Dec 1, 2015 - services. While the networks have been repeatedly reconstructed, key aspects of ... virtualized, cloud-bas
SBC Evolution to Virtualization and Cloud Deployments December 2015
Copyright Copyright © 2015 Sonus Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. This item and the information contained herein are the property of Sonus Networks, Inc. This publication may be used, copied, or distributed only in accordance with the terms of the license agreement. Any other use, reproduction, or distribution may occur only upon Sonus’ prior written consent. Disclaimer and Restrictions The content in this document is for informational purposes only and is subject to change by Sonus Networks without notice. While reasonable efforts have been made in the preparation of this publication to assure its accuracy, Sonus Networks assumes no liability resulting from technical or editorial errors or omissions, or for any damages resulting from the use of this information. Unless specifically included in a written agreement with Sonus Networks, Sonus Networks has no obligation to develop or deliver any future release or upgrade, or any feature, enhancement, or function. Trademarks Sonus and the Sonus logo are registered trademarks of Sonus Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks may be the property of their respective owners. The Sonus Networks, Inc. trademarks may not be used in connection with any product or service that is not Sonus Networks' in any manner that is likely to cause confusion among customers or in any manner that disparages or discredits Sonus Networks, Inc.
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Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Evolution of the Virtual SBC Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Elasticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Load Balancing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 High Availability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
NFV Orchestration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Single Management View in the Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Applying Software-Defined Networking for SBC Decomposition . . . . . . . . 6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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Introduction Telecommunication networks are continuously evolving to remain efficient, drive down costs, increase scale, and support innovative services. While the networks have been repeatedly reconstructed, key aspects of how the physical networks were constructed fundamentally remained the same. The technologies used for communication across the networks have changed, along with the transport and physical connectivity technologies. The networks are mainly still comprised of vertically integrated nodes purposebuilt for specific functions and configured to communicate to other network nodes. This is finally beginning to change, as Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are adopted. NFV and SDN provide the most disruptive change in telecommunications since the transition to all-IP networks. Network Function Virtualization: Existing telecommunications networks were developed with various vertically integrated network functions. These network functions are specific to an application which operates on proprietary hardware, and are co-dependent. Historically, it has been cost prohibitive to replicate the functionality of an application on generic computing hardware without specialized chips and hardware. Now, with lower costs of generic computing power, and coupled with the raw increase in performance, the industry has reached a point where a large set of applications that were previously coupled to proprietary hardware can now be run on generic commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computing hardware. NFV is a tool that can be used to help migrate telecommunications applications into cloud environments. Software-Defined Networking: Traditionally, telecommunications equipment has been vertically integrated with higher level control software coupled with lower level transport functions to deliver a specific network function. SDN enables the decoupling of the data and control planes that co-exist by introducing an API (such as OpenFlow) between the two planes. The data plane continues to be implemented in appropriate hardware elements, possibly already existing in the network. The control plane now exists separately on a generic computing server or is even virtualized in the Cloud. The “centralization” of network control makes it possible to be much more creative and adaptive with the control plane software. Sonus has a completely virtualized product portfolio including Session Border Controllers (SBCs), Policy/Routing servers (PSX), WebRTC Services, Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC), Cloud Exchange Networking Control (VellOS), Element Management System (EMS), DataStream Integrator (DSI), and NetScore. By leveraging the same hardened codebase across both hardware and softwareonly solutions, Sonus provides customers a migration path from today’s hardware-based network to NFV and the Cloud. This paper will explore Sonus’ strategy for evolving its SBC software architecture that leverages both NFV and SDN in the evolution to private and public cloud environments. It will address many aspects of the evolution from a traditional vertically integrated, custom-hardware-centric architecture to a flexible, software-defined and highly elastic future.
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Evolution of the Virtual SBC Architecture Sonus has undertaken many initiatives in recent years to ensure its SBC software architecture can integrate smoothly into virtualized, cloud-based environments. A software-based SBC running on a virtual platform in a cloud deployment must deliver the same functions as a hardware-based SBC and also support a new generation of advanced IP communications services. This shift to virtualized, cloud-based SBCs allows service providers to:
• Simplify hardware requirements by eliminating the need for proprietary SBC hardware. • Acquire hardware with a short lead time and turn up an SBC in days, or if hardware is already available it is possible to turn up new services within minutes. Contrast this with today’s networks, where this could take weeks or months.
