Offloading the FEC onto the Mount Bryce driver gives you hardware acceleration and frees up compute resources to handle RAN workloads.
VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure Cloud Director Edition Release 2.2
The new release enhances the telco cloud infrastructure bundle with networking features to support high performance and new networking technologies.
Here are some key enhancements in this release:
- Carrier-grade networking and security: VMware NSX-T now supports NUMA-aware teaming policies. With NUMA-aware teaming policies, NSX can support processing of the traffic on the same NUMA node as the pNICs to speed up deployment by using teaming policies across multiple NUMA nodes.
- This release also includes several security enhancements, such as L7 App IDs, malware detection and prevention, URL filtering, and IDS/IPS.
- Multi-tenancy management and networking are simplified through the management of system backup and restore by introducing a new appliance management UI and API that automates restoration in VMware Cloud Director.
Conclusion
Transformational projects can bog down in the challenges of change, and it’s quite easy to get stuck in the systemic structures of the past. The updated releases discussed in this blog post are intended to help boost your momentum as you propel your organization toward a modernized 5G network. For more information, see telco.vmware.com.
