D2 ICE - Ecosystem & Innovation
ONAP VNF CERTIFICATION
PROGRAM (ONAP ICE)
Project Proposal
This project proposal introduces the objectives and goals for an ONAP VNF certification
program. It also outlines the relation to the open-sourcing of the AT&T D2 ICE process & tools
and its dependencies to the ONAP VNF Requirements & Guidelines.
Erik Sundelof
[email protected]
July 13, 2017
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ONAP VNF Certification Program – Project Proposal
Introduction
It is essential to for both operators and VNF providers utilizing ONAP to be
able to validate or certify VNFs using the ONAP VNF Requirements and
Guidelines to acquire an ONAP Compatible label.
Background
Introducing any platform requires a seamless and efficient process to validate any software
running on top of it to be designed per as the platform requirements. There is a large footprint in
the industry around this spanning from Web APIs to OS SDKs. There are also similar certification
programs for financial transactions such as Verisign. In telecom, certification programs have
been used for service definitions (e.g. MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 Certification) and interface
conformance (e.g. BBF TR-069 certified products).
There are of course also examples in the open-source communities. OpenStack allows products
providing a “functioning operational instance of the OpenStack software” (i.e. Powered by
OpenStack). OpenStack also software & hardware products compatible with the OpenStack APIs
to obtain the OpenStack Compatible logo. Another prominent open-source project Open
Compute Project (OCP) allows a hardware implementation to obtain an OCP Certified logo.
This project proposal outlines the options for any party developing VNFs intended to run on top
of it to be able to acquire a ONAP certified status for their VNF. It outlines the introduction of an
ONAP Certification Program to validate VNFs for seamless onboarding. This proposal does not
address any certification for functionality, resiliency, performance, or efficiency.
Objective & Goals
The overall objective of the proposal is to build & foster an active community at ONAP
contributing to all aspects of an ONAP VNF Certification program, and the key goals are:
1. Define and start to execute on a long-term strategy & goals to support and allow for a
resource efficient model for VNF validation across the combined ONAP ecosystem.
2. Build & foster an active contributor community across the ONAP ecosystem to support a
broad alignment & definition around the ONAP VNF requirements & Guidelines.
3. Introduce an efficient and seamless process to allow the community to contribute to all
aspects of the validation process and platform.
Scope & Key Deliverables
The scope for this project is to establish an ONAP VNF Certification Program by the end of 2017
allowing anyone to obtain an ONAP Compatible label for their VNFs. The key deliverables
currently identified for this project to be completed by the end of 2017 are:
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1. Define & establish an overall governance model for the program to properly
continuously define a scalable, and flexible model for certifying
2. Define & establish a resource-efficient model for VNF providers and other parties to
acquire an ONAP Compatible label.
3. Define & foster an active contributor community with at least 10 monthly active
contributors from 4 different companies or organization
4. Define a roadmap for the expansion of the program to include additional validation
scope and dependencies to other projects inside ONAP
It will be important as part of these deliverables to define ways for 3rd parties to carry out the
validation to allow for an efficient and broad adaption. The developed processes and tools will
be available for any use within the scope of the Apache 2.0 license and all changes to them must
be contributed back the ONAP community.
Exploring possible expansions to the validation scope is an essential part of this project and
especially looking to define specific steps to do so. Some immediate candidates would be to
validate the integration with DCAE and/or A&AI as well introducing validation of TOSCA
templates. This work by its very nature will need to be closely linked to the work with the ONAP
VNF Requirements and Guidelines.
Key related projects and components are the Open-O VNF SDK and the ONAP SDC component
who both will play important roles into defining the long-term direction for the program.
We have already approached the members of the ONAP community such as TechMahindra,
Ericsson, AmDocs, and Huawei to make sure there is enough active contributors from the start of
the project and even before the project starts.
Contributor Profiles
There are two main audience profiles which have distinctly different areas of interest.
Any party interested in creating VNF validation programs
based on the ONAP VNF Requirements & Guidelines
Any VNF provider interested in aligning their VNF based on
the ONAP VNF Requirements & Guidelines
Validation Process &
Tracking
Validation Scripts
✓
(✓)
✓
AT&T D2 ICE: Overview
AT&T D2 ICE is a suite of processes and tools by which to validate and incubate Virtual Functions
(VNFs) against the ECOMP and AIC architecture based on AT&T VNF Requirements & Guidelines.
AT&T D2 ICE validated 132 unique VNFs and carried out 238 validations in total during 2016. The
average total validation time decreased from 22+ business days to 4 business days during 2016.
The validation time is steadily decreasing this year and aimed to reach an average of 1 business
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day by the end of 2017. Our current validation process is the result of the unique number of
VNFs validated, but also as by having to address the very broad and diverse differences between
different VNFs and the ability to assemble a valid VNF package of the teams working on those.
The validation process has been design to efficiently and iteratively provide direct guidance to
allow a VNF to be seamlessly on-boarded into ECOMP and AIC, yet is not in any way dependent
on the requirements for those. A seamless and resource efficient onboarding is best
accomplished by shielding the end users from detailed test results and instead focusing on
providing actionable steps based on the test results.
Figure 1: The concept of D2 ICE
The outcome of a validation is a VNF Package which has been validated against a specific AIC
version, ECOMP release and VNF version. The VNF project team must provide a complete VNF
Package passing the Validation Criteria described later:



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HEAT template(s): All templates provided must be provided as valid yaml files, and have
the file extension .yaml.
Environment file(s): All environment files must be provided as valid yaml files, and have
the file extension of .env.
Glance image(s): All Glance images provided must be of the qcow2 format.
A basic infrastructure design document: It should outline all the various virtual resources
making up the VNF, yet we do not require a specific format of the basic infrastructure
design document.