• Use resources more efficiently by being deployed along with other applications on standard IT hardware. Service providers no longer have to support unique hardware platforms at each site.
• Deliver scalable and shareable infrastructures by using a common, distributed infrastructure that features centralized management and orchestration capabilities. Service providers can achieve new economies of scale by sharing this infrastructure across many applications.
• Increase automation with support for standardized tools that automate the installation, configuration, and provisioning of network elements, helping service providers reduce costs and accelerate time to market for new services.
• Optimize total cost of ownership, since virtualized SBCs can be sized to fit the edge profile of the cloud network at deployment time. Service providers can implement virtualized SBCs in small points of presence that support a few thousand subscribers, or in large central offices or data centers that support millions of subscribers. SBCs – which represent critical network functionality for real-time communications – will remain a mandatory component as service providers harness the power of NFV and move forward with their implementation strategies for virtualization. Service providers will have to pay close attention to three key aspects in migrating to a virtualized cloud-based SBC, including scaling on-demand, load balancing (managing scalable resources), and high availability.
Elasticity A significant advantage of the cloud environment is the ease and speed at which a new “logical” server, i.e., a Virtual Machine (VM), can be deployed. Given the ability to perform scaling on-demand, it becomes possible to much more closely match service sizing with current demand, scaling up when load increases and scaling down when load subsides. Service providers can allocate specific SBC VMs on-demand to support new services or enhance existing ones, as well as temporarily allocating VMs to support high traffic volumes generated by holidays such as Mother’s Day. By capitalizing on the flexibility of virtualized SBCs, service providers can reinvent how they deliver their real-time communications services. To derive the most benefit from on-demand scaling, the turn-up and turn-down of SBC instances need to be automated and touchless.
Load Balancing The load balancing of resources is a critical role in leveraging and maintaining availability in cloud environments. To successfully leverage the advantages of a cloud environment, load balancing is essential for the scalable deployment of SBCs. With a welldesigned load balancing strategy, service providers can scale SBC resources more effectively, ultimately enabling the components executing the work to relocate work to less busy ones in order to fine tune the overall status of the application processing. Service providers can add or delete SBC capacity gradually, without committing large upfront capacity or reconfiguring other network elements.
High Availability Real-time applications in a virtualized, cloud-based environment have the same high availability requirements for service, subscriber, and call resiliency as they do in traditional network environments. These requirements warrant an architecture where critical state information in an SBC is backed up in another node, ready to take over the traffic in the event of failure. Any change in the network is transparent to all peers, and no action is required to achieve this seamless transition. Sonus will replicate the same very effective techniques used in the hardware-based SBCs to ensure high availability for real-time applications in cloud-based environments.
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NFV Orchestration The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has taken the lead to specify the architecture and protocols necessary to operate an NFV-oriented network, going beyond the simple statements of “everything must be virtualized” or “everything must support OpenStack”. ETSI is reviewing the service provider requirements to manage a complete network of services day to day, including on-boarding, instantiating, chaining (via service graphs), scaling up and down, and taking down a service or one or more VNFs. The ETSI architecture addresses many issues created by the operational gaps left by hypervisors and OpenStack. As an active member of the ETSI for more than a decade, Sonus has a very pragmatic approach to NFV orchestration with support for standard OpenStack, as well as ETSI-based interfaces. As defined by ETSI, Sonus will provide its SBC applications as VNFs and provide the management modules to manage these VNFs in the application orchestration space. As a result, the Sonus elements can be turned up in a variety of cloud environments. Sonus has partnered with market-leading orchestration vendors to facilitate VNF implementations. For those service providers that want a vendor to provide a more turn-key and integrated solution, Sonus has implemented a VNFM (VNF Manager) as per the ETSI specifications. In concert with the Sonus Element Management System (EMS), this allows a service provider who wants the applications to be more self-contained to interface with the VNF at a higher “service” level, leaving more of the life cycle management to the VNF itself.
