Network Function Virtualization in the Cloud: Case

for Enterprises

Alka Gupta, VMware

Sanjay Aiyagari, VMware

Allon Dafner, Amdocs

Iain Woolf, Alcatel-Lucent

Artur Tyloch, Nokia Solutions and Networks

TEX5466

#TEX5466

2

Disclaimer

This presentation may contain product features that are currently

under development.

This overview of new technology represents no commitment from

VMware to deliver these features in any generally available

product.

Features are subject to change, and must not be included in

contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.

Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.

Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features

discussed or presented have not been determined.

3

Agenda

Cloud Services in Telecom

Network Function Virtualization

• Overview

• VMware Value Proposition

vSphere Carrier-Grade Hypervisor

• Real-time Features

Partnerships and Use Cases

• Amdocs

• Alcatel-Lucent

• Nokia Solutions and Networks

4

VMware: The Industry-Leading Virtualization Software Company

$4.61 billion in revenues

for 2012

More than 500,000 customers

99% of the Fortune 100

99% of the Fortune 500

99% of the Fortune 1000

100% of the Fortune Global 100

99% of the Fortune Global 500

Over 55,000 partners worldwide

~13,800 employees worldwide

5

The Broadest, Most Mature Ecosystem for Virtualization/Cloud

10,000+ Service Provider Partners

2,200+

Technology Alliance Partners

55,000+ Total Partners

Distributors, ISVs, OEMs, Solution Providers,

Service Providers, System Integrators

93,000+ VMware

Certified Professionals

7

Virtual Reality

9%14%

22%

33%

42%

51%

59% 60%

80%

% workloads

on virtualized infrastructure

Source: Gartner “Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure” by Thomas J. Bittman, George J. Weiss, Mark A. Margevicius, Philip

Dawson, June 11, 2012

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2013

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0

2015

8

Setting the Scene Why Cloud for Telecom Operators

9

The importance of Cloud Services to Operators

Eagerly seeking services: A strong desire to make money out of

cloud market

Traditional sources of revenue (communications services) are

declining, especially in developed markets

According to Heavy Reading study early 2012 with 149

operator respondents:

• ~60% of operators are familiar with cloud

• ~80% of operators have a cloud evaluation team in place

• 55% already purchased cloud technology

• >40% of operators have already launched multiple cloud services

Cloud services are a big driver for SDN and NFV

10

Future of Telco Business Linked to Three Emerging Technologies

Virtualization

• Abstracting networking software (functions) from dedicated hardware and running in virtual machines on COTS platform

• NFV initiative specifically is about consolidating many network equipment types onto standard high volume servers, switches and storage in a cloud (ie elastic, resource pooled, orchestrated ) environment

Software-Defined Networking

• Creates network abstractions to enable faster innovation

• Using virtualization techniques, e.g. network overlays to create programmable data center networks

• Using protocols/technologies such as OSS/orchestration and management systems to create programmable WAN

Cloud

• Layer of automation/orchestration on top of virtualization that provides NIST cloud characteristics

• Distinction emerging between “resource cloud” and “application management cloud”

11

Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

12

Network Function Virtualization

13

ENTERPRISE

SERVICES

Evolved Packet Core (PGW/SGW/MME/GGSN)

M2M SERVICES

VOLTE SERVICES

(IMS,TAS,RMS)

SERVICE

MONITORING

Network Infrastructure

(Access, Transport, Routing/Switching)

SMART NETWORK

POLICY CONTROL`

Common HW Infrastructure distributed across

data centers, where NW nodes become

Applications

14

• Virtualization of Mobile Core Network and IMS

• Virtualization of CDNs (vCDN)

• Virtualized Network Functions and Cloud Computing Infrastructure

• Virtualization of Mobile Base Station

• Virtualization of Home Environment

• Virtualization of the Enterprise (vEnterprise)

• Virtualization of service chains (Firewall, NAT, security, load balancer,

DPI, 3GPP functions, various forms of gateways, etc)

• Cloud service exposure to a 3rd party

NFV Use Cases (Source ETSI)

