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Announcing VMware User Group for Telecoms Services and Operations

Announcing the VMware Telecoms Services and Operations User Group

In November I posted a blog overviewing an invitation-only Telco user forum, held on alongside VMworld Europe. Over 20 representatives from 10 customers began the process of building the first VMware community for Communication Service Providers (CSPs). The community will focus on supporting telecom infrastructure and services projects.

Delegates meet at Telco Customer Forum, November 2019. Barcelona

I’m delighted to announce that the Telcoms Services and Operations VMUG is now live!

Delegates agreed that the new community should meet through a combination of online and face-to-face activities. Coronavirus has had a massive impact on all our lives and face-to-face activity is no longer an option for the foreseeable future. Thankfully, VMUG is a fantastic online community platform.

Our first event will be on April 21^st 2020: An Introduction to VMware Telco Cloud. You can register here or through the VMUG Group page. The webinar will provide the context for follow-on, deeper dives and highlight some key technologies including Orchestration and Assurance.

Get Involved!

If you are part of a team planning or operating virtualised telecom infrastructure including NFV, or the next wave of Enterprise services such as SD-WAN, join the conversation by joining the Telecoms Services and operations VMUG or contacting memberservices@vmug.com for more information.

I would like to thank the teams at Telia, BT, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Swisscom and MTS for their input and support that has led to the creation of this group.

About VMUG: Officially launched in August of 2010, the VMware User Group (VMUG) is an independent, global, customer-led organization, created to maximize members’ use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events.

Telco Bits & Bytes – 19th March 2020

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Our regular roundup of the technology news that matters

Welcome to the first edition of our ‘Telco Bits & Bytes’ news blog. Here we share news and insights from across VMware and the technology industry that caught our attention, so you don’t miss a beat. Let us know in the comments below how we can improve this service and enjoy!

VMware Bits

Industry Bytes

For daily updates, follow us on LinkedIn and our website

Introducing Telco Cloud Automation

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Accelerate network agility with VMware Telco Cloud Automation™

Today we announced VMware Telco Cloud Automation general availability (GA)—VMware’s next-generation telco cloud orchestrator (previously announced under the name, Project Maestro). VMware Telco Cloud Automation transforms the CSP’s telco cloud experience and delivers tremendous value through unified lifecycle management automation, multi-cloud agility and improved MANO interoperability.

Many communications service providers (CSPs) have set their sights set on the cloud in hopes of achieving operational agility, lower costs, and network resiliency while also delivering an exceptional service experience to their customers. However, the cloud is evolving quickly, both in terms of technology and multi-cloud expansion; and this doesn’t necessarily align with the traditional CSP’s carrier-grade technology adoption pattern. It’s a big shift that serves up new challenges in terms of learnings, growing complexity, and interoperability – especially as you bridge physical and virtual ecosystems. In a nutshell, as the cloud and networks evolve with containers, 5G and MEC, the challenge to contain operational costs will become increasingly more difficult. We are today at a crucial moment– and CSPs that build a foundation that enables them to innovate quickly and control their operational costs will have a distinct advantage over their current competitors and OTT players.

The good news is that CSPs can bypass much of the complexity with VMware Telco Cloud Automation, a new orchestrator that accelerates time to market for network functions and services while igniting operational agility through simplified automation—across any network and any cloud.

VMware Telco Cloud Automation

Figure 1: VMware Telco Cloud Automation

An orchestration and automation platform for the telco cloud

VMware started this journey back in 2016, by assessing the market and listening to customer requests. Our findings were twofold. First, CSPs must implement orchestration and automation as soon as possible to improve efficiency and to ensure readiness for future cloud network innovations. Second, most of the MANO solutions on the market today are designed around telco vendors’ vantage points with traditional pros and cons (vendor lock-in, heavy integration costs, etc.). These all share a fundamental flaw: none have fully taken advantage of the cloud’s capabilities over time, nor have they tapped into possibilities associated with the multi-cloud. To this end, we’re applying VMware cloud expertise and designed a new cloud-first approach to MANO, a strategy that abstracts much of the cloud complexities and exposes the new multi-cloud ecosystem through standard telco interfaces (following ETSI standards). At the very heart of this approach is VMware’s ability to build native integrations at each layer and to continuously synchronize the bottom infrastructure stack (VIM/NFVI) with the upper MANO stack (NFVO/VNFM).

This new approach allows the service and application layers to be cloud/multi-cloud aware and to leverage all available data centers as a shared pool of resources. It also enables more savvy policy/placement decisions that avoid rollbacks, a major problem in most of today’s MANO implementations.

Figure 2: Difference between traditional blueprint-first and VMware new cloud-first approach

By applying this cloud-first philosophy combined with a standards-based and a network function vendor-neutral position, VMware Telco Cloud Automation helps CSPs to:

Orchestrate and automate network functions/services with multi-cloud agility from the core to the edge, and from private to public cloud.
Unify the management of network functions of any vendor on VM-based and Container-based infrastructures (ETSI standard-compliant VNF/CNF/PNF).
Streamline the orchestration journey with native VIM integrations and a pluggable architecture following ETSI-MANO standards.
Enable a thriving multi-vendor telco cloud ecosystem with standard interfaces and the certification of partner’s network functions from the NFVI to the NFVO.

Vetted by customers and partners

From day one, we have worked with customers and partners to create a product adapted to their needs. We are thankful to them for all the guidance provided and the time they’ve devoted to proof the product’s capabilities.

