Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Testing Best Practices

Contents 1.

Scope............................................................................................................................... 3

2.

References....................................................................................................................... 3

3.

Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. 3

4.

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 7 NFV Framework ........................................................................................................... 7 NFV Use Cases ............................................................................................................. 8

5.

Assuring compliance to ESTI ISG Standards ...................................................................... 9

6.

NFV Test Environment ................................................................................................... 10

7.

NFV Test Techniques ..................................................................................................... 11 Static Test.................................................................................................................. 11 Oracle Testing ........................................................................................................... 11

8.

Test Case #1: MANO ..................................................................................................... 12 NFV Orchestrator: ..................................................................................................... 12 VNF Manager: ........................................................................................................... 13 Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM): ................................................................. 13 Orchestrator – VNF Manager (Or-Vnfm) .................................................................... 13 Virtualised Infrastructure Manager – VNF Manager (Vi-Vnfm) ................................... 13 Orchestrator – Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (Or-Vi) ......................................... 13 OSS/BSS – NFV MANO (Os-Ma) .................................................................................. 14 VNF – VNF Manager .................................................................................................. 14

9.

Test Case #2: Failover Convergence Testing (C.1.2.2) ..................................................... 15

10.

Test Case #3: Security .................................................................................................... 16

11.

Test Case #4: VNF Migration (C.1.2.3) ............................................................................ 17

12.

Test Case #5: Scalability (C.1.2.1) ................................................................................... 18

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1. Scope The document provides a list of best practices to be used for ensuring smooth migration of Network Elements and Services to NFV environment. It is recognized that certain portion of the best practices and recommendation are not required in all cases of VNFs migration. 2. References This document is based on ESTI ISG NFV Standards. The following referenced documents are served as a baseline for this document: GS NFV 001

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Use Cases

GS NFV 003

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Terminology for Main Concepts

NFV GS NFV 004

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Virtualisation Requirements

GS NFV-PER 001

Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); NFV Performance & Portability Best Practises

3. API ARP AS BBU BFD BGP BIOS BNG BRAS BW CDN CGNAT CHD CIFS COTS CPE CPU C-RAN CVLAN DCB

Abbreviations Application Programming Interface Address Resolution Protocol Application Server Base Band Unit Bidirectional Forwarding Detection Border Gateway Protocol Basic Input/Output System Broadband Network Gateway Broadband Remote Access Server Bandwidth Content Delivery Network Carrier Grade Network Address Translation Compute Host Descriptor Common Internet File System Commercial Off-The-Shelf Customer Premises Equipment Central Processing Unit Cloud-Radio Access Network Customer VLAN Data Center Bridging

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DDoS DDR2 DDR3 DHCP DMA DPI DSLAM DUT E-CPE ERPS FFT FIB FTP FW GB GE GGSN GPRS GPS GRE GUI GW HTML HTTP HW I/O I-CSCF IMS IO IOMMU IOTLB IP IPC IPoE IPsec ISIS ETSI 9 KPI L4 L7

Distributed Denial of Service Double Data Rate type 2 Double Data Rate type 3 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Direct Memory Access Deep Packet Inspection Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer Device Under Test Enterprise-Customer Premises Equipment Ethernet Ring Protection Switching Fast Fourier Transform Forwarding Information Base File Transfer Protocol Firewall GigaByte Gigabit Ethernet Gateway GPRS Support Node General Packet Radio Service Global Positioning System Generic Routing Encapsulation Graphical User Interface Gateway HyperText Markup Language HyperText Transfer Protocol Hardware Input/Output Interrogating-Call Session Control Function IP Multimedia Subsystem Input Output Input/Output Memory Management Unit I/O Translation Lookaside Buffer Internet Protocol Inter-Process Communication IP over Ethernet IP security Intermediate System to Intermediate System ETSI GS NFV-PER 001 V1.1.1 (2014-06) Key Performance Indicator Layer 4 Layer 7

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LPM MAC MAN MANO MGCF MME MMU MOS MOS-AV MPLS MSE N/A NAS NAT NF NFV NFVI NIC NID NUMA OLT ONT ONU OS OSPF OVF P2P PCI PCIe PCIe VF PCI-SIG PCRF P-CSCF PDN PE P-GW PNF PPP PPPoE PSNR