15

Reasons for NFV

16

NFV in the CARRIER CLOUD

Element Manager System

HW Resource Pool

Compute Resources Load balancing Res. Network Resources Storage Resources

Element Manager System (EMS)/Cloud framework from each Tennant

vSphere/vCenter/vCloud

VM:

TAS-

NEP3

VM:

IMS-

NEP2

VM :

IMS-

NEP1

Management of application

Global Orchestration/Cloud Management System

Integration Framework

OS/Software Provisioning

Virtualization Managers

Hardware Managers

APIs Middleware Layer

Cloud Admin

(Tenant Admin)

Tenant User

Tenant User

(Tenant Admin)

Tenant User

Hardware Layer

VM:

SBC-

NEP3

VM:

MMS-

NEP3

SGSN

MGW

MSS

MGW

LEGACY

ENV.

Legacy and SOA interfaces / NGCOR

OSS/BSS Higher Level System

VCLOUD MULTI-TENANT VIRTUAL DATA CENTER

VCLOUD APIS vCloud APIs

ORG 1 ORG 3 ORG 2

17

VMware vSphere = Virtualization VMware vCloud Suite = Software-defined Datacenter

• Virtualization

• Delivered by VMware vSphere

• Software-defined Datacenter

• Architecture for Cloud

• Recasting all datacenter services

as software

• Compute, storage, network

• Security, Availability

• Automation and Management

vCloud Suite: Complete offering delivering the Software-defined Datacenter

18

Virtualizing Networks with VMware – VMware vCloud Suite

Cloud Infrastructure

VMware vCloud Director

Integration &

Orchestration

VMware vCloud

API’s

VMware vCloud

Connector

VMware vCenter

Orchestrator

Virtualization

Management

VMware Sphere

Virtualization Platform

VMware vCenter

Site Recovery Manager

Virtualization Disaster

Recovery Network & Security

Virtualization

VMware vCloud

Networking and Security

VMware vCenter

Operations

Management Suite

VMware vFabric

Application

Director

VMware vCloud

Automation Center

VMware vCloud

Connector

DPI SGSN

GGSN

HSS

HLR BSS IMS OSS SDP SBC

Storage/ Availability Servers Networking Security Management/

Monitoring

20

Carrier-Grade Hypervisor

22

Real-time ! = Average Latency

• Real-time applications need determinism

• Primary criteria: Maximum Latency (i.e. Low Jitter)

• Average Latency also important, lower is better

• 99%ile Latency: track trend in reducing outliers contributing to

maximum latency

• RT features available in ESXi 5.5

22

23

Average Latencies in ESXi 5.0

Benchmark: Ping (ICMP) Kernel space <-> Kernel space

VM I/O Path: vmxnet3 vNIC/vSwitch -> Intel 82599 10GbE pNIC

Latencies: Average HRT (Half Round Trip) in microseconds

23

10 us 18 us 13 us

Ping Ping Ping

Physical to Physical VM to Physical VM to VM (same host)

Virtual Networking

24

Real-time Virtualization Performance Results

24

ISR

Latency

Interrupt

period

ISR ISR

Jitter

• cyclictest –p 99 –a 1 –m –n –D 10m –q

ESXi 5.0 ESXi 5.1 ESXi RT Prototype

Min 5 μs

Max 1676 μs

Avg 13 μs

Min 4 μs

Max 1536 μs

Avg 7 μs

Min 2 μs

Max 23 μs

Avg 4 μs

99%-ile 56 μs 99%-ile 11μs

99.99%-ile 118 μs 99.99%-ile 17 μs

25

Partner Use Cases

25

26

Partner Use Cases

Amdocs – First Fully Virtualized Real-Time Charging

Alcatel-Lucent – Virtualizing Wireless Cloud Element

NSN – Telco in the Cloud

26

First Fully Virtualized Real-Time Charging

Allon Dafner

Director, Strategic Accounts

Amdocs Product Business Group

August 2013

28

#1 in Telecom Software

Market Share

Amdocs wins

2012 Outsourcing

Excellence Award

A leader in 2012

Integrated Revenue

and Customer

Management (IRCM)

Magic Quadrant

About Amdocs

Leader in Telecom Customer Experience Systems and Services

$3.2 billion revenue in 2012

20,000 professionals

Serving customers in more than 60 countries

Listed on the New York Stock Exchange (DOX)