As a positive response, VMware is already engaged in Beta trials with several customers. More notably, the platform is being rolled out in various Opcos of a large Tier 1 carrier, supporting its next-generation automation initiative. As part of that project, VMware Telco Cloud Automation manages the orchestration and automation of hundreds of network functions and services for both 4G and 5G networks – plus the implementation of new cloud-native 5G network services.

A fundamental aspect of any MANO solution is its ability to evolve in a multi-vendor ecosystem. As an infrastructure provider for many years, VMware already has a robust group of VNF partners certified on its technology (150+ VNFs certified from all major equipment providers). And, as part of our Telco Cloud Automation efforts, we’ve worked with many of these partners to integrate their VNFs and now CNFs, including Affirmed Networks, Metaswitch, Altiostar, Mavenir, Altran, VeloCloud, and Avi Networks. The Ready for NFV Program, extended for VMware Telco Cloud Automation, will open soon after this announcement. Any partner can submit a certification request today and will be contacted once the certification program becomes available.

A closer look at the core capabilities and features provided with this version:

The core capabilities for VMware Telco Cloud Automation can be grouped into four areas:

Generic VNF Management (G-VNFM) unifies and standardizes network function management across physical (PNF), VM (VNF) and Container-based (CNF) infrastructures.
NFV/Domain Orchestration (NFVO) simplifies the design and management of centralized and distributed multi-vendor network services (chaining PNF/CNF/VNF).
Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Management abstracts cloud complexity, eases VIM registration, synchronizes inventories/resources, and collects faults and performance from infrastructure to network functions.
Policy and Placement engine enables intent-based and multi-cloud workload/policy placements from the network core to edge, and from private to public clouds.

Figure 3: VMware Telco Cloud Automation & multi-VIM integrations

A set of features to simplify and transform network operations

Native VIM/Kubernetes integrations. VMware Telco Cloud Automation integrates natively with VMware vCloud NFV 2.1/3.2.1/3.3 (vCD/OpenStack editions), VMware Cloud (VMC) 1.9, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Cluster API 1.16 (w/ Helm support for resource description).
Multi-cloud, multi-VIM registration. The multi-VIM registration process allows CSP to easily add multiple VIMs to Telco Cloud Automation. Through its local VIM distributed component, it auto-discovers all required VIM/tenant configurations without needing API integration or complex commands to execute.

Figure 4: Multi-cloud – multi-VIM

Figure 5: Simplified VIM registration

Continuous VIM synchronization. Once registered, the VIM automatically synchronizes with Telco Cloud Automation, providing real-time information about its configurations, state, faults/performance (FM/PM) and inventories – from resources (CPU, storage, memory, etc.) to network, deployed VMs and network functions.
Single pane of glass. The orchestrator lets you view all elements of your telco cloud in a centralized location, from network services and network functions to the cloud virtual infrastructure. CSPs can quickly assess the state of all components and their performance, and trigger automatic actions to remediate identified issues.

Figure: 6: Telco Cloud 360° awareness

Access all network functions and services in a single location. The centralized catalogs offer access to all onboarded network functions (PNF/CNF/VNF) including those onboarded using VMware Telco Cloud Automation and others managed through third-party S-VNFM (see southbound integrations). Similarly, all onboarded network services are available in a centralized catalog.
Easily onboard any network function and service. VMware Telco Cloud Automation enables onboarding of SOL001/004-compliant network functions and services. Once onboarded, the network functions and services are added to their respective catalogs for review and instantiation. Note that the VMware Ready for NFV program lets VNF partners certify VNFD and package on VMware vCloud NFV and VMware Telco Cloud Automation.
Design network functions and services through an easy-to-use visual composer. The visual composer provides an end-to-end environment to design new or modify existing ETSI-MANO compliant TOSCA templates. The network function template integrates elements such as VDU/HELM, network, resources, automation interfaces, and other artifacts. Similarly, network services can chain network functions from different vendors and technologies (VNF/CNF/PNF). In parallel to the design, the solution generates a YAML source file as part of the package that can be further edited. Once saved, the ETSI compliant package is automatically onboarded or can be downloaded.

Figure 7: VNF/CNF onboarding and design

Figure 8: TOSCA-template network service visual composer (also available for CNF/VNF design)

Customize automation processes. VMware extends ETSI-MANO standard automation capabilities with custom workflows enabled through interfaces. Telco Cloud Automation integrates natively with VMware vRealize Orchestrator (vRO) to trigger—and simplify—the design of new custom workflows. CSPs can also easily reuse any existing VNF workflows created through vRO.
Intent-based placement. Continuous synchronization between Telco Cloud Automation and the VIM enables effective intent-based placement. Telco Cloud Automation automatically optimizes workload placement on the most suitable cloud, matching the descriptor requirements with the cloud profiles. These cloud profiles include available resources, networks and VIM-specific capabilities (e.g., SR-IOV, DPDK, etc.).
Distribute workload placements. The orchestrator lets CSPs take full advantage of their multi-cloud ecosystem, distributing workloads among multiple clouds. As part of the network service instantiation process, CSPs can assign clouds in similar or different locations, and each network functions part of the service. The right transport network is then assigned to provide connectivity across sites.
Hybrid cloud placements. CSPs can now take advantage of public clouds as an alternate set of resources. Telco Cloud Automation allows for workload placement and mobility across both private and public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google (via VMware VMC).

