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

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.

Today at Mobile World Congress Americas, VMware is highlighting the next phase of 5G readiness for communications service providers (CSPs) worldwide. At the event, we will showcase how the VMware Service Assurance Suite will integrate into VMware’s NFV portfolio and illustrate real-world service assurance use cases for CSPs as they prepare for 5G.

2018 has been a year of unprecedented momentum for VMware’s Telco NFV business. Solution innovation, the movement to acquire Dell EMC’s Service Assurance Suite, continued customer momentum and expansion and the ability to address more use cases have defined the first part of the year. 5G deployments will not be possible without virtualization, service assurance and a solid multi-cloud strategy. With VMware, customers have everything they need to become 5G-ready while still meeting the demands on today’s networks and reaping the benefits.

Last month, we announced our intent to acquire the Dell EMC Service Assurance Suite portfolio: software spanning network health, performance monitoring and root cause analysis for communications service providers (CSPs) and their customers. The addition of the Service Assurance Suite to the portfolio of VMware telco solution offerings will enable CSPs to maintain operational reliability in their core network, cloud and IT domains across physical and virtual infrastructure and operationalize competitive new services faster. Service Assurance Suite is now a part of VMware’s robust telco portfolio, engineered to enable CSPs to bridge the gap from 4G to 5G through simplified networks, service enablement and multi-cloud support.

So how does it work? VMware Service Assurance Suite focuses on automating a variety of key operational use cases for CSPs aimed at reducing operational costs and improving customer experience,  such as:

• Network and Service Availability Management: with automated root-cause and service impact analysis
• Performance Management and SLA Monitoring: with deep analysis for historical and real-time views, trending, forecasting and adaptive alerting
• Network Configuration Management: enabling automated network infrastructure change and compliance management
• Application & Service Level Monitoring: with cross correlation of Network Applications and/or Virtual Network Functions (VNF) with service delivery infrastructure
• Hybrid Assurance: Correlation spanning physical, NFVi, VIM and service layers offering unparalleled operations management with deep NFV closed loop integration

VMware Service Assurance Suite covers a rich variety of network segments such as: Backbone/Transport, IP, MPLS, Mobile, SDN/NFV, SD-WAN, IPTV, Unified Communications and Managed Enterprise Networks.

We will be showcasing the VMware Service Assurance Suite and NFV solutions in booth #S1714 at Mobile World Congress Americas, September 12-14 in Los Angeles, Calif. Our executives will also be participating in a panel on network analytics, diagnostics & service assurance on Wednesday, September 12, 2018 from 1:00-2:00 pm PDT. Stop by for more information—we hope to see you there!

Nokia and VMware continue to collaborate to deliver integrated and proven end-to-end NFV solutions which are widely deployed at communication service providers (CSP) globally.  Together we bring joint value with decades of telecom innovation combined with virtualization and cloud expertise. Powered by continued networking and cloud technology portfolio investment, supported by the research and creativity of Bell Labs, Nokia has the industry’s most complete, end-to-end Telecom portfolio of products and services. Likewise, VMware brings more than two decades of innovation and has delivered the most trusted and widely deployed virtualization and cloud solution to the market. The end result is a solid, unified solution that helps our customers address not only today’s rapid technology shifts, but also capitalize on new opportunities as they arise. Ultimately positioning CSPs for rapid growth by accelerating their digital transformation journey to the new era of enhanced mobile broadband,  IOT and 5G

Leveraging VMware vCloud NFV Platform, Nokia and VMware have delivered the following joint Virtual Network Functions (VNFs)

• Cloudband Application Manager (CBAM) and Network Director (CBND)
• Cloud Packet Core – Cloud Management Gateway (CMG)
• Cloud Packet Core – Cloud Mobility Manger (CMM)
• Virtual Session Boarder Controller
• Virtual Service Router
• Nokia Register
• Nokia Smart Plan Suite

Additional details such as solution overview, solution white papers and  ready for NFV certification details can be found on the solution exchange: https://marketplace.vmware.com/vsx/company/nokia

Nokia and VMware have put their heads together to simplify the day to day operational requirement to efficiently run NFV services.   To learn more about our joint capabilities of how we intelligently automate network functions on a virtualized telco cloud, visit us at Mobile World Congress USA in Los Angeles in South Hall Booth 1714 and see a live demonstration.  Here is a sneak peak of what you will see:

In one demo, we will show an instance of a Nokia Cloud Packet Core network function that is exceeding its defined capacity thresholds.  Our joint solution will show the automated scaling of a Cloud Packet Core network function to address dynamic VNF demands.

As more and more CSP networks transition from bare metal to NFV, the upgrade of the NFV infrastructure has quickly become a significant operational challenge. Over the past 20 years, VMware has evolved to become the industry standard for seamless and effortless upgrades. This fundamental capability is also readily available in VMware’s vCloud NFV platform. Nokia and VMware have partnered to demonstrate how to upgrade NFV infrastructure without service disruption of traffic through Nokia’s Cloud Packet Core functions.  Join us to see how effortless NFVI upgrade can be with Nokia and VMware.