1、 ETSI White Paper No.54 Evolving NFV towards the next decade 1st edition May 2023 Authors(alphabetical order):Xuhui CAI,Hui DENG,Lingli DENG,Ahmed ELSAWAF,Shen GAO,Arturo MARTIN DE NICOLAS,Yoshihiro NAKAJIMA,Janusz PIECZERAK,Joan TRIAY,Xuliang WANG,Baoguo XIE,Hammad ZAFAR ETSI 06921 Sophia Antipolis
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3、格斗搏击、漫画手绘、声乐训练、自媒体打造、效率软件工具、游戏影音扫码先加好友，以备不时之需扫码先加好友，以备不时之需行业报告/思维导图/电子书/资讯情报行业报告/思维导图/电子书/资讯情报致终身学习者社群致终身学习者社群关注公众号获取更多资料关注公众号获取更多资料 Evolving NFV towards the next decade 2 About the author This White Paper has been produced as a collective effort within the ETSI ISG NFV,and on its behalf the followi
4、ng editing team(listed in alphabetical order):Xuhui CAI(China Mobile)Hui DENG(Huawei,ETSI ISG NFV Vice-Chair)Lingli DENG(China Mobile)Ahmed ELSAWAF(Nokia)Shen GAO(China Telecom)Arturo MARTIN DE NICOLAS(Ericsson)Yoshihiro NAKAJIMA(NTT DOCOMO,ETSI ISG NFV Chair)Janusz PIECZERAK(Orange,ETSI ISG NFV Vic
5、e-Chair)Joan TRIAY(NTT DOCOMO)Xuliang WANG(China Telecom)Baoguo XIE(ZTE)Hammad ZAFAR(NEC)Evolving NFV towards the next decade 3 Contents About the author 2 Contents 3 Executive Summary 5 1 NFV:a short history 6 2 Challenges,trends,and opportunities for NFV 7 2.1 Declarative intent-driven network ope
6、rations 7 2.2 The rise of containerization and heterogeneous infrastructure 8 2.3 Autonomous networking,automation,and unified/sole data source 9 2.4 Fragmentation of telco cloud implementations 11 2.5 Business sustainability versus rapid release evolution of open source 13 2.6 Hyper-distributed&ful
7、l-interconnected edge deployments 13 3 Towards the next decade of NFV 14 3.1 Context for NFV:5G advanced,6G and beyond 14 3.2 APIs development and relationship to open source 15 3.3 NFV multi-cloud and multi-technology 16 3.4 Unified NFV management and orchestration 17 3.5 Autonomous networking,auto
8、mation,and AI 18 4 Conclusion and summary 19 References 21 Evolving NFV towards the next decade 4 Evolving NFV towards the next decade 5 Executive Summary Network Functions Virtualization(NFV)has been the catalyst of a radical change to the telecom industry,leading the transition from the traditiona
9、l physical(hardware)network appliance into a new software-based virtualized network function(VNF)era.Based on the use of general-purpose(commodity-off-the-shelf,COTS)servers and the deployment of network functions as software applications,NFV has broken through the technical challenges of software a
10、nd hardware decoupling.The migration of network functions from dedicated physical appliances to distributed cloud infrastructure has revolutionized the way communications networks are developed,deployed,and operated nowadays.In 2012 various international leading telecom service providers(network ope
11、rators)jointly released the seminal White Paper about NFVs concept and vision and announced the beginning of a new era in the telecom industry.Since the creation of the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group(ISG)in late 2012(the first standards organization of this kind in this domain)network operato
12、rs,communications technology(CT)vendors,information technology(IT)vendors,small and medium-sized enterprises(SME)and other core contributors(e.g.,from open source,academia and research communities)have been actively discussing and standardizing the NFV framework,which has become the telco cloud&virt
13、ualization network architecture of reference.The mixture of IT and traditional telecom networks viewpoints in NFV have also brought a challenging,yet an important network transformation environment.Traditionally,network operators and CT vendors have become accustomed to the consensus-based standard
14、development process,from which products are then developed and commercialized.However,the scenario of IT vendors and open source communities is different;these are based on a code-first process,whereby code is first developed and then contributed.These two ways of developing current telecom networks
15、 technology need to be brought together,as sides of the same coin;in this scenario,network operators,CT and IT vendors,and open source communities need to work together to bridge the gap between the two perspectives and facilitate broader support of NFV standards.For instance,while open source could
16、 further support and implement the standards as much as possible,standards could consider the borrow-in philosophy to take advantage of the core strength of open source in the specifications.Ten years after the emergence of NFV,and after major investments and network deployments based on it,it is th
17、e right time to consider how NFV can and will evolve.For this,it is important to understand and take actions to the requirements that telecom service providers consider for their telco cloud:1)unified network management;2)use of latest cloud-native,IT,automation and Artificial Intelligence(AI)open s