Figure 9: Multi-cloud and hybrid placement

Automate lifecycle management. The orchestrator offers automation capabilities driven by a policy engine that executes standard closed-loop policies described in VNFD and NSD, plus custom defined workflows. These policies apply to the entire lifecycle management (day 0; day 1; day 2 operations – instantiate, heal, scale, update, etc.) of network functions and services for lean operational processes. They also remove complicated, tedious and repetitive tasks while maximizing overall resource utilization through dynamic scaling and multi-cloud workload mobility.
Auto-action operations. The orchestrator allows actions to be triggered from various decision points including NFVO, G-VNFM and Element Manager.
Tailored governance. Telco Cloud Automation combines multi-tenancy and role-based access control to enable a tailored governance model. The multi-tenancy allows the isolation of network functions and services to specific group(s) (and/or Opcos) while the roles-based access control enables data and operation segregations (e.g., NFVO, VNFM, VNF Designer, Voice VNF Manager, etc.). These governance capabilities apply to both GUI and API interactions.

A product that speaks telco and cloud

VMware Telco Cloud Automation supports core ETSI-MANO guidelines for telco component interoperability and leverages native integration with VIM and Kubernetes for northbound interfaces (e.g., placement, KPI collection, etc.). This architecture provides a streamlined and flexible approach for orchestrating telco standards-compliant workloads on a fast-evolving multi-cloud ecosystem. CSPs can interact with telco standards and allow Telco Cloud Automation to translate the requirements in cloud capabilities.

Telco standardized interfaces facilitate Telco Cloud Automation deployment and interactions within a multi-vendor MANO architecture. Here’s a list of supported interfaces:

VNF descriptor definition and package IFA011/SOL001 and IFA014/SOL004
S-VNFM integration to NFVO through IFA007/SOL003
EMS integration to G-VNFM and NFVO through IFA008/SOL002
Service Orchestrator/Service Assurance/OSS/BSS integrations to NFVO through IFA013/SOL005 and relevant TMF API’s

Figure 10: Southbound interfaces

Northbound VIM interfaces are supported by Telco Cloud Automation through native integrations with VMware vCloud NFV 2.1/3.2.1/3.3 – (vCloud Director and VMware Integrated OpenStack editions), VMware Cloud (VMC) 1.9, and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) – Cluster API 1.16 (w/ Helm support for resource description).

Accelerate the network transformation journey while controlling operational costs

CSPs switching to the network cloud can now do so with great ease thanks to VMware Telco Cloud Automation. Its broad feature set simplifies and expands your capabilities, delivering consistency from infrastructure to network services. The latest addition to VMware’s growing cloud portfolio, VMware Telco Cloud Automation empowers CSPs with a solution that streamlines the orchestration journey, enables a thriving multi-vendor ecosystem and delivers the multi-cloud agility that modern networks require.

Learn more about VMware Telco Cloud Automation, the new telco cloud orchestrator for CSPs brought to you by VMware:

Online
- Telco Cloud Automation – Website
- Telco Cloud Automation – Press Release

Roll Up! See how VMware and Dell Technologies accelerates your 5G journey from Core, to Edge, to Device at MWC 2020

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Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are now on the road to deploying 5G. The journey will be exciting for some and certainly have its twists and turns for others. At VMware, we’re working to smooth the highway ahead for CSPs and accelerating their journey so they can deliver a successful cloud centric 5G network quicker. This will help them improve the customer experience and generate new revenues with innovative applications and services at the Edge. Would you like to see what that trip looks like? We thought so and we’re happy to share this journey with you at a certain large tech event happening soon?

At MWC 2020 in Barcelona, we’ll be mapping the way with a variety of demonstrations at the Dell Technologies and VMware stand 3M11 in Hall 3. Enjoy an all-encompassing experience complete with augmented and simulated reality demos, showcasing our 5G telco cloud solutions and the latest in modern networking solutions for you to test drive.

No matter where you sit in your organization, we can put you in the driving seat with a demo applicable to your business. Telco Cloud. Private Cloud. Multi-Cloud. Edge. SD-WAN. Enterprise Services. Consumer Services. End User Computing. We’ve got something for everyone!

We will show you how CSPs are deploying next-gen 5G networks using our solutions all the way from the Core, to the Edge, to the Device. With our team of subject matter experts on hand to navigate you through the latest developments from VMware and Dell, here’s some of what you can see…

Starting at the Core

In addition to the full range of our Telco Cloud Products and Solutions on show, we’re excited to show you our 5G Network Operations Center (NOC). Come and see how you can manage and orchestrate 5G services and view how your existing network topology can be monitored and analyzed all the way from the network to the subscriber, all using VMware’s Telco Cloud solutions.

Accelerating to the Edge

Along with our partners and the latest in Dell Edge infrastructure hardware, we’ll also show you the latest and greatest in 5G Edge Services for Consumers and Enterprises. Edge Services unleash low latency and high bandwidth capabilities, and we’ve got some great examples of how these will be practically deployed on VMware’s Telco Cloud platform and managed at the application layer.

For consumers, we will be showing off augmented reality based real-time services developed with our partners MobiledgeX, Vuzix and Zoi. Using AR glasses, we’ll be translating and transcribing conversations in real-time at the Edge.

For enterprise services, we’ll be demonstrating how you can interact and collaborate in virtual reality at the Edge. Again, with our partners MobiledgeX and a leader in simulated reality, Dimenco, we’ll use interactive 3D screens and ultra-haptics to show off some low-latency, real-time collaboration.

The VeloCloud, now a part of VMware, team will also be in attendance to show how you can power up your performance across any application, any cloud and any device. Using their market leading SD-WAN solutions and the latest 510LTE device, watch demos of network slicing, UCaaS and maintaining uptime and connectivity in brownout and blackout scenarios.

