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Chapter 1. Understanding Red Hat Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is a software-based solution that helps communication service providers (CSPs) to move beyond the traditional, proprietary hardware to achieve greater efficiency and agility and to reduce operational costs.

Using NFV in a Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environment allows for IT and network convergence by providing a virtualized infrastructure that uses the standard virtualization technologies to virtualize network functions (VNFs) that run on hardware devices such as switches, routers, and storage.

1.1. Advantages of NFV
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The main advantages of implementing network functions virtualization (NFV) in a Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environment are:

  • Accelerates the time-to-market by enabling you to quickly deploy and scale new networking services to address changing demands.
  • Supports innovation by enabling service developers to self-manage their resources and prototype using the same platform that will be used in production.
  • Addresses customer demands in hours or minutes instead of weeks or days, without sacrificing security or performance.
  • Reduces capital expenditure because it uses commodity-off-the-shelf hardware instead of expensive tailor-made equipment.
  • Uses streamlined operations and automation that optimize day-to-day tasks to improve employee productivity and reduce operational costs.

1.2. Supported Configurations for NFV Deployments
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Red Hat supports network functions virtualization (NFV) on Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments using Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

Other configurations include:

  • Open vSwitch (OVS) with LACP
  • Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)

1.3. NFV data plane connectivity
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With the introduction of network functions virtualization (NFV), more networking vendors are starting to implement their traditional devices as VNFs. While the majority of networking vendors are considering virtual machines, some are also investigating a container-based approach as a design choice. A Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environment should be rich and flexible because of two primary reasons:

  • Application readiness - Network vendors are currently in the process of transforming their devices into VNFs. Different VNFs in the market have different maturity levels; common barriers to this readiness include enabling RESTful interfaces in their APIs, evolving their data models to become stateless, and providing automated management operations. OpenStack should provide a common platform for all.

  • Broad use-cases - NFV includes a broad range of applications that serve different use-cases. For example, Virtual Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE) aims at providing a number of network functions such as routing, firewall, virtual private network (VPN), and network address translation (NAT) at customer premises. Virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), is a cloud architecture that provides a cost-effective platform for the core components of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network, allowing dynamic provisioning of gateways and mobile endpoints to sustain the increased volumes of data traffic from smartphones and other devices.

    These use cases are implemented using different network applications and protocols, and require different connectivity, isolation, and performance characteristics from the infrastructure. It is also common to separate between control plane interfaces and protocols and the actual forwarding plane. OpenStack must be flexible enough to offer different datapath connectivity options.

In principle, there are two common approaches for providing data plane connectivity to virtual machines:

  • Direct hardware access bypasses the linux kernel and provides secure direct memory access (DMA) to the physical NIC using technologies such as PCI Passthrough or single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) for both Virtual Function (VF) and Physical Function (PF) pass-through.
  • Using a virtual switch (vswitch), implemented as a software service of the hypervisor. Virtual machines are connected to the vSwitch using virtual interfaces (vNICs), and the vSwitch is capable of forwarding traffic between virtual machines, as well as between virtual machines and the physical network.

Some of the fast data path options are as follows:

  • Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a standard that makes a single PCI hardware device appear as multiple virtual PCI devices. It works by introducing Physical Functions (PFs), which are the fully featured PCIe functions that represent the physical hardware ports, and Virtual Functions (VFs), which are lightweight functions that are assigned to the virtual machines. To the VM, the VF resembles a regular NIC that communicates directly with the hardware. NICs support multiple VFs.
  • Open vSwitch (OVS) is an open source software switch that is designed to be used as a virtual switch within a virtualized server environment. OVS supports the capabilities of a regular L2-L3 switch and also offers support to the SDN protocols such as OpenFlow to create user-defined overlay networks (for example, VXLAN). OVS uses Linux kernel networking to switch packets between virtual machines and across hosts using physical NIC. OVS now supports connection tracking (Conntrack) with built-in firewall capability to avoid the overhead of Linux bridges that use iptables/ebtables. Open vSwitch for Red Hat OpenStack Platform environments offers default OpenStack Networking (neutron) integration with OVS.
  • Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) consists of a set of libraries and poll mode drivers (PMD) for fast packet processing. It is designed to run mostly in the user-space, enabling applications to perform their own packet processing directly from or to the NIC. DPDK reduces latency and allows more packets to be processed. DPDK Poll Mode Drivers (PMDs) run in busy loop, constantly scanning the NIC ports on the host and vNIC ports in the guest for arrival of packets.
  • DPDK accelerated Open vSwitch (OVS-DPDK) is Open vSwitch bundled with DPDK for a high performance user-space solution with Linux kernel bypass and direct memory access (DMA) to physical NICs. The idea is to replace the standard OVS kernel data path with a DPDK-based data path, creating a user-space vSwitch on the host that uses DPDK internally for its packet forwarding. The advantage of this architecture is that it is mostly transparent to users. The interfaces it exposes, such as OpenFlow, OVSDB, the command line, remain mostly the same.

