This chapter provides information about working with network services, VNFs, and PNFs in Oracle Communications Network Service Orchestration.
To work with network services, VNFs, and PNFs in Network Service Orchestration, you can use either the UIM user interface or the REST APIs. See UIM Help for instructions about performing tasks using the user interface.
When you use REST APIs, you use a REST API client and provide values for the required parameters in the API request. The values and the parameters are defined in the network service and VNF descriptor files that you created in Design Studio. See "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for details about the REST APIs that you can use to perform various tasks.
You perform the following tasks related to network services, VNFs, and PNFs:
Note:
Based on the configurations that the VNFs in the network service require, some VNF life cycle operations may take some time to complete. In UIM and in your VIM, the resources may not be created, deleted, or updated immediately after you send the API request or complete the operation using the user interface.You instantiate a network service to start a VNF on the network. A network service can have multiple VNFs that are connected to each other. When you instantiate a network service that has multiple VNFs, all the VNFs in the network service are started on the network. You can also include PNFs in your network services. See "Working with PNFs in Network Services" for information about including PNFs in network services.
Before you instantiate a network service, ensure that your VIM is registered and the data center resources that your VIM manages are discovered. If you use multiple VIMs, register all your VIMs and discover the resources that the VIMs manage. See "Discovering VIM Resources" for information about discovering VIM resources.
If you use multiple VIMs to instantiate your network services, do the following:
In UIM, create an Inventory Group entity and associate the VDC custom object that was generated during the discovery of VIM resources to the inventory group. See UIM Help for instructions.
Create a ServiceLocation entity based on the Place specification and associate it to the Inventory Group entity.
When you instantiate a network service, specify the service location of the VDC in which you want to instantiate the network service.
After you instantiate a network service, verify the following in UIM:
The network service and its configurations are created and are in In Service status. You can see this in the Network Service Summary page of the network service.
The VNF service and its configurations are created and associated to the network service.
The VNFs and PNFs, which are represented as logical devices, are created.
The specified networks are either created or referenced.
The details of the endpoints are updated in the service configuration.
In your VIM, verify the following:
The VNF instances are up and running.
The specified networks are either created or referenced.
The VNFs are linked to the networks.
Based on the configurations you defined in the network service and the VNF and PNF descriptor files, Network Service Orchestration does the following tasks during the instantiation of a network service:
Finds the best suitable data center for the network service from among the data centers that you registered.
Performs resource orchestration to find the best suitable availability zone where constituent VNFs can be deployed.
Creates new networks or references existing networks that are required for connectivity among the VNFs.
Manages IP addresses of all the resources.
Configures the VNFs based on pre-defined parameters. See "About VNF Configuration Files" for more information.
If the network service includes a PNF, configures the PNF and checks access to the PNF using the management IP address.
If you integrated a monitoring engine, configures the monitoring engine to trigger alarms for VNFs that reach a specified threshold to enable healing of VNFs.
If you integrated an SDN controller, configures routing paths for end-to-end packet flow.
Note:
If the instantiation of a network service fails at any stage of the transaction due to insufficient ports or other resources in the VIM (or for any other reason), Network Service Orchestration rolls back the resources completely.See "Modifying Network Services" for information about adding and removing VNFs, endpoints, and PNFs in network services.
You modify a network service to add or remove endpoints, VNFs, and PNFs in the network service. You add a VNF to a network service to enable the network service to deliver additional service capabilities. You remove a VNF from a network service when it is no longer required. Similarly, you can add and remove endpoints and PNFs in your network services.
Using the user interface and the REST APIs, you can perform the following the tasks:
Add VNFs to network services
Remove VNFs from network services
Add PNFs to network services
Remove PNFs from network services
Add endpoints to network services
Remove endpoints from network services
See UIM Help for instructions about performing tasks using the user interface. See "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for details about the Network Service Orchestration REST APIs that you can use to modify network services.
You add VNFs to a network service when you create it. Every network service requires one or more VNFs.
With one exception, you can add VNFs to network services by using the user interface or the REST APIs. Before you instantiate a network service, you can add constituent VNFs in a network service by using the Network Service Summary pages. After a network service is instantiated, you can add VNFs to the network service by using the scale options only.
After you add a VNF to a network service, do the following:
In UIM, verify the following:
The network service is updated with a new service configuration version showing the VNF that you added.
The status of the new service configuration version shows completed.
In your VIM, verify that a new VNF instance is created.
Before you instantiate a network service, you can remove any VNF that you have already added to your network service.