Finishing on the Device

Finally, we’ll be showing off the many advantages of using Workspace One, a single platform that creates a digital workspace that will excite and energize employees, increase IT and employee productivity with rapid deployment and enrollment of applications, administration and remote management of any device (including wearables), coupled with the speed of 5G.

So, make space in your Barcelona road trip to come and learn how your 5G journey can proceed smoothly and speedily from Core, to Edge, to Device at the Dell Technologies and VMware stand in Hall 3. Remember, there are other ways to meet with us at this year’s event and you can learn more about presence at MWC 2020 here.

We look forward to meeting you in Barcelona!

Why bet your future on unproven cloud solutions? Let’s meet at MWC 2020!

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VMware takes a cloud-centric approach to the network, and unlike traditional vendors, virtualization and cloud are at our core. Learn how we can help you take full advantage of your 5G strategy and focus on new business opportunities. Meet us at Mobile World Congress 2020, Hall 3 Stand M11.

At MWC 2020 thousands of us will be discussing ‘Limitless Intelligent Connectivity’.

According to GSMA’s website “5G promised endless possibilities. An era of Intelligent Connectivity – the convergence of AI, Big Data, and IoT – powered by 5G. A new digitally driven industrial revolution. As new 5G rolls out, so possibilities become reality. And by connecting everyone to everything, across every industry these opportunities are without limits.” But who can truly help you take advantage of these limitless opportunities?

VMware – the trusted advisor to Service Providers and Enterprises globally for more than 20 years

VMware’s solutions already keep pace with the hype, spanning telco, private and public clouds all the way to the edge. It’s how we enabled one customer to deploy close to 1000 VNFs across 50 locations in 15+ countries. We give telco’s and enterprises of all sizes the choice, efficiency, and agility to deliver any app, on any cloud, to any device to create the workplace of the future.

Join us at the Dell Technologies and VMware stand in Hall 3 to see the latest in 5G and Edge based services for consumers and enterprises, powered by our 5G-ready NFV platform.

What will you see and do at the VMware booth?

At our stand you will learn about how our common platform for Telco, Edge, Private and Hybrid Clouds provide the agility, scalability, and cost savings needed to take part in the cloud economy.

You can also meet with our executives and subject matter experts who will guide you through our solutions including Telco Cloud, Enterprise Services and Consumer Services.

Finally, join us throughout the day at our ‘Café of the Future’ for a rejuvenating coffee or a beer at the end of each day.

Still don’t believe us? Attend the VMware & Mercy Ships keynote to learn how you can take part in the cloud economy.

VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger and Rosa Whitaker, President, Mercy Ships, will present one of the main stage keynote presentations on Wednesday, 26^th February. They will discuss the practical realities of the new generation that 5G is enabling right now and how our technology will be the rising tide that lifts all ships – literally in this case – through the lens of its potential effect on Mercy Ships.

Need a break from the whirlwind of MWC?

Customers and Partners are invited to the Dell Technologies, Intel and VMware reception being held on Tuesday, February 25^th. Don’t miss this opportunity to travel in time with us back to the early days of Dell. Register for this exclusive event here.

Come and learn more at MWC 2020 about new 5G reality VMware is already delivering.

We look forward to meeting you and you can learn more about our presence at MWC 2020 here.

Link

VMware Integrated OpenStack 6.0: What’s New

VMware recently announced VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) 6.0. We are truly excited about our latest OpenStack distribution as this release enables customers to take advantage of advancements in the upstream Stein release including support for Cinder generic volume groups, improved admin panels, and security improvements throughout the stack.

For our Telco customers, VIO 6.0 delivers scale and availability for hybrid applications across VM and container-based workloads using a single VIM (Virtual Infrastructure Manager). VIO 6.0 is built with a Kubernetes-managed high availability control plane built on top of VMware SDDC, providing resilience in addition to availability. Upgrades from VIO 5.1 to VIO 6.0 is seamless with zero data plane downtime. We are super excited to bring these features in VIO 6.0!

VIO 6.0 Feature Details:

Advanced Kubernetes Support:

Kubernetes-powered OpenStack control plane: VIO 6.0 is now intent based running on top of a dedicated Kubernetes cluster. The intent-based design allows the VIO control plane to self-heal from failures. Since OpenStack services are now deployed as pods in Kubernetes, the new intent-based control plane also allows VIO components to be horizontally scaled up or down seamlessly and independently of one another. The new control plane architecture achieves a lower out-of-the-box footprint while allowing cloud admins to easily expand capacity.

Tenant-facing Kubernetes: In addition to providing a Kubernetes managed control plane, VIO provides tenant facing clusters powered by Essential PKS. A reference implementation using Heat is available for download from github. The Heat stack is intended to accelerate Essential PKS on VIO. The Heat stacks are open source software and provide support for either native integration with NSX-T using NCP (NSX Container Plugin) or Calico (v3.7) networking.