18、ource software,and 3)multi-vendor interoperability and migration among different clouds.Building on previous achievements,this White Paper analyzes different challenges and technology trends,and proposes several potential directions on how NFV can evolve in the next decade.Aspects about API developm
19、ent,open source,NFV multi-cloud,unified management,automation,and AI are considered as key drivers for the evolution.The White Paper is organized as follows:section 1 summarizes NFVs history;section 2 recaps learnings,experiences and challenges related to NFV and introduces various trends and opport
20、unities in network transformation that can play an important role for NFV.Section 3 develops the way forward for evolving NFV.Finally,section 4 concludes the White Paper.Evolving NFV towards the next decade 6 1 NFV:a short history The NFV concept was first proposed in 2012,almost at the same time as
21、 the ETSI ISG NFV was established.The group started its journey from a joint effort among telecom service providers and vendors.Key experts were entrusted to the development of a new approach to provide telecom networks based on virtualized technologies.ETSI ISG NFV attracted not only vendors of tel
22、ecom network systems,but also vendors of infrastructure and software enabling virtualization.From the very beginning,it was identified that a joint effort was needed to define requirements for an infrastructure required to be efficient,reliable,and capable(e.g.,with acceleration support)in order to
23、build a solid base for transitioning telecom networks towards clouds and NFV.NFVs success highly relies on this collaboration between network operators and vendors,and the consensus reached between them.By adopting cutting-edge IT technologies,NFV has been increasingly influenced by open source comm
24、unities,especially considering commercially available network deployments wherein integrated solutions have been built based on key reference open source projects.Indeed,at very early stages it was identified that,in order to realize the NFV from a simple theoretical concept to real commercializatio
25、n,the ETSI ISG NFV needed to join efforts with open source communities as well,to get benefits from both formal standards and de-facto standards and accelerate the development based on readily available open source based solutions.Examples of such collaboration came in early during the first years o
26、f the ISG,like the creation of the OPNFV which was tasked to release NFV integration solutions based on existing IT and open source software.Later,as the network and service orchestration became particularly important for service providers,a number of other open source communities such as OSM,OPEN-O
27、,and ONAP built upon the concepts from NFV.Initial stages of the ISG focused on checking the feasibility of NFV,which subsequently transitioned into formal development of standards for interoperability.Since then,the ETSI ISG NFV has published dozens of NFV specifications.These have been grouped,rel
28、eased,and evolved through a sequence of NFV Releases,in a short recapitulation:NFV Release 1 laid the concepts foundation,NFV Release 2 provided the first set of interoperable implementation solutions,and NFV Release 3 enhanced the NFV framework by addressing operational matters.From NFV Release 4,a
29、dditional support for containerized VNFs towards more cloud-native deployment and automation has been specified.Finally,the ongoing NFV Release 5 is dealing with the consolidation of various ecosystems which have had a profound impact on many NFV related standards organizations and open source commu
30、nities,including 3GPP,TM Forum,LFN(e.g.,Anuket,ONAP,Nephio,etc.).As a promoter of network transformation and a key enabler of technology evolution,NFV technologies are continuously evolving,starting from the earliest LTEs core network virtualization based on virtual machine(VM)virtualization technol
31、ogy,to 5G network cloud deployments based on OS container virtualization technology and with basic level of automation capabilities.As a matter of fact,NFV has played a key role in defining 5G.As an example,the 3GPP defined 5G system architecture and the design of 5G core network service-based archi
32、tecture(SBA)were heavily influenced by NFV,even to a point that one could claim that“5G is an NFV-native network”.Today,practically all product portfolios for 5G core network deployments offered by vendors comprise of virtualized network functions based on ETSI NFV standards.Evolving NFV towards the
33、 next decade 7 Recently,with the introduction of the concept of autonomous network,the NFV standards are not scoped to network virtualization matters only(like VM or OS container-based virtualization)but are rather extending as well to other more transversal and multi-faceted technology areas.Exampl
34、es are the efforts to consider AI for IT operations(AIOps)related services,models and interfaces into scope,such as intent-driven network service(NS)lifecycle management,management data analysis,Platform-as-a-Service(PaaS)and related VNF generic OAM functions.While the level of achievements and real
