Policy Management NF Agent implements support for VNF management functionality within the MPE. The NF Agent provides VNF management services as well as act as a point of integration with orchestrator software (for example, OpenStack) and VIM APIs that manage our VNF/VM lifecycle's. The NF Agent provides the logical interface and mappings between virtual deployments and internal Policy objects and logic. VIM connections work with the OpenStack API, the OpenStack HEAT API, and VMWare vCloud..
Figure 1 illustrates the NFV management and orchestration (MANO) interfaces. VNF Managers are logical objects that interface with VNF instances (VNF 1, VNF 2, and VNF 3), the Orchestrator function and the VIMs (see red rectangle). For this release, Policy Management provides a policy application service that will allow the MPE to support virtual deployment within an NFVI (Ve-Vnfm and Vi-Vnfm interfaces). The intent is to support an environment where the MPE is asked to provide its own VNF-M capabilities for deployment and horizontal scaling. Having VNF application-specific logic is important for proper VNF Descriptor (VNFD) calculations and orchestration.
