Supporting MANOaaS and Heterogenous MANOaaS Deployment Within the Zero-Touch Network and Service Management Framework

Abstract

With the deployment of network slicing in fifth generation (5G) systems, telecom operators can partition their physical infrastructure into a number of distinct network services. However, the advantages of network slicing come at the price of higher complexity in operating and managing telecom networks. To cope with such complexity, the ETSI zero-touch network and service management (ZSM) framework is designed as a next-generation management system that aims to ideally have all operational processes and tasks executed automatically. ETSI has defined a procedure to deploy the network-slice-as-a-service (NSaaS) scenario using the ZSM reference architecture. Two important use-cases for a more ambitious NSaaS model are MANO-as-a-service (MANOaaS) and heterogeneous MANO-as-a-service (H-MANOaaS), where multiple instances of the same (MANOaaS) or different (H-MANOaaS) MANO frameworks are deployed over the same physical substrate. We propose a conceptual model for supporting the never-addressed H-MANOaaS use-case. We also offer a blueprint to integrate the MANOaaS and H-MANOaaS use-cases into the ZSM procedures and mechanisms. We then validate the H-MANOaaS deployment use-case with a proof-of-concept where our proposed solution is instantiated using a real-world slice-as-a-service platform and some relevant implementations of different MANO frameworks.