Dirk Kutscher

The OPNFV project has released its first major software release "Arno".

OPNFV is a carrier-grade,integrated,  open source platform to accelerate the introduction of new Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) products and services.

Arno is a developer-focused release that provides an initial build of the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components of ETSI NFV architecture.

Key capabilities of OPNFV Arno:

• Availability of baseline platform: Arno enables continuous integration, automated deployment and testing of components from upstream projects such as Ceph, KVM, OpenDaylight, OpenStack and Open vSwitch. It allows developers and users to automatically install and explore the platform.
• Ability to deploy and test various VNFs: End users and developers can deploy their own or third party VNFs on Arno to test its functionality and performance in various traffic scenarios and use cases.
• Availability of test infrastructure in community-hosted labs: Agile testing plays a crucial role in the OPNFV platform. With Arno, the project is unveiling a community test labs infrastructure where users can test the platform in different environments and on different hardware. This test labs infrastructure enables the platform to be exercised in different NFV scenarios to ensure that the various open source components come together to meet vendor and end user needs.
• Allows automatic continuous integration of specific components: As upstream projects are developed independently they require testing of various OPNFV use cases to ensure seamless integration and interworking within the platform. OPNFV’s automated toolchain allows continuous automatic builds and verification.

Links

• https://www.opnfv.org/arno

• OPNFV’s First Milestone: A Toe-dip in the River

• Press Release: OPNFV Delivers Open Source Software to Enable Deployment of Network Functions Virtualization Solutions

Dave Ward (Chief Architect at Cisco) gave an interesting lunch talk on the relationship between Open Standards and Open Source Software at IETF-91 today. Technologies such as OpenFlow and NFV are increasingly being advanced through Open Source Software projects that develop both individual components as well as larger systems. The developed artifacts are  sometimes being referred to as de-facto standards.

Dave gave some perspectives on how Open Source Software can help to speed up collaborative technology development and related this to standards work in the IETF and other bodies. Dave emphasized the importance of Open Standards for the development of Internet technologies but he pointed out that Open Standards can leverage Open Source to speed up specification development and to validate architecture and protocol specifications.

The talk suggested embracing Open Source Software development for standards work in the IETF, pointing at new working models and skill sets that were required for that.

Obviously, the IETF has always had a focus on running code for validating specification and several recent efforts have been leveraging OSS succesfully -- for example CORE, DTN and many others. Still, there was agreement that there is room for extending and potentially institutionalizing this.

Linux Foundation has announced the creation of the  Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) project aiming at accelerating cloud-based delivery models for operators, enable interoperability and accelerate standards through an open source reference implementation.

OPNFV is expected to increase performance and power efficiency; improve reliability, availability and serviceability; and deliver comprehensive platform instrumentation. The initial scope of OPNFV will be on building NFV infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtualized Infrastructure Management (VIM) leveraging existing open source components where possible.

The initial project objectives are to:

• develop an integrated and tested open source platform that can be used to investigate and demonstrate core NFV functionality;
• include proactive participation of leading end users to validate that OPNFV meets the needs of the end user community;
• contribute to and participate in relevant open source projects that will be leveraged in the OPNFV reference platform;
• establish an open ecosystem for NFV solutions based on open standards and open source software; and
• promote OPNFV as the preferred open reference platform.

See the complete press release and the project website.