TOMMANO—Virtualised Network Functions Management in Cloud Environment based on the TOSCA Standard

Abstract

Since 2012 NFV (Network Functions Virtualisation) technology has evolved significantly and became widespread. Before the advent of this technology, proprietary network devices had to be used to process traffic. NFV technology allows you to simplify the configuration of network functions and reduce the cost of traffic processing by using software modules running on completely standard datacenter servers (in virtual machines). However, deploying and maintaining virtualised network functions (such as firewall, NAT, spam filter, access speed restriction) in the form of software components, changing the configurations of these components, and manually configuring traffic routing are still complicated operations. The problems described exist due to the huge number of network infrastructure components and differences in the functionality of chosen software, network operating systems and cloud platforms. In particular, the problem is relevant for the biomedical data analysis platform of the world-class Scientific Center of Sechenov University. In this article, we propose a solution to this problem by creating a framework TOMMANO that allows you to automate the deployment of virtualised network functions on virtual machines in cloud environments. It converts OASIS TOSCA [5, 6] declarative templates in notation corresponding to the ETSI MANO [2] for NFV standard into normative TOSCA templates and sets of Ansible scripts. Using these outputs an application containing virtualised network functions can be deployed by the TOSCA orchestrator in any cloud environment it supports. The developed TOMMANO framework received a certificate of state registration of the computer program no. 2023682112 dated October 23, 2023. In addition, this article provides an example of using this framework for the automatic deployment of network functions. In this solution Cumulus VX is used as the provider operating system of network functions. Clouni is used as an orchestrator. Openstack is used as a cloud provider.