About Virtualization

The Policy Management system can operate as a standard virtualized hardware system with virtual machines loaded onto qualified hardware elements or as an ETSI-defined Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Management and Organization (MANO) system where orchestrator software (such as, OpenStack) handles the network-wide orchestration and management of the NFV (infrastructure and software) resources and the NFV service topology on the NFV infrastructure. See NF Agent for VNF Management for more information.

The Policy Management system functions on a range of hardware platforms. Alternatively, you can deploy Policy Management applications in a virtualized hardware environment, as virtual machines (VMs). The VMs run on industry-standard high-volume servers (also called Hosts) with switches and storage. VMs are abstracted from Host systems (also called compute nodes) and function as if running alone, although actually multiple VMs (or Guests) can run on a single Host system.

The qualified hardware configurations include:

HP Enterprise DL360/DL380 Gen8
Oracle Server X5-2

The qualified VM manager/hypervisor software includes:

Hypervisor: VM Manager
Oracle Virtual Machine Server (OVM-S): Oracle Virtual Machine Manager (OVM-M)
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM): With or without OpenStack
VMware ESXi: VMware vSphere
Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM): No VM Manager (for server configuration)

VMs are deployed within a network functions virtualization (NFV) infrastructure that is hardware independent. The NFV infrastructure includes an environment manager known as a VM manager. The VM manager monitors and manages VMs running on a single host system. The VM manager performs the following management functions:

Dynamically allocates resources, such as CPU, RAM, and storage among VMs to maximize hardware utilization and balance load
Instantiates new VMs on demand for increased capacity or in the case of VM failure
Moves VMs from one host system to another before upgrades or in the case of hardware failure

Figure 1 illustrates the virtualization architecture.

Virtualization Architecture

The virtualized environment supports the multiple network interface connections (OAM, SIG A, SIG B, SIG C, REP, and BKUP) used by Policy Management applications by mapping virtual Ethernet devices as if they were separate physical devices. The virtualized environment supports HA by defining affinity, so that the hypervisor maintains a standby VM on a different host system from the active VM. The virtualized environment calculates key performance indicators (KPI) such as performance, capacity, and load factor by dynamically obtaining the current resources, and the KPI Dashboard indicates if a server is running as a virtual machine (see KPI Dashboard).

Note: A Policy Management topology can combine both virtual and physical (or bare-metal) machines.

An alternate supported configuration is to include all the Policy Management VMs on a pair of Oracle X5-2 RMS host systems or HP Enterprise DL360/DL380 Gen8 blade host-based systems, running Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) with either the KVM, OVM-M, or VMware ESXi hypervisor, as a fully functional, high-availability, entry-level, minimal-footprint solution consisting of the following:

1 clustered, high-availability (2-server) CMP system
1 clustered, high-availability (2-server) MRA system
2 clustered, high-availability (2-server) MPE systems

Figure 2 shows this minimum Policy Management virtualized topology.

Note: The standby VNFC devices reside on separate host systems to ensure proper system function in the event a host system fails.

Policy Management Minimum Virtualized Topology

Refer to Virtual Installation Guide for detailed information on creating Virtual Network Function Components (VNFCs) (for example, CMP, MPE, and MRA devices) on a host system.

Once a virtualized host system is implemented, adding VNFCs to the Policy Management system is as simple as adding a server. See About Setting Up the Topology for details.