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5 Reference NFVI SW profiles and configurations

scope

Table of Contents

5.1 NFVI SW profile description

NFVI Software layer is composed of 2 layers, Figure 5-1: - The virtualisation Infrastructure layer, which is based on hypervisor virtualisation technology or container-based virtualisation technology. Container virtualisation can be nested in hypervisor-based virtualisation - The host OS layer

ref_profiles

Figure 5-1: NFVI software layers.

For a host (compute node or physical server), the virtualization layer is an abstraction layer between hardware components (compute, storage and network resources) and virtual resources allocated to VNF-C, each VNF-C generally maps 1:1 against a single VM or a single container/pod. Figure 5-2 represents the virtual resources (virtual compute, virtual network and virtual storage) allocated to VNF-C and managed by the VIM.

b_ref_profile

Figure 5-2: NFVI- Virtual resources.

Depending on the requirements of VNFs, a VNFC will be deployed with a NFVI instance type and an appropriate compute flavour. A NFVI instance type is defined by a NFVI SW profile and a NFVI HW profile. A NFVI SW profile is a set of virtual resources with specific behaviour, capabilities and metrics. Figure 5-3 depicts a high level view of software profiles for Basic, Network Intensive and Compute intensive instances types.

ref_profiles

Figure 5-3: NFVI software profiles.

The following sections detail the NFVI SW profile features per type of virtual resource. The list of these features will evolve over time.

5.1.1 Virtual Compute

Table 5-1 and Table 5-2 depict the features related to virtual compute.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.com.cfg.001 Support of flavours Flavours Support of compute Flavours defined in Compute Flavour's catalogue.
nfvi.com.cfg.002 CPU partionning Value CPU dedicated to the host and CPU dedicated to VNFs
nfvi.com.cfg.003 CPU allocation ratio Value Number of virtual cores per physical core
nfvi.com.cfg.004 NUMA awareness Yes/No Support of NUMA at the virtualization layer
nfvi.com.cfg.005 CPU pinning capability Yes/No Binding of a process to a dedicated CPU
nfvi.com.cfg.006 Huge Pages Yes/No Ability to manage huge pages of memory

Table 5-1: Virtual Compute features.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.com.acc.cfg.001 Editor Note: To be worked on

Table 5-2: Virtual Compute Acceleration features.

5.1.2 Virtual Storage

Table 5-3 and Table 5-4 depict the features related to virtual storage.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.stg.cfg.001 Storage Types Supported Storage types.
nfvi.stg.cfg.002 Storage Block Yes/No
nfvi.stg.cfg.003 Storage Object Yes/No
nfvi.stg.cfg.004 Storage with replication Yes/No
nfvi.stg.cfg.005 Storage with encryption Yes/No

Table 5-3: Virtual Storage features.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.stg.acc.cfg.001 Storage IOPS oriented Yes/No
nfvi.stg.acc.cfg.002 Storage capacity oriented Yes/No

Table 5-4: Virtual Storage Acceleration features.

5.1.3 Virtual Networking

Table 5-5 and Table 5-6 depict the features related to virtual networking.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.net.cfg.001 vNIC interface IO virtualisation e.g. virtio1.1, i40evf (Intel driver for VF SR-IOV).
nfvi.net.cfg.002 Overlay protocol Protocols The overlay network encapsulation protocol needs to enable ECMP in the underlay to take advantage of the scale-out features of the network fabric.
nfvi.net.cfg.003 NAT Yes/No Support of Network Address Translation
nfvi.net.cfg.004 Security Groups Yes/No Set of rules managing incoming and outgoing network traffic
nfvi.net.cfg.005 SFC Yes/No Support of Service Function Chaining
nfvi.net.cfg.006 Traffic patterns symmetry Yes/No Traffic patterns should be optimal, in terms of packet flow. North-south traffic shall not be concentrated in specific elements in the architecture, making those critical choke-points, unless strictly necessary (i.e. when NAT 1:many is required).
nfvi.net.cfg.007 Horizontal scaling Yes/No The VNF cluster must be able to scale horizontally and to leverage technologies such as ECMP to enable scale-outs/scale-ins, privileging Active-Active HA models, even though this may require some level of application re-design to cope with the need of sharing state between VNF instances

Table 5-5: Virtual Networking features.