Information Security Level 1 – Confidential

© 2013 – Proprietary and Confidential Information of Amdocs

29

We Support Billions of Telecom Customer Experiences a Day

250+ customers 2500+ projects

Caribbean and Latin America

Asia Pacific

Europe, Middle East and Africa

North America

Information Security Level 1 – Confidential

© 2013 – Proprietary and Confidential Information of Amdocs 30

Amdocs Portfolio – fully virtualized

BE EFFICIENT

STAY AHEAD

HARNESS DATA

SIMPLIFY EXPERIENCE

Business Process Expertise

IPTV PC Home Hub

Devices

Tablet Connected Car Mobile Customer Care Retail Web

@

Channels

24

Phone Home Monitoring

Fixed, Wireless, Next Generation Networks

Unified Foundation

AMDOCS SERVICES

Business Consulting

System Integration

Project Delivery

Support

Managed Services

AMDOCS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOLUTIONS

Customer Management

Digital Services

Revenue Management

Operations Support Systems

Network Control

Information Security Level 1 – Confidential

© 2013 – Proprietary and Confidential Information of Amdocs 31

Amdocs Portfolio – fully virtualized

BE EFFICIENT

STAY AHEAD

HARNESS DATA

SIMPLIFY EXPERIENCE

Business Process Expertise

IPTV PC Home Hub

Devices

Tablet Connected Car Mobile Customer Care Retail Web

@

Channels

24

Phone Home Monitoring

Fixed, Wireless, Next Generation Networks

Unified Foundation

AMDOCS SERVICES

Business Consulting

System Integration

Project Delivery

Support

Managed Services

AMDOCS CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOLUTIONS

Customer Management

Digital Services

Revenue Management

Operations Support Systems

Network Control

32

Amdocs Online Charging System

OCS is part network, part IT, part business

These are not packets, this is money

It is challenging:

Highly sensitive to latency

Network grade high availability

Highly tuned and hardware optimized

A lost event, is a lost dollar

33

Virtualizing Amdocs Online Charging System

SUCCESS

• Virtualized OCS results are on par

with the physical deployment

A joint VMware and Amdocs certification was held

• Physical environment compared to virtualized

• Production like, high loads

We had some concerns

• Virtualization may add latency overheads

• Separates OCS from physical hardware

• Real time aspects of continuous processing

!

34

VMware Certification Results

Comparing virtualized OCS and physical is comparing apples to apples

-10% 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

90%95%

99%99.5%

Latency (ms)

Baseline (physical) VM

Sub Second

Failover

Productivity

35

Virtualized OCS LIVE in Production

A virtualized OCS is running in production in a large Tier-1 North

American carrier

36

Amdocs Online Charging – What’s Next?

Virtualized OCS Cloud-aware, NFV Monetizing SDN & NFV Networks

• Deployable on

Operators’ Datacenter

• OPEX & CAPEX

reduction

• NFV-OCS

• Automated Elasticity

• CMS-managed

• Further TCO reduction

• Cloud Services

Monetization

• RT Analytics &

Orchestration

Monetization

• SDN Monetization

Thank You!

Allon Dafner

Allon.dafner@amdocs.com

© 2013 VMware Inc. All rights reserved

Alcatel-Lucent Wireless Cloud Element Virtual Radio Network Controller

Iain Woolf

39

From Controller to Radio Network Platform

Virtualization

One application Dedicated hardware

Multi - Tenancy

• Cloud in a box

Hardware independent scalable platform supporting multiple technologies

• Flexibility

From small single technology to large multi-technology controller

• Cloud on a disk

Software only solution can be deployed in existing data center

• Seamless capacity and scalability

Cloud architecture

SW

HW RNC

RNC RNC

RNC

40

Wireless Cloud Element Feature Roadmap

Leverage benefits for Network Function

Multi-Tenancy – GSM, W-CDMA, and LTE applications share physical resources

Horizontal Scalability – number of CPUs controls capacity (flexible configurations)

Elastic Capacity – the capacity of the system can change quickly according to need

Reduced Power Usage – as capacity breathes throughout the day hardware can power up / down

Geographic Redundancy – a fault in one location does not disable the system

Zero Downtime Maintenance – VMs move to other hardware for maintenance

Sub-Urban

Dense Urban Rural

As traffic shifts during the day ...