Note:
You cannot remove VNFs from a network service that is already instantiated. To remove VNFs from a network service that is already instantiated, use the scale options.After you delete a VNF from a network service, do the following:
In UIM, verify the following:
The network service is updated with a new service configuration version showing that the VNF is deleted.
The status of the service configuration version shows completed.
In your VIM, verify that the VNF instance is removed and the resources that were assigned to the VNF are freed up.
You terminate a network service to deactivate all the constituent VNFs in the network service. When you terminate a network service, all the resources that were allocated to the VNFs are released and become available for consumption by other network services.
After you terminate a network service, do the following:
In UIM, verify the following:
The status of the network service and the VNF and PNF services is changed to Disconnected.
The statuses of the logical devices corresponding to the associated VNFs and PNFs are changed to Unassigned.
In your VIM, verify that the VNF instance is deleted and all the allocated resources are released.
You scale VNFs in a network service when there is high or low utilization of CPU and memory on the machine on which the network service is instantiated. When you scale VNFs, you can either clone existing VNF instances in a network service or remove VNFs from a network service.
You monitor VNFs in a network service to track their performance and take actions based on their CPU utilization, number of requests handled, and other key performance indicator (KPI) parameters.
To monitor VNFs, you configure and use monitoring engines. You also configure and specify the relevant parameters in the Network Service descriptor file. See "Describing Deployment Flavors" for information about defining assurance parameters for monitoring and healing a VNF.
By default, Network Service Orchestration supports integration with OpenStack Ceilometer, which monitors VNFs and reboots failed VNFs automatically based on KPI thresholds that are defined in the network service descriptor file.
You can integrate other third-party monitoring engines by using the extensions provided in Network Service Orchestration. See "Implementing a Custom Monitoring Engine" for more information about implementing a third-party monitoring engine.
When the monitoring engine identifies a failed VNF in a network service, you can heal the failed VNF by either rebooting or replacing the virtual machine on which the VNF is deployed. In OpenStack Ceilometer, when you heal a failed VNF by replacing it, the new VNF may come up in a different host. Network Service Orchestration performs resource orchestration to deduce the resources from the new host and the availability zone and adds up the resources count to the host.
To heal a VNF:
Ensure that you have defined the assurance parameters for the VNFs in the network service descriptor file. See "Describing Deployment Flavors" for information about defining assurance parameters.
Do one of the following:
Use the user interface to reboot or replace the VNF. See UIM Help for instructions.
Call the RESTful API. See "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for more information.
In your VIM, verify that the VNF you rebooted or replaced is listed as active and running.
When you create specifications for your VNFs and network services in Design Studio, you can add characteristics to the specifications to capture URLs of web pages of your monitoring systems. You can define the characteristics to capture any number of URLs of web pages. See Design Studio documentation about working with characteristics and specifications.
In the UIM user interface, when you create network services, you specify the URLs of web pages of your monitoring systems. After the network service is instantiated, each URL that you specified for your monitoring system displays an embedded page in a tab in the Network Service Summary page.
You can use the monitoring tabs to view service topologies of your network services, and the following metrics about your VNFs:
CPU
Memory
Disk space
See UIM Help for more information about the monitoring tabs.
You upgrade the software version of a VNF in a network service to utilize the functional capabilities that a later software version of the VNF provides.
You can use the user interface or the REST API to upgrade the software version of a VNF. See UIM Help and "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for instructions.
After you upgrade the software version of a VNF, do the following:
In UIM, verify the following:
The network service is updated with a new service configuration version.
The version number of the VNF image that you upgraded the VNF to is listed.
In your VIM, verify that the VNF instance displays the name of the VNF image that you upgraded to.
You can include Physical Network Functions (PNFs) in your network services.
To include PNFs in a network service, do the following:
If your PNF is managed by an EMS, register the Element Management System (EMS) with Network Service Orchestration by using the REST API. See "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for information about registering EMSs.
Register the PNF with Network Service Orchestration by using the REST API.
When you create a network service in the user interface, add the PNF to the network service. See UIM Help for instructions about adding PNFs to network services.
If you use REST APIs to instantiate a network service with PNFs, specify the details of the PNFs in the API request. See "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference" for information about the API request.
You can retrieve and view details about your network services, VNFs, PNFs, network service descriptors, and VNF descriptors by using the user interface and the REST APIs. In the user interface, you can search for and view details by using standard UIM techniques. See UIM Help for more information.
Network Service Orchestration provides RESTful APIs that you can call to retrieve and view different types of information about your network services, VNFs, and PNFs. For details about the RESTful APIs, see "Network Service Orchestration RESTful API Reference".