.conf Feature Type Description
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.001 vSwitch optimization Yes/No and SW Optimization e.g. DPDK.
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.002 Support of HW offload Yes/No e.g. support of SR-IOV, SmartNic.
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.003 Crypto acceleration Yes/No
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.004 Crypto Acceleration Interface Yes/No

Table 5-6: Virtual Networking Acceleration features.

5.1.4 Security

5.2 NFVI reference SW profiles and configurations

This section will detail NFVI SW profiles and associated configurations for the 3 types of NFVI instances: Basic, Network intensive and Compute intensive.

5.2.1 Virtual Compute features and configurations

Table 5-7 depicts the features and configurations related to virtual compute for the 3 types of reference NFVI instances.

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.com.cfg.001 Support of flavours Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.com.cfg.002 CPU partionning value
nfvi.com.cfg.003 CPU allocation ratio value 1:4 1:1 1:1
nfvi.com.cfg.004 NUMA awareness Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.com.cfg.005 CPU pinning capability Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.com.cfg.006 Huge Pages Yes/No N Y Y

Table 5-7: Virtual Compute features and configuration for the 3 types of SW profiles.

Table 5-8 will gather virtual compute acceleration features. It will be filled over time.

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.com.acc.cfg.001 Editor Note: To be worked on

Table 5-8: Virtual Compute Acceleration features.

5.2.2 Virtual Storage features and configuration

Table 5-9 and Table 5-10 depict the features and configurations related to virtual storage for the 3 types of reference NFVI instances.

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.stg.cfg.001 Catalogue storage Types Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.stg.cfg.002 Storage Block Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.stg.cfg.003 Storage Object Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.stg.cfg.004 Storage with replication Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.stg.cfg.005 Storage with encryption Yes/No N N Y

Table 5-9: Virtual Storage features and configuration for the 3 types of SW profiles.

Table 5-10 depicts the features related to Virtual storage Acceleration

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.stg.acc.cfg.001 Storage IOPS oriented Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.stg.acc.cfg.002 Storage capacity oriented Yes/No N N Y

Table 5-10: Virtual Storage Acceleration features.

5.2.3 Virtual Networking features and configurations

Table 5-11 and Table 5-12 depict the features and configurations related to virtual networking for the 3 types of reference NFVI instances.

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.net.cfg.001 vNIC interface IO virtualisation virtio1.1 virtio1.1, i40evf (Intel driver for VF SR-IOV) virtio1.1, i40evf (Intel driver for VF SR-IOV)
nfvi.net.cfg.002 Overlay protocol Protocols VXLAN, MPLSoUDP, GENEVE, other VXLAN, MPLSoUDP, GENEVE, other VXLAN, MPLSoUDP, GENEVE, other
nfvi.net.cfg.003 NAT Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.net.cfg.004 Security Group Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.net.cfg.005 SFC support Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.net.cfg.006 Traffic patterns symmetry Yes/No Y Y Y
nfvi.net.cfg.007 Horizontal scaling Yes/No Y Y Y

Table 5-11: Virtual Networking features and configuration for the 3 types of SW profiles.

.conf Feature Type Basic Network Intensive Compute Intensive
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.001 vSwitch optimization YeS/No and SW Optimization N Y, DPDK Y, DPDK
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.002 Support of HW offload YeS/No N Y, support of SR-IOV and SmartNic Y, support of SR-IOV and SmartNic
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.003 Crypto acceleration Yes/No N Y Y
nfvi.net.acc.cfg.004 Crypto Acceleration Interface Yes/No N Y Y

Table 5-12: Virtual Networking Acceleration features.