... server

load is

uniform

RNC RNC

41

Transformation from 9370 to WCE RNC

The WCE virtual RNC needs to scale horizontally to much larger capacity than possible with the 9370

Two problems must be addressed:

• N2 Communications

• Scope of Failure

Reorganization of existing 9370 code allowed for the creation of a component responsible for cells and another responsible for user equipment (UEs)

As UEs (and UMUs) are independent of each allowing for horizontal scalability

The scope of failure is greater reduced as UMUs don’t require sparing

WCE vRNC Virtual Machines

Current 9370 RNC Application

RAB

U-Plane

GTP/RLC

MAC

TMU

U-Plane

RPM-Cell

C-Plane

NoB CP

C-Plane

UE CP

CMU UMU

U-Plane

GTP/RLC

MAC

C-Plane

NoB CP

U-Plane

RPM-Cell

C-Plane

UE CP

VxWorks on Linux

VxWorks

CMU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU UMU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU

UEU UEU UMU

CMU

CMU

CMU

Cells (spared)

Mobiles

Scale to 10000s of Cells

Scale to 100000s of Mobiles

42

Wireless Cloud Element – 3G RNC Architecture

RNC Components:

Spared Roles (SWACT in a few seconds): • CMU (N+M) – Cell Management

• 3gOAM (1+1) – OAM termination

• PC (N+1) – Public / Private network gateway

Unspared Role (Return to capacity ~ 60s): • UMU - UE Management (UE Call)

& RAB UE Packet processing

Platform Components: • vCenter Server – VM Management

(VMware)

• LRC Mgr – Tenant Management (unspared)

• Disk Access – NAS Front End to SAN

Each RNC component represents a single virtual machine

UMU

U-Plane

GTP/RLC

MAC

NI

SCCP

C-Plane

UE CP

CMU

U-Plane

RPM-Cell

NI

M3UA

SCTP

C-Plane

NoB CP

Iub/Iur/IuCS/IuPS

Signaling

PC

PC NAT

Common

Channel

Traffic

Iub / NBAP

Dedicated

Channel

Traffic

vCenter Server

LRC Mgr

3gOAM

PC Control

OMU

Netconf

Disk

Access

43

RNC Real-time Requirements

A controller’s user-plane

components typically need

very precise timing, e.g.

The RNC must send downlink

packets such that they arrive

at the NodeB within the Time

Of Arrival Window

When the user goes into

Diversity mode the RNC’s

transmit window must

compensate for different

transmission times

Six NodeB may be involved in

a single user’s connection

which currently reduces the

RNC transmit window to 5ms

147 148 149 150 151 152

CFN

CFN Early OK Late Too Late

Tproc TOAWS

(50 ms)

Node B

CFN

Node B

CFN

Node B

SRNC

44

Non-deterministic Timing

Deterministic timing not

possible within a virtualized /

cloud environment

Virtualized Network

Functions must compensate

for timing uncertainty

Data for this chart was

extracted from the virtualized

RNC while running an hour

long traffic test

Note: this system was

running with ESXi 5.1;

significant improvements are

expected from ESXi 5.5

45

Interval Scheduling

Interval scheduling allows

for variable amounts of time

between events

At each event an accurate time

reference is read and the interval

between events is calculated

Based on the elapsed time and the

priority of work that needs to be

done a work schedule is created

that ensures isochronous work is

completed first at the potential

expense of background work

46

Shadow Network Functions

WCE provides the capability to

create a “shadow” of a network

element within the same physical

hardware as the service providing

network element

This shadow can be used for:

• Fast and Graceful Reset

• Software Upgrade

• Software Configuration Change

• Virtual or Physical Machine Change

• Geo-Redundancy

Roll-back to the previous version

is possible after an upgrade

RNC

iBTS

RNC

Core Network

RNC

47

48

49

Towards an Improved Telco Cloud

Nokia Solutions and Networks

Artur Tyloch

VMWorld 2013, San Francisco

50

17.9 50,500 no.1 59

120 2011 2007

Global company with a rich heritage

Ranking, macro

base station vendor

competitive

assessment

LTE supplier

to launched

operator

networks

Employees

globally

Our net sales

in 2012

bn

$

120+

Started Telecoms

experience

in years

Countries

we operate in

We acquired

Motorola’s wireless

network

Focused on Mobile Broadband

51

The next disruption is coming to wireless networks

52

NSN’s relationship with VMware

• VMware is NSN’s

approved software

supplier since 2011

• vSphere, vCenter..