Feature Enhancements:

Cinder:

New multi-attach feature allows a volume to be attached to multiple instances at once
vSphere First Class Disk (FCD) support:
- FCD does away with the need for shadow VM’s to house unattached Cinder volumes
- Faster than VMDK driver for most operations
- Compliments the existing VMDK driver: FCD can be enabled as an optional secondary backend
- Users can create traditional VMDK or FCD volumes using volume types

IPv4 / IPv6 and Dual Stack Support:

Dual stack IPv4/IPv6 for Nova instances, Neutron security groups & routers
Support IPv6 with NSX-T 2.5 and NSX-P Neutron plugin
IPv6 addressing modes: static, SLAAC
Static IPv6 routing on Neutron routers
IPv6 support for FWaaS

Keystone:

Federation support using JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

OpenStack at Scale:

VIO 6.0 features seamlessly scaling OpenStack services to meet changes in demand and load. VIO 6 supports horizontally scaling the controllers as well as the pods that are run in those controllers. An out of the box compact deployment uses only one controller and an out of the box HA deployment uses three controllers, but users can scale up to a maximum of 10 controllers with a few clicks or CLI commands. This provides increased flexibility for cloud admins to right-size their deployments according to their needs. The ability to scale controller nodes provides for simple expansion of capacity for higher-load environments. VIO 6.0 supports scale out of individual OpenStack services by increasing pod replica counts. OpenStack services can be scaled out with just few clicks from the UI or a command from CLI without affecting other services or causing data plane downtime.

Essential PKS on OpenStack:

Provides a hybrid VM and container platform that combines best of breed components.
OpenStack and Kubernetes APIs for workloads, cluster and resource lifecycle management
Ability to deploy Essential PKS with OpenStack Heat for a native OpenStack experience and repeatable cluster creation
OpenStack multi-tenancy for more secure separation of container workloads
VMware Certified Kubernetes distribution, support and reference architecture with Essential PKS

Enhanced Management Tools:

viocli rewritten in Golang, new enhancements added
Bash completion and CLI shortcuts added to Life Cycle Manager
HTML5 WebUI:
- No dependency on vCenter Web Plugin
- Native Clarity theme provides a congruent user experience for VMware admins

Photon 3:

VIO control plane VM’s now use VMware Photon OS 3, a lightweight, secure, container-optimized Linux distribution backed by VMware
Containers are also built on Photon OS 3 base images

Industry-standard API’s:

Proprietary OMS API’s replaced with standard Kubernetes API’s and extensions
Many parts of VIO can optionally be managed with kubectl commands in addition to viocli
Cluster API responsible for additional VM bringup/management

Automated VIO Backups: Cloud administrators can schedule backups of the VIO control plane to a vSphere Content Library

Lifecycle Management: VIO provides lifecycle management for OpenStack components including deployment, patching, upgrade (with NO data plane downtime) and rich day-2 operations via Kubernetes deployment rollouts.

Versioning: VIO 6.0 comes with built-in versioning of configuration and config version control for control plane configuration changes.

Clarity Theme: VIO 6.0 Horizon now ships with a Clarity theme. The VIO 6.0 life cycle manager web interface also uses Clarity to familiar look and feel for vSphere administrators.

OpenStack Helm: VIO 6.0 uses OpenStack-Helm for deploying OpenStack components. OpenStack-Helm is an OpenStack community project that provides deployment tooling for OpenStack based on the Helm package manager, which is a CNCF project.

OpenStack-Helm provides benefits such as:

Better management of loosely coupled OpenStack services
Better service dependencies handling
Declarative and easy to operate
Enhanced rolling update workflow and rollback

Monitoring:

Assurance & Intelligent Operations:
Service impact and root-cause analysis with Smart Assurance
Operational Monitoring and Intelligence with vROps OpenStack Dashboards and Container monitoring
vRealize Log Insight integration to get insight into the OpenStack day to day operations.
Visibility across physical and virtual OpenStack networks
Automated approach to operational intelligence to reduce service impact and OpEx

VIO 6.0 Demos:
Below are a list of videos that provides a step by step walkthrough of deployment, upgrade, 360 degree visibility and Deployment of VMware Essential PKS on top of VIO 6.0.

1. VMware Integrated OpenStack Deployment: This demo video shows the step by step deployment of Virtual Appliance on your vCenter Server instance and deployment of OpenStack by using the Integrated OpenStack.

2. VMware Integrated OpenStack Upgrade 5.1 to 6.0: Upgrading VIO 5.1 deployment to VIO 6.0 allows you to take advantage of new features and functions, plus it also ensures you zero downtime.

3. VMware Essential PKS on top of VMware Integrated OpenStack 6.0: VIO provides pre-built open-source Heat stacks to help deploy Essential PKS on top of VIO for individual tenants of the cloud. Using the Heat orchestration engine simplifies and speeds up the deployment of Kubernetes as well as managing the lifecycle of Kubernetes (e.g. scaling out, tearing down clusters, etc), and does so using an orchestrator that OpenStack users will already be familiar with. This demo video shows step by step process to deploy Essential PKS on top of VIO.

4. 360 Degree Visibility: This demo video shows the integration of VIO 6.0 with vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Log Insight. vRealize Operations provides a comprehensive dashboard for monitoring the Health, Risk, and Efficiency of your entire SDDC infrastructure. vRealize Operations OpenStack Management Pack offers OpenStack the ability to monitor and troubleshoot VMware Integrated OpenStack or other OpenStack distributions. vRealize Log Insight extends analytics capabilities to unstructured data and log management, giving you operational intelligence and deep enterprise-wide visibility across all tiers of your IT infrastructure and applications.

VMware Customers back formation of a VMware User Group (VMUG) for Telco Cloud

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At a special invitation-only user forum held on November 5th alongside VMworld Europe 2019, over 20 representatives from 10 Communication Service Provider (CSP) customers began the process of building the first VMware User Group (VMUG) community specifically focused on supporting telecom infrastructure projects for NFV and Telco Cloud.

