OPNFV ‘Euphrates’ Initiates the Cloud Native NFV Journey

Fifth iteration of open source NFV project platform advances functionality, interoperability, and performance to accelerate NFV transformation

PRAGUE, Czech Republic — Open Source Summit Europe — 24 October, 2017 — The OPNFV Project, an open source project that facilitates the development and evolution of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) components across various open source ecosystems through integration, deployment, and testing, today announced the availability of OPNFV Euphrates, the project’s fifth platform release. OPNFV Euphrates represents a step forward in functionality, interoperability and performance to help operators advance network transformation via open source NFV.

OPNFV Euphrates delivers Kubernetes integration for the first time as well as enhanced cross-community continuous integration (XCI) and new carrier-grade features such as increased visibility into complex virtualized networks. This is enabled via Euphrates’ platform of pre-tested, tuned, interoperable, open source NFV components that facilitate multiple use cases such as VNF onboarding, network service testing, data plane acceleration, NFVI/VIM validation, MANO qualification, test automation and creation of DevOps methodologies and operational best practices.

“With this initial integration of Kubernetes with the existing stack of open source network components, Euphrates enables NFV to make significant advances in the journey towards cloud native,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “Combined with a focus on XCI and modern DevOps practices, more efficient infrastructure, and enhanced operations capabilities, we’re witnessing the powerful culmination of three years’ worth of collaboration across a broad swath of open source communities, come to life.”

Key enhancements available in OPNFV Euphrates include:

• Architecture: OPNFV container journey begins. Though early, there is an unmistakable trend towards the containerization of VNFs in the industry. Euphrates brings Kubernetes and container integration with multiple components of the end-to-end stack, as well as the ability to deploy containerized OpenStack via Kolla, which provides production-ready containers and deployment tools for operating OpenStack clouds that are scalable, fast, reliable, and upgradable using community best practices. These enhancements enable easier management of the infrastructure, support of cloud native network applications in NFV, and lighter weight control plane capabilities as service providers prepare for edge architectures to support 5G and IOT.
• Integration: access to the latest upstream code. Building on the continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline integration work in Danube, Euphrates introduced the implementation of the XCI integrated CI/CD pipeline amongst OPNFV, OpenStack, OpenDaylight, and FD.io. Instead of waiting for an official stable release, the OPNFV CI pipeline integrates the latest upstream code from these upstream projects in order to more quickly resolve bugs and validate features. This reduces the time it takes for feedback on a new feature or bug-fix from months to days, greatly increasing the pace of innovation. XCI also enables multi-distribution support and fosters closer developer relationships.
• New carrier-grade features. With the integration of the new Calipso project, operators now have operational visibility into their complex virtual networks. When combined with telemetry enhancements in existing Barometer and Doctor projects, users have access to a powerful service assurance framework. Euphrates also includes performance improvements on the Arm architecture, and in Layer 3 performance with FD.io. Moreover, Euphrates brings new security and user management capabilities with Moon, continued improvement in Service Function Chaining (SFC), FD.io, and new EVPN features. Euphrates also integrates the OVN network virtualization project along with the most recent versions of other upstream projects to provide additional choice in networking control options.
• Enhanced testing and integration. The OPNFV integration and testing effort has made significant progress in providing an extensive set of tools to test the NFV cloud, VNFs, and complete network services. New projects—including Sample VNF, which provides testing of the VIM/NFVI layer with applications approximating real-life application workloads; and NFVBench, which provides an end-to-end dataplane benchmarking framework—have been introduced. Additionally, existing test projects have continued to evolve with new features, capabilities, and test cases.

“Euphrates brings a deeper level of maturity to the platform,” said Tapio Tallgren, chair of Technical Steering Committee (TSC), OPNFV, and lead software architect, Nokia’s Mobile Architecture Unit. “Iterative updates and improvements in areas such as MANO integration and service assurance, security, testing, and performance are part and parcel to bigger architectural changes that introduce Kubernetes as a VIM to orchestrate containerized VNFs.”

Looking ahead, the OPNFV Fraser Release is scheduled for spring 2018. Evolutions on the horizon include continuing to evolve MANO capabilities through ONAP integration, and a focus on analytics with PNDA.io analytics framework integration.

The OPNFV community is currently planning ts its fourth OPNFV Plugfest, December 4-8, 2017  in Hillsboro, Ore. Hosted by Intel, the event will focus on interoperability of the OPNFV platform in deployment, network integration, VNF applications, and more. Developers who are both OPNFV members and non-members are welcome to attend. More information is available here: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/opnfv-plugfest.

More information about OPNFV Euphrates is available here: https://www.opnfv.org/software/downloads

About the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV)

Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) facilitates the development and evolution of NFV components across various open source ecosystems. Through system level integration, deployment and testing, OPNFV creates a reference NFV platform to accelerate the transformation of enterprise and service provider networks. For more information, please visit  http://www.opnfv.org.

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