Orchestrierung von Netzwerkfunktionen
OpenBaton is a platform for Network Function Virtualization Management and Orchestration shutterstock

OpenBaton Release 2: Increasing flexibility in Network Function Virtualization Management and Orchestration 

News from May 18, 2016

The researchers of the business unit “Software-based Networks” extended their open-source ETSI NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) compliant platform with additional components and communication mechanisms. 

Open Baton enables virtual Network Services deployment on top of multiple cloud-infrastructures and thereby builds a bridge between cloud computing service providers that have to understand Network Functions and Network Function providers requiring the appropriate infrastructure support for their virtualization. In this second release, Open Baton switched to an AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) based standard messaging system (RabbitMQ) that provides a standard interface for the communication between entities and simplifies the interoperability with external components or with Virtual Network Function Managers (VNFMs). In addition, an extended set of new external modules have been released including an auto-scaling system for the automatic runtime management of the Virtual Network Function operations and a fault management system. The event mechanism was also improved providing the interested entities a more precise mechanism for retrieving VNFs lifecycle events. These modules combined with the improved plugin mechanism and the Network Function Virtualization Orchestrator Software Development Kit (NFVO-SDK) allow fast prototyping of new advanced features without requiring any modifications to the orchestration logic.

In a nutshell, OpenBaton release 2 consists of the following components: 

  • a Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Orchestrator that dynamically orchestrates carrier-grade network functions and services as well as infrastructure resources,
  • a generic Virtual Network Function Manager (gVNFM) that dynamically manages the functions, 
  • a plugin mechanism for adding and removing different types of Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) without having to re-write anything in the orchestration logic,
  • a powerful event engine based on a pub/ sub mechanism for the dispatching of lifecycle events to the registered external modules,
  • an auto-scaling engine which can be used for automatic runtime management of the scaling operations of the Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), 
  • a fault management system which can be used for automatic runtime management of faults which may occur at any level, 
  • a set of libraries for the creation of customized VNFM, 
  • a Command Line Interface (CLI) useful for quickly managing network functions from a terminal , 
  • a user-friendly dashboard through which the platform can be administrated.
Each of these components can be started or stopped independently according to the use case. OpenBaton combined with a monitoring solution (i.e. Zabbix) represents the most advanced open source MANO platform available for NFV prototyping. The platform can be easily installed on existing cloud-infrastructures like OpenStack.