VMUG, an independent and customer-led organisation, helps customers connect, collaborate, and network with fellow VMware users through a combination of ‘UserCons’ (delivered around the world), virtual events and webcasts. By launching a community within VMUG specifically focussed on the Telcom Infrastructure use-case, VMware aims to create a self-serve collaborative environment for CSPs to advance their ambitions to become cloud-first service providers.

The Event

The half-day event, held at the Renaissance Fira Hotel, was opened by Honore’ LaBourdette, VP GTM Telco Edge Cloud (TEC), who set the scene and the objectives for the day, which included actionable outcomes to take the community forward. Immediately following, Gabriele Di Piazza, VP Solutions TEC provided a deeper dive into the ‘telco’ announcements made during Pat Gelsinger’s general session at VMworld Europe earlier in the day; including the technology preview of Project Maestro. Project Maestro is a telco cloud orchestration solution that will accelerate the time-to-market of modern network functions and services while igniting operational agility through simplified automation, across any network and any cloud. You can read more in Gabriele’s blog.

“One of the highlights for me at VMworld Europe was the Telco and Edge Cloud User Forum. It was great seeing CSP industry peers discussing the disruptive changes they are facing and how they are embracing the changes. Events like this forum allow CSPs to deliver what the customer is asking for today and what they will be asking for in the future.” Brad Tompkins. VMUG Executive Director.

Discussions then centred on the status of existing NFV deployments, which serve as a the foundation for Telco Clouds and how, as a community, we could generate greater success for our members. Experience in the room ranged from well-established multi-country, multi-vendor Telco Clouds to early phase NFV deployments. Key topics included operational transformation, automation and orchestration. There was also discussion on deployment strategies and the need to better specify requirements to VNF vendors to ensure operational success.

Going forward

It was agreed that the new community should meet through a combination of online and face-to-face activities and on a quarterly basis. Meeting agendas and topics will be driven by the community and supported by VMware. As a next step, a number of customers volunteered to act as advisors to shape the formalised VMUG group and the focus of the next event.

Get Involved!

If you are a VMware telecom infrastructure customer deploying NFV and Telco Cloud, and would like to be kept informed on the progress of this new user group, please contact memberservices@vmug.com.

Accelerate the move to 5G and Edge on VMware Integrated OpenStack

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Last week at VMworld, we announced in a press release the launch of VMware Integrated OpenStack v6.0. In this PR, we highlighted the expansion of VMware’s Telco and Edge Cloud portfolio to drive real-time intelligence for telco networks, as well as improved automation and security for Telco, Edge and IoT applications. A key element of our telco portfolio includes the availability of VMware Integrated OpenStack and how VMware continues to invest in OpenStack-managed virtualized telco clouds enabling Communications Service Providers to deploy networks and services across multiple clouds (Private, Telco, Edge and Public) and have consistent operations and management across clouds.

Today, we are excited to announce that VIO 6.0 is now officially available for our Communications Service Provider and Enterprise customers to download and install. We have added several new capabilities in the latest release, giving CSPs the fastest path to deploy services on OpenStack.

VIO based on Stein

VMware continues its leadership in being one of the first commercial OpenStack distributions to support Stein and is fully tested and validated with OpenStack 2018.11. With the latest Stein release, VMware continues to deliver core functionality with strengthened support of container and networking capabilities to support key CSP use cases including NFV, Edge and supporting the network evolution to 5G.

Cloud Native brings greater efficiency and higher resiliency for 5G networks

5G networks are being with the premise that it will be cloud native. A cloud native architecture accelerates CSPs time to deploy and scale services as well as provide greater resiliency and flexibility in the network with the ability to rapidly instantiate new services and applications based on real-time customer demand.

The latest release of VMware Integrated OpenStack 6.0 includes support for VMware Essential PKS, which provides CSPs access to the latest release of upstream Kubernetes, supported by VMware, giving CSPs a flexible secure cloud platform that will allow them to build, run, and manage next generation container based applications and services on any cloud.

As CSPs evolve their network architectures from 4G to 5G, maintaining a hybrid network with both VM and Container-based workloads will be required. With VIO 6.0, CSPs will be able to deploy and manage both environments using a common platform.

As part of VMware Essential PKS, CSPs have access to the VMware’s Kubernetes architect team who can guide CSPs through every step of their cloud native journey and ensure they build a platform that supports network operations at massive scale.

Virtual Cloud Networking Scale and Performance with VIO support of NSX-T Data Center

As CSPs make the transformation from 4G to 5G networks to support the massive number of mobile and IoT devices, they require an NFVI platform that is flexible and can seamlessly scale to meet the demands of 5G and multi-cloud environments.

VIO 6.0 natively integrated with the latest release of VMware NSX-T 2.4 supporting greater scale, resiliency and performance, with near line-rate speed using a DPDK-based accelerated data plane.

With the depletion of IPv4 addresses and the massive number of IoT and mobile devices, the adoption of IPv6 will continue to grow. VIO 6.0 with NSX-T 2.4 introduces support for IPv6 to meet the critical requirement of cloud-scale networks for CSPs. With dual-stack support, CSPs can continue to manage dual IPv4 and IPv6 stacks across their control and data plane.

Service Assurance across OpenStack environments with VMware Smart Assurance 10.0

CSPs deploying OpenStack for their 4G and 5G networks require robust service assurance capabilities with monitoring and management tools that will allow CSPs to deliver highly reliable networks and ensure high QoS and stringent SLAs are met. The latest release of VMware Smart Assurance with VIO 6.0, provides assurance capabilities that will deliver service impact and root-cause analysis with visibility across physical and virtual OpenStack networks, as well as multi-cloud networks. With VMware Smart Assurance and VIO 6.0, CSPs will gain an automated approach to operational intelligence to reduce service impact and operational expenses.