35、 benefits of NFV might not equate among all service providers worldwide,partly also due to the particular use cases and contexts where these operate,the reality shows us that,based on the ETSI NFV architecture,service providers have been able to build ultra-large-scale telco cloud infrastructures ba
36、sed on cross-layer and multi-vendor interoperability.For example,one of the worlds largest telco clouds based on the ETSI NFV standard architecture includes distributed infrastructure of multiple centralized regions and hundreds of edge data centers,with a total of more than 100,000 servers.In addit
37、ion,some network operators have also achieved very high ratios of virtualization(i.e.,amount of virtualized network functions compared to legacy ATCA-based network elements)in their targeted network systems,e.g.,above 70%in the case of 4G and 5G core network systems.In addition,ETSI NFV standards ar
38、e continuously providing essential value for wider-scale multi-vendor interoperability,also into the hyperscaler ecosystem as exemplified by recent announcements on offering support for ETSI NFV specifications in offered telco network management service solutions.2 Challenges,trends,and opportunitie
39、s for NFV 2.1 Declarative intent-driven network operations It is becoming apparent that there is growing complexity inherent to disaggregated network deployments,due to the introduction of virtualization and cloudification technologies(from a vertical network disaggregation perspective),as well as t
40、oo fined-grained customization experienced in actual network development.To cope with the growing complexity and to simplify network operations,more generic management solutions are being envisioned and becoming a reality.This can help service providers cover a broader spectrum of use cases,both at
41、the network deployment level,as well as at the operations level with a common generic management toolset.In both levels,NFV technologies bring major opportunities,not only in offering a framework for deploying networks on a more unified physical and virtual infrastructure,but also in providing a gen
42、eric management and resource services platform.Moreover,simplification drives towards network operations efficiency and agility,which applies to the network itself and the services offered over the network.This improves customer satisfaction and the perception of telecom operators.In particular,the
43、introduction of declarative intent-based operations can play a key role to simplify NFV network operations.The declarative intent-driven operation only needs API to be consumed and exposed by/to managed objects desired state to maintain.This shifts more responsibility to the API producer management
44、function into fulfilling the desired state,as well as it demands additional orchestration capabilities to be supported by it.This more declarative operation manner has been successful in diverse management and orchestration systems,like those dedicated to managing OS containers from an infrastructur
45、e point of view,as well as others in the services level management.Evolving NFV towards the next decade 8 2.2 The rise of containerization and heterogeneous infrastructure When NFV started,virtual machine was the dominant and most mature virtualization technology in the industry at the time.Therefor
46、e,it was a natural choice for the NFV community to design the architecture,models,and interfaces around VM-based virtualization technology like those offered by KVM as hypervisor layer,Open vSwitch for virtual networking,OpenStack as virtual infrastructure management,etc.However,NFV has,since the ve
47、ry beginning,the ambition to create a virtualization technology agnostic reference architecture and associated solutions;as examples,concepts such as virtualization container and virtualization deployment unit(VDU)were created to abstract the differences of the underlying infrastructure.However,abst
48、racting different virtualization technologies is not an easy task as available upstream solutions to build NFV have very specific technology-dependent factors.The benefits of VM-based virtualization technology,such as their more dynamic manageability with respect to legacy hardware-based solutions,a
49、s well as the good levels of isolation,security and performance have proved to be a key asset in past and current NFV deployments.It could even be said that some network functions benefit greatly by the stability and maturity of the VM-based virtualization technologies,which is a perfect match when
50、considering the stringent long-term support and maintenance requirements of telecom networks.The OS container virtualization technology(or more commonly referred as containers)is becoming over time the main choice by many developments of cloud-native based micro services applications.Among its advan