1.4. ETSI NFV architecture
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The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent standardization group that develops standards for information and communications technologies (ICT) in Europe.

Network functions virtualization (NFV) focuses on addressing problems involved in using proprietary hardware devices. With NFV, the necessity to install network-specific equipment is reduced, depending upon the use case requirements and economic benefits. The ETSI Industry Specification Group for Network Functions Virtualization (ETSI ISG NFV) sets the requirements, reference architecture, and the infrastructure specifications necessary to ensure virtualized functions are supported.

Red Hat is offering an open-source based cloud-optimized solution to help the Communication Service Providers (CSP) to achieve IT and network convergence. Red Hat adds NFV features such as single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) and Open vSwitch with Data Plane Development Kit (OVS-DPDK) to Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments.

1.5. NFV ETSI architecture and components
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In general, a network functions virtualization (NFV) on Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) environments has the following components:

Figure 1.1. NFV ETSI architecture and components

NFV ETSI architecture and components
  • Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) - the software implementation of routers, firewalls, load balancers, broadband gateways, mobile packet processors, servicing nodes, signalling, location services, and other network functions.
  • NFV Infrastructure (NFVi) - the physical resources (compute, storage, network) and the virtualization layer that make up the infrastructure. The network includes the datapath for forwarding packets between virtual machines and across hosts. This allows you to install VNFs without being concerned about the details of the underlying hardware. NFVi forms the foundation of the NFV stack. NFVi supports multi-tenancy and is managed by the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM). Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) improves the virtual machine packet forwarding performance (throughput, latency, jitter) by exposing low-level CPU and NIC acceleration components to the VNF.
  • NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) - the management and orchestration layer focuses on all the service management tasks required throughout the life cycle of the VNF. The main goals of MANO is to allow service definition, automation, error-correlation, monitoring, and life-cycle management of the network functions offered by the operator to its customers, decoupled from the physical infrastructure. This decoupling requires additional layers of management, provided by the Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM). VNFM manages the life cycle of the virtual machines and VNFs by either interacting directly with them or through the Element Management System (EMS) provided by the VNF vendor. The other important component defined by MANO is the Orchestrator, also known as NFVO. NFVO interfaces with various databases and systems including Operations/Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) on the top and the VNFM on the bottom. If the NFVO wants to create a new service for a customer, it asks the VNFM to trigger the instantiation of a VNF, which may result in multiple virtual machines.
  • Operations and Business Support Systems (OSS/BSS) - provides the essential business function applications, for example, operations support and billing. The OSS/BSS needs to be adapted to NFV, integrating with both legacy systems and the new MANO components. The BSS systems set policies based on service subscriptions and manage reporting and billing.
  • Systems Administration, Automation and Life-Cycle Management - manages system administration, automation of the infrastructure components and life cycle of the NFVi platform.

1.6. Red Hat NFV components
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Red Hat’s solution for network functions virtualization (NFV) includes a range of products that can act as the different components of the NFV framework in the ETSI model. The following products from the Red Hat portfolio integrate into an NFV solution:

  • Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift (RHOSO) - Supports IT and NFV workloads. The Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) features deliver deterministic performance improvements through CPU pinning, huge pages, Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) affinity, and network adaptors (NICs) that support SR-IOV and OVS-DPDK.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host - Create virtual machines and containers as VNFs.
  • Red Hat Ceph Storage - Provides the unified elastic and high-performance storage layer for all the needs of the service provider workloads.
  • Red Hat JBoss Middleware and OpenShift Enterprise by Red Hat - Optionally provide the ability to modernize the OSS/BSS components.
  • Red Hat CloudForms - Provides a VNF manager and presents data from multiple sources, such as the VIM and the NFVi in a unified display.
  • Red Hat Satellite and Ansible by Red Hat - Optionally provide enhanced systems administration, automation and life-cycle management.
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