1

• Licenses and support for demos and testing purposes

• Lab installations in several NSN locations

2

Parties are cooperating on proof of concept projects for migrating mobile core applications to cloud, involving several major wireless carriers

3 NSN and VMware

have an ongoing

business

relationship

Cooperation in proof of concept projects

‘Create innovative telco grade cloud solutions for wireless carriers’

NSN is VMware’s Technology Alliance Program (TAP) partner

53

The VoLTE race has began already

• 2 times more voice calls per MHz

• 3 times more data throughput per MHz

• A multimedia environment enriches voice and

equips for fight against OTTs

• Operators plan to combine VoLTE with RCS to

offer multimedia, video telephony and video chat

0

10

20

30

40

50

GSM AMR HSPA CS 12.2kbps

VoLTE 12.2 kbps

Calls per MHz

• Short call setup time

• HD voice service experience (IR.92)

• Guaranteed bit rate

• VoLTE terminal talk time expected to

outperform OTT VoIP ~ by factor 1.5

* IR.92: GSMA IMS Profile for Voice and SMS

0

2

4

6

CS call VoLTE

Setu

p t

ime in s

ec

Call setup time improvement

Increase

Spectral

Efficiency

Superior

Voice Service

Quality

Richer

End User

Experience

54

Network Architecture 2020

Telco Networks will undergo a fundamental transformation

Content and application aware network ensuring best customer experience

• Central data centers for efficient network control and XaaS offerings

• Common Network & IT data

Local data centers hosting multiple intelligent network applications

Heterogeneous access combining multiple technologies and cell sizes

Network Architecture 2013

Flexibility & efficiency through virtualization and automation

55

Why core applications in a Telco Cloud?

High Total Cost of Ownership

MSS

MGCF

CSCF

IMS-MGW

HSS

GGSN

PCRF

TAS

CS-MGW

HLR

SGSN

Browsing GW

I-BGF

Serving GW

MME

PDN GW

High complexity with dedicated hardware/

software for each function

Proprietary hardware limits gains from

industry-wide innovation

Cannot meet new capacity demands

and new service launches easily

Target: Core applications in the IT datacenter

• Better Business Agility (- create new services much cheaper and faster -)

• Operational Efficiencies (- remove operational silos -)

• Capex Efficiencies (- leverage latest IT hardware and cloud technology -)

Cloud

56

NSN and VMware initiative towards improved Telco Cloud Live experiences from a lab verification

Lab verification

Discover and develop telecom requirements

in hypervisor and cloud orchestration layers

• High availability and resiliency (recovery

groups, affinity rules)

• Integrated operations (FM, PM)

• Latency optimization

• Optimization of vMotion to telecom

applications

Major Telco

Cloud

Functions

verified

VoLTE Test

Cases

Verified

Flexible

Setup

Enabling

Efficiency

Automation,

elastic

scaling,

recovery

Cloud Domain Management

NetAct

Cloud stack mediation

Operation on

Demand

Open TASIMS

iNUM

API

VMware ESXi hypervisor

HW Resource Pool

VMware

Cloud Management

(vCloud Director,vCenter Server)

OAM

i/f

Voice over LTE services in Telco Cloud

57

NSN vision of a liquid network architecture

58

Presentation / Author / Date

Thank YOU ! ARTUR.TYLOCH@NSN.COM

THANK YOU

Network Function Virtualization in the Public Cloud:

Case for Enterprises

Alka Gupta, Vmware

Sanjay Aiyagari, Vmware

Allon Dafner, Amdocs

Iain Woolf, Alcatel-Lucent

Artur Tyloch, Nokia Solutions and Networks

TEX5466

#TEX5466