Longest Prefix Match Media Access Control Metropolitan Area Network MANagement and Orchestration Media Gateway Controller Function Mobility Management Entity Memory Management Unit Mean Opinion Score MOS-Audio & Video Multi-Protocol Label Switching Mean Square Error Not Applicable Network-Attached Storage Network Address Translation Network Function Network Functions Virtualisation Network Functions Virtualisation Infrastructure Network Interface Card Network Interface Device Non-Uniform Memory Access Optical Line Terminal Optical Network Terminal Optical Network Unit Operating System Open Shortest Path First Open Virtualisation Format Peer-to-Peer Peripheral Component Interconnect PCI Express PCIe Virtual Function PCI Special Interest Group Policy and Charging Rules Function Proxy-Call Session Control Function Packet Data Network Provider Edge PDN-Gateway Physical Network Function Point-to-Point Protocol Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio

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QoE QoS R/W RADIUS RAM RAN RDMA RGW RIB RMS RoCE RX SAN S-CSCF SGSN S-GW SLA SMT SR-IOV SSIM ETSI10 STB STP SVLAN SW TC TCP TLB TWAMP TX VF VIA VIM VLAN VM VNF VQM VTA EMS KVM

Quality of Experience Quality of Service Read/Write Remote Authentication Dial In User Service Random Access Memory Radio Access Network Remote Direct Memory Access Residential Gateway Routing Information Base Root Mean of Squares RDMA over Converged Ethernet Reception Storage Area Network Serving-Call Session Control Function Serving GPRS Support Node Serving-Gateway Service Level Agreement Simultaneous Multi-Threading Single Root I/O Virtualisation Structural Similarity ETSI GS NFV-PER 001 V1.1.1 (2014-06) Set-Top-Box Spanning Tree Protocol Service VLAN Software Test Case Transmission Control Protocol Translation Lookaside Buffer Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol Transmission Virtual Function Virtual Interface Architecture Virtualised Infrastructure Manager Virtual Local Area Network Virtual Machine Virtualised Network Function Video Quality Metric Virtual Test Appliance Element Management System Kernel-based Virtual Machine

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DNS NTP SSH NFS TA ISV ABR CBR VBR RSS

Domain Name System Network Time Protocol Secure SHell Network File System Test Agent Independent Software Vendor Available Bit Rate Constant Bit Rate Variable Bit Rate Receive Side Scaling

4. Introduction Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a concept introduced by network operators in 2012 [Network Functions Virtualisation – Introductory White Paper]. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a network architecture concept that proposes using IT virtualization related technologies to virtualize entire classes of network node functions into building blocks that may be connected, or chained, together to create communication services. NFV relies upon, but differs from traditional server virtualization techniques such as those used in enterprise IT. A virtualized network function, or VNF, may consist of one or more virtual machines running different software and processes, on top of industry standard high volume servers, switches and storage, or even cloud computing infrastructure, instead of having custom hardware appliances for each network function. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has formed an Industry Specification Group on Network Function Virtualization (ISG NFV). The contributors of the NFV Introductory white paper as well as the ETSI ISG have identified Testing and QoE monitoring as one of the main use cases and subjects to address when implementing NFV environment.

NFV Framework The NFV framework consists of three main components. 1. Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) are software implementations of network functions that can be deployed on a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI). 2. NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) is the totality of all hardware and software components which build up the environment in which VNFs are deployed. The NFV-Infrastructure can

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span across several locations. The network providing connectivity between these locations is regarded to be part of the NFV-Infrastructure. 3. Network Functions Virtualization Management and Orchestration Architectural Framework (NFV-MANO Architectural Framework) is the collection of all functional blocks, data repositories used by these functional blocks, and reference points and interfaces through which these functional blocks exchange information for the purpose of managing and orchestrating NFVI and VNFs. The building block for both the NFVI and the NFV-MANO is the NFV platform. In the NFVI role, it consists of both virtual and physical compute and storage resources, and virtualization software. In its NFV-MANO role it consists of VNF and NFVI managers and virtualization software operating on a hardware controller. The NFV platform implements carrier-grade features used to manage and monitor the platform components, recover from failures and provide effective security - all required for the public carrier network.