Additional Resources

Latest VMware Integrated OpenStack information can be found here
Read the latest VIO 6.0 release notes and get technical documentation here
Learn more at vmware.com

Innovation at the Telco Edge

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Imagine watching the biggest football game of the year being streamed to your Virtual Reality headset, and just as your team is about to score, your VR headset freezes due to latency in the network, and you miss the moment!

While this may be a trivial inconvenience, there are other scenarios that can have serious consequential events such as a self-driving car not stopping at a stop sign because of high latency networks.

The rapid growth of applications and services such as Internet of Things, Vehicle to Everything communications and Virtual Reality is driving the massive growth of data in the network that will demand real-time processing at the edge of the network closer to the user that will deliver faster speeds and reduced latency when compared to 4G LTE networks.

Edge computing will be critical in ensuring that low-latency and high reliability applications can be successfully deployed in 4G and 5G networks.

For CSPs, deploying a distributed cloud architecture where compute power is pushed to the network edge, closer to the user or device, offers improved performance in terms of latency, jitter, and bandwidth and ultimately a higher Quality of Experience.

Delivering services at the edge will enable CSPs to realize significant benefits, including:

Reduced backhaul traffic by keeping required traffic processing and content at the edge instead of sending it back to the core data center
New revenue streams by offering their edge cloud premises to 3^rd party application developers allowing them to develop new innovative services
Reduced costs with the optimization of infrastructure being deployed at the edge and core data centers
Improved network reliability and application availability

Edge Computing Use Cases

According to a recent report by TBR, CSP spend on Edge compute infrastructure will grow at a 76.5% CAGR from 2018 to 2023 and exceed $67B in 2023. While AR/VR/Autonomous Vehicle applications are the headlining edge use cases, many of the initial use cases CSPs will be deploying at the edge will focus on network cost optimization, including infrastructure virtualization, real estate footprint consolidation and bandwidth optimization. These edge use cases include:

Mobile User Plane at the Edge

A Control Plane and User Plane Separation (CUPS) architecture delivers the ability to scale the user plane and control plane independent of each other. Within a CUPS architecture, CSPs can place user plane functionality closer to the user thereby providing optimized processing and ultra-low latency at the edge, while continuing to manage control plane functionality in a centralized data center. An additional benefit for CSPs is the reduction of backhaul traffic between the end device and central data center, as that traffic can be processed right at the edge and offloaded to the internet when necessary.

Virtual CDN

Content Delivery Network was one of the original edge use cases, with content cached at the edge to provide an improved subscriber user experience. However, with the exponential growth of video content being streamed to devices, the scaling of dedicated CDN hardware can become increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain. With a Virtualized CDN (vCDN), CSPs can deploy capacity at the edge on-demand to meet the needs of peak events while maximizing infrastructure efficiency while minimizing costs.

Private LTE

Enterprise applications such as industrial manufacturing, transportation, and smart city applications have traditionally relied on Wi-Fi and fixed-line services for connectivity and communications. These applications require a level of resiliency, low-latency and high-speed networks that cannot be met with existing network infrastructure. To deliver a network that can provide the flexibility, security and reliability, CSPs can deploy dedicated mobile networks (Private LTE) at the enterprise to meet the requirements of the enterprise. Private LTE deployments includes all the data plane and control plane components needed to manage a scaled-out network where mobile sessions do not leave the enterprise premises unless necessary.

VMware Telco Edge Reference Architecture

Fundamentally, VMware Telco Edge is based on the following design principles:

Common Platform

VMware provides a flexible deployment architecture based on a common infrastructure platform that is optimized for deployments across the Edge data centers and Core data centers. With centralized management and a single pane of glass for monitoring network infrastructure across the multiple clouds, CSPs will have consistent networking, operations and management across their cloud infrastructure.

Centralized Management

VMware Telco Edge is designed to have a centralized VMware Integrated OpenStack VIM at the core data center while the edge sites do not need to have any OpenStack instances. With zero OpenStack components present at the Edge sites, CSPs will gain massive improvements in network manageability, upgrades, scale, and operational overhead. This centralized management at the Core data center gives CSPs access to all the Edge sites without having to connect to individual Edge sites to manage their resources.

Multi-tenancy and Advanced Networking

Leveraging the existing vCloud NFV design, the Telco Edge can be deployed in a multi-tenant environment with resource guarantees and resource isolation with each tenant having an independent view of their network and capacity and management of their underlying infrastructure and overlay networking. The Edge sites support overlay networking which makes them easier to configure and offers zero trust through NSX multi-segmentation.

Superior Performance

VMware NSX managed Virtual Distributed Switch in Enhanced Data Path mode (N-VDS (E)) leverages hardware-based acceleration (SR-IOV/Direct-PT) and DPDK techniques to provide the fastest virtual switching fabric on vSphere. Telco User Plane Functions (UPFs) that require lower latency and higher throughput at the Edge sites can run on hosts configured with N-VDS (E) for enhanced performance.