Single Management View in the Cloud The philosophy of Sonus cloud management is to enable service providers to create a virtualized SBC with a single management view of the cloud network – essentially hiding the underlying complexities of cloud applications through automation and transparency. Sonus’ strategy for cloud management works in tandem with its strategy for virtualization and scaling. The cloud management framework supports full centralized management in cloud environments, including:
• Logical representation of Sonus cloud applications at the management console • Simplified logical cluster view of the cloud applications, greatly simplifying complex cloud management tasks • Support for network-wide floating licenses and use of centralized, template-based configuration distribution • Automatic registration and configuration of virtual nodes through third-party or service-level orchestration • Support for OpenStack (natively or via VNFM) • Centralized backup and restore solutions, centralized software administration and download mechanisms • Cloud-level aggregation of alarms and statistics • Aggregated fault management view and consolidated performance reports The Sonus Element Management System (EMS) will integrate seamlessly with the Sonus virtualized network functions, supporting orchestration in conjunction with the Sonus VNFM or third-party orchestrators. Most importantly, it enables cloud management through automated node registration and configuration support for elasticity and cloud level aggregation of alarms and statistics.
Applying Software-Defined Networking for SBC Decomposition The traditional model for an SBC is a vertically integrated unit, with a tightly coupled control and data plane. The control plane is call signaling (SIP) aware, and uses this information to dictate how the IP packets for media pass through its data plane. This interaction enables the SBC to police and control the packets that are routed through it. An NFV infrastructure needs to support network functions across many geographical locations. It also needs to be a highly reliable, high-performance solution that can interwork easily with legacy networks. As more service providers adopt SDN concepts, there are more opportunities to reimagine how an SBC application functions. With SDN, it is possible to envisage the entire network forwarding plane as one big data plane used by the SBC. By evolving the SBC to allow it to programmatically determine the requirements for the underlying network resources, it can adjust the flow behavior of packets across the network, as applicable to each SBC session, and dynamically ensure Quality of Service.
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Sonus’ strategy for a virtualized SBC includes splitting apart the SBC into signaling, media, and transcoding functions – a decomposition of services that are each fully and independently virtualized. The ability to independently scale and manage SBC signaling, media, and transcoding functions isritical to optimize network investment.
Conclusion Sonus has outlined evolution plans for its SBC to a cloud-enabled, scalable, distributed, and SDN-aware solution. This evolution is based on Sonus’ unique advantage to leverage its intellectual property and expertise in security, signaling, scalable performance, media interworking, and transcoding, in order to deliver a best-in-class, software-based, virtualized SBC. As was discussed, there are many aspects of this SBC evolution, each of which needs to be analyzed and understood on its own merits, as well as combined into an overall view of how a virtualized, cloud-based SBC will be deployed. For service providers, Sonus recognizes there are many possible migration paths from the traditional vertically integrated, customized hardware-centric way of building networks, to the more flexible, software-defined, and highly elastic future way of building networks. Because Sonus shares a common codebase between its hardware and virtualized SBC, this evolution can begin at multiple points within a service provider’s network, in concert with adoption plans for NFV, SDN, and the overall cloud infrastructure. Based upon our strategic vision for virtualized cloud-based SBCs, Sonus is committed to working with each service provider to achieve the best possible deployment model for their specific network and in alignment with their network evolution strategy.
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About Sonus Networks Sonus enables and secures real-time communications so the world’s leading service providers and enterprises can embrace the next generation of SIP and 4G/LTE solutions, including VoIP, video, instant messaging, and online collaboration. With customers in more than 50 countries and nearly two decades of experience, Sonus offers a complete portfolio of hardware-based and virtualized Session Border Controllers (SBCs), Diameter Signaling Controllers (DSCs), Cloud Exchange Networking Platform, policy/routing servers, and media and signaling gateways. For more information, visit www.sonus.net or call 1-855-GO-SONUS. Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
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To learn more, call Sonus at 855-GO-SONUS or visit us online at www.sonus.net The content in this document is for informational purposes only and is subject to change by Sonus Networks without notice. While reasonable efforts have been made in the preparation of this publication to assure its accuracy, Sonus Networks assumes no liability resulting from technical or editorial errors or omissions, or for any damages resulting from the use of this information. Unless specifically included in a written agreement with Sonus Networks, Sonus Networks has no obligation to develop or deliver any future release or upgrade, or any feature, enhancement or function. Copyright © 2015 Sonus Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks or registered service marks may be the property of their respective owners.
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