NFV Use Cases The first standard issued by ESTI identified 9 use cases for NFV in GS NFV 001: Use Case #1:

NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) as a Service

Use Case #2:

Virtual Network Functions as a Service (VNFaaS)

Use Case #3:

Virtual Network Platform as a Service (VNPaaS)

Use Case #4:

VNF Forwarding Graphs

Use Case #5:

Virtualisation of Mobile Core Network and IMS

Use Case #6:

Virtualisation of Mobile Base Station

Use Case #7:

Virtualisation of the Home Environment

Use Case #8:

Virtualisation of CDNs (vCDN)

Use Case #9:

Fixed Access Network Functions Virtualisation

Each of those use cases requires different level of techniques and has different set of QoS and QoE KPIs. Nevertheless, from System Test point of view, same workload scenarios may apply for all use cases

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5.

Assuring compliance to ESTI ISG Standards

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6. NFV Test Environment Workload simulation

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7.

NFV Test Techniques

Static Test Oracle Testing

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8. Test Case #1: MANO The first step is to test NFV Management and Orchestration Architectural Framework.

NFV Orchestrator (NFVO)

NS Catalog

VNF Catalog

NFV Instance

NFV Instance

Or-Vnfm Manage

VNF Manager (VNFM)

Or-Vi Manag

Vi-Vnfm

Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM)

NFV Management and Orchestration Architecture

NFV Orchestrator: -

On-boarding of new Network Service (NS), VNF Forwarding Graphs (VNF-FG) and VNF Packages VNF lifecycle management (including instantiation, scale-out/in, Performance measurements, event correlation, termination) Monitoring and collection of information related to resource usage, including mapping of usage Scheduled request regarding VNF instances Global resource management, validation and authorization of NFVI resource requests Resources sharing between VNFs Policy management Constraints management SLA parameters Network capacity adaptation to load

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-

Coexistence with legacy network equipment Controlling and managing Inventory of versions, releases and patches of all units of hardware and software Maintenance, hardware and software exchange, SW upgrades, Firmware upgrades, repair Manage log of all changes to inventory, unexpected events and maintenance activities

VNF Manager: -

Lifecycle management of VNF instances Configuration and event reporting between NFVI and the E/NMS Liveness checking of an VNF, e.g. watchdog timer or keepalive Failure detection Fault remediation of each VNF resiliency category

Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM): -

Controlling and managing Inventory of software (hypervisors), computing, storage and network resources Collection and forwarding of performance measurements and events NFV Infrastructure faults collection and remediation Management of infrastructure resource and allocation, e.g. increase resource to VMs, improve energy efficiency and resource reclamation Root cause analysis of performance issues from the NFV infrastructure perspective Mechanism for time-stamping of hardware (e.g. network interface cards, NICs and NIDs)

Orchestrator – VNF Manager (Or-Vnfm) -

Resource related requests, e.g. authorization, validation, reservation, allocation by VNF Manager(s) Sending configuration information to the VNF Manager, so that the VNF can be configured appropriately to function within the VNF Forwarding Graph in the NS Collecting state information

Virtualised Infrastructure Manager – VNF Manager (Vi-Vnfm) -

Resource allocation requests Virtualised hardware resource configuration and state information (e,g. events) exchange

Orchestrator – Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (Or-Vi) -

Resource reservation and allocation Virtualised hardware resource configuration and state information (e,g. events)

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OSS/BSS – NFV MANO (Os-Ma) -

Requests for network service lifecycle management Requests for VNF lifecycle management Forwarding of NFV related state information Policy management exchanges Data analytics exchanges Forwarding of NFV related accounting and usage resords NFVI capacity and inventory information exchanges

VNF – VNF Manager -

Requests for VNF lifecycle management Exchanging configuration information Exchanging state information

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9.

Test Case #2: Failover Convergence Testing (C.1.2.2)

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10.

Test Case #3: Security

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11.

Test Case #4: VNF Migration (C.1.2.3)

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12.

Test Case #5: Scalability (C.1.2.1)

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