Real-time Integrated Operational Intelligence

The ability to locate, isolate and provide remediation capabilities is critical given the various applications and services that are being deployed at the edge. In a distributed cloud environment, isolating an issue is further complicated given the nature of the deployments. The Telco Edge framework uses the same operational model as is deployed in the core network and provides the capability to correlate, analyze and enable day 2 operations. This includes providing continuous visibility over service provisioning, workload migrations, auto-scaling, elastic networking, and network-sliced multitenancy that spans across VNFs, clusters and sites.

Efficient VNF onboarding and placement

Once a VNF is onboarded, the tenant admin deploys the VNF to either the core data center or the edge data center depending on the defined policies and workload requirements. VMware Telco Edge offers dynamic workload placement ensuring the VNF has the right number of resources to function efficiently.

Validated Hardware platform

VMware and Dell Technologies have partnered to deliver validated solutions that will help CSPs deploy a distributed cloud architecture and accelerate time to innovation. Learn more about how VMware and Dell Technologies have engineered and created a scalable and agile platform for CSPs.

Learn More

Edge computing will transform how network infrastructure and operations are deployed and provide greater value to customers. VMware has published a Telco Edge Reference Architecture that will enable CSPs to deploy an edge-cloud service that can support a variety of edge use cases along with flexible business models.

Learn more about VMware Telco and Edge Cloud solutions at https://telco.vmware.com

Also, check out our latest press release.

Open Works Here! Migrating Telco Providers and Partners to a Tried and True Multi-Cloud Ready Open Stack

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Greetings from OpenStack Summit! We’re here this week to talk about the opportunities for OpenStack. Telcos and CSPs in particular have looked to OpenStack as the centerpiece of their virtualization and software-defined infrastructure strategy, which is needed as we move towards 5G, multi-access edge computing (MEC)/edge and IoT scenarios. Unfortunately, OpenStack has not quite realized its potential in this regard. Telcos trying to stand up OpenStack for their NFV deployments today face significant operational complexity, cost overruns and scaling challenges—inviting questions about the efficacy of their deployments and causing them to look for new ways to problem solve for OpenStack. Further complicating matters is the drive to a distributed architecture with cloud, core and edge computing, and the move toward modern application architectures in the mobile-cloud era.

VMware has embarked on a two-pronged approach to address the dire need to make OpenStack work:

Deliver a robust OpenStack offering VMware Integrated OpenStack, that provides the best of OpenStack, yet fixes some of its key flaws, and
Enable providers and partners to convert & migrate their VNFs to be able to take advantage of VMware Integrated OpenStack and vCloud NFV, leveraging VMware HCX.

VMware Integrated OpenStack: OpenStack That Works:

VMware is addressing the need for more effective OpenStack deployments head-on with a leading virtualization platform, allowing our system integrator partners to provide a unified framework across IT, network and edge for telcos worldwide. VIO is VMware’s answer to the challenges of operationalizing OpenStack—and customers using the VMware OpenStack migration service will automatically have access to VMware Integrated OpenStack. We released VMware Integrated OpenStack 5.1 today.

Key features include:

Queens-based OpenStack Distribution—take advantage of the latest upstream functionality using the most recent OpenStack release
Streamlined OpenStack Deployment—quickly deploy a standard OpenStack on top of VMware SDDC. Perform upgrades with minimal disruption. This results in accelerated time to revenue.
Best-of-Breed Infrastructure—take advantage of advanced enterprise and cloud features and capabilities delivered by VMware vSphere, VMware NSX and VMware vSAN, including better security, high availability, simplified maintenance and disaster recovery.
Integrated Operations and Management—Out-of-the-box vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Automation integrations for streamlined operations such as health checks, troubleshooting and capacity management, as well as governance and control with user management, role-based access control (RBAC), quotas and more.
VMware Integrated OpenStack “in a box”—build small-footprint, highly-resilient micro data centers based on VMware Integrated OpenStack and have full control over these micro data centers and apps via automated, API driven orchestration and lifecycle management.

HCX – OpenStack Migration Services:

We talked about how VMware Integrated OpenStack significantly solves some of the critical issues above. But how do we get to the desired state? To help with this change, we’re introducing new migration services to enable customers to move from alternative OpenStack deployments to VMware Integrated OpenStack. We welcome providers and partners to contact us regarding early engagements with VMware to leverage such migration services.

The migration service leverages VMware HCX technology, which provides a seamless way to migrate workloads across private, hybrid and public clouds. HCX now additionally can convert OpenStack VMs running on KVM to migrate and run on VMware Integrated OpenStack. For telcos and CSPs, this capability now creates a common foundation across their IT, B2B, and NFV environments (the telco cloud). Additionally, it also connects these telco clouds to private, public, hybrid and edge environments. Thus, for the first time, we can have a unified architecture across IT, cloud tech (CT), network tech (NT) and edge tech (ET), accelerating the journey to 5G, edge/MEC, and IoT use cases.

“VMware has made a breakthrough in OpenStack production readiness—no question,” said John Antonio, CSO of IDX, a VMware partner. “Telcos and CSPs have struggled with making OpenStack work effectively in their environments, and instead of abandoning their investment, they can now work with VMware to benefit from their “PRODUCTION READY” legacy and entirely managed migration of their OpenStack deployments. VMware has the virtualization chops and the right mix of traditional and new technology to effectively serve these customers and enable them to make the most of OpenStack.”

By providing a dependable OpenStack solution that includes a robust stack, and a migration service to get there, VMware is taking the complexity out of OpenStack to enable customers to capture value from their existing deployments. Finally, there will be an OpenStack that can work for carriers and CSPs at scale.

For more information on VMware’s OpenStack migration managed service, please visit booth B14 at OpenStack Summit in Berlin.