The Validation Criteria has been designed to cover the key areas to allow a VNF to be seamlessly
on-boarded, and currently consists of the following overall parts:
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ONAP VNF Certification Program – Project Proposal
The provided HEAT template(s) and environment file(s) need to adhere to the AT&T
Domain 2.0 Heat Template Guidelines
The provided Glance image(s) need to pass the virus and security scan as defined by the
CSO and the AIC image onboarding team
The VNF must be successfully spun up in an, for the VNF, representative AIC zone by
using only the HEAT template(s), environment file(s) and Glance image(s)
The VNF must be successfully on-boarded as a VFSP and VNF, into the ASDC E2E
environment
The D2 ICE process is closely tied to the concept of Checklists, which have been derived from the
AT&T VNF Requirements & Guidelines. The Checklists are continuously reviewed with various
stakeholders and updated as additional requirements are identified with new releases of ECOMP
and AT&Ts internal cloud. The Checklists are designed to allow for a consistent validation of a
selection of requirements as outlined in the AT&T VNF Requirements & Guidelines against
ECOMP and AIC.
The underlying concept of checklists is illustrated in Figure 2 and allows the validation team to
more efficiently map the detailed requirements into a structure, which can be more easily
testable both automatically and manually. This is essential as not all requirements can currently
be automatically validated.
It is important to note that the concept of Checklists is extendable by its very nature why
introducing additional validation scope is a well-understood process.
Figure 2: The Checklist Concept
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AT&T D2 ICE: Validation Platform & Tools
To aid the validation process, we have developed the D2 ICE platform. The architectural details
are presented in Figure 3: Components - High-Level Architecture, Figure 4: Application Services Current Architecture, and Figure 5: Platform - Current Architecture.
Figure 3: Components - High-Level Architecture
Figure 4: Application Services - Current Architecture
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Figure 5: Platform - Current Architecture
AT&T D2 ICE: Open-Source Scope & Release Schedule
As part of this project, AT&T D2 ICE will be open-sourced in its entirety by releasing the following
to the ONAP community in iterations from May 2017 onwards. Table 1: Documentation and
Table 2: Technology provide details on what is and when it is expected to be open-sourced. Do
note that this schedule may be adjusted by requests and/or discussions with the community.
Table 1: Documentation (Release Schedule)
Date
Working Models
1. Program Working Model
May ‘17
2. Engagement Track Working Model
May ‘17
3. Design Track Working Model
May ‘17
4. Technology Working Model
May ‘17
Overviews
1. The Engagement Concept
May ‘17
2. The Validation Process
May ‘17
3. The Self-Service Portal
May ‘17
Tutorials & Examples
1. Heat 101
Jun ‘17
2. Git 101
Jun ‘17
3. Valid Heat Template Examples
May ‘17
Platform Component Documentation
1. Application Services Stack
Jul ‘17
2. Infrastructure Management Framework
Jul ‘17
3. CI/CD Framework
Jul ‘17
4. Validation Test Suite
Jul ‘17
Getting Started
1. Creating a New VNF Validation Program
Oct ‘17
2. Setup & configuring the D2 ICE Platform including examples for virtual environments and
bare metal
Aug ‘17
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Table 2: Technology (Release Schedule)
Date
The Application Stack
1. Self-Service Portal: provides the self-service experience for both stakeholders and users
Sep ‘17
2. Engagement Manager: Django application responsible for managing all aspects of an
engagement
Sep ‘17
3. Validation Manager: Django application responsible for translating individual test results into
the concept of checklists which is how we manage the blend of automation and manual
validations
Sep ‘17
4. VNF Package Manager: Customized Gitlab instance to allow for seamless management of the
VNF Packages
Sep ‘17
5. Test Engine: customized Jenkins instance to run the automatic validation scripts
Sep ‘17
6. ICE CI Container: Integration tests for the entire Application Stack
Sep ‘17
Infrastructure Management Framework
1. ice-devkit: hyper-generalized Ansible project allowing anyone to deploy and manage the full
D2 ICE platform on either virtual environments or physical hardware. It includes both the
infrastructure and application management components.
Jul ‘17
2. ansible-ice-bootstrap: ansible project responsible for bootstrapping infrastructure
management framework on virtual environments or physical hardware
Jul ‘17
Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Framework:
1. jeeves: the developed CI/CD Framework to manage the development and deployment
Sep ‘17
Example Validation Test Suite
1. ice-heat-validation: example test suite to test Heat templates
May ‘17
Relation to ONAP VNF Guidelines & Requirements
The D2 ICE process is currently leveraging the AT&T VNF Requirements & Guidelines, yet the
process is by its nature and design fully agnostic the scope of and what requirements are
validated. One of the key first steps will be to do the initial translation of the ONAP VNF
Requirements & Guidelines into ONAP specific Checklists.
Currently the ONAP VNF Requirements & Guidelines provide requirements and guidelines for
VNFs to be compatible with the ONAP platform and its expected operational configurations in a
narrative format. However as previously outlined in AT&T D2 ICE: Overview, it is essential for any
validation process to define easily testable and identifiable requirements.
The easily testable and identifiable requirements will be refined in several steps before
introduced to the ONAP VNF Certification Program. It is important to note that the ONAP VNF
Requirements & Guidelines cannot fully be tested automatically why there initially will be both
automated and manual steps. It will of course be important to refine these to be more broadly
and easily automatically tested, yet there may always be requirements not possible to test
automatically.
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Naturally, it will be essential to ensure the associated validation process within an ONAP
Certification Program is properly aligned with the ONAP VNF Requirements & Guidelines. We will
introduce and leverage the current model developed and utilized inside D2 ICE to assure this will
be the case.
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