Symworld™ Cloud simplifies the operations and lifecycle management of 5G applications at scale and demystifies the complexity around 5G and network functions management. The simplified end-to-end automation and App-Store-like user interface make the management of applications easy for operators. This is relevant for several reasons. Some of the key requirements when operators deploy their telco solutions include the following:
To achieve all of the above, operators need to overcome several challenges. Whether it is far edge or RAN CU/DU or 5G workloads, they need to be fine-tuned for deploying applications on a bare-metal server or in a cloud environment to achieve the desired, optimized performance. The 5G network functions typically require multiple types of network interfaces. They should also be resilient to NIC port failures, which calls for NIC bonding. The IP address assigned for these applications or network functions should be persistent, with the occasional need for a static IP to enable seamless communication.
Then there are other requirements as well, such as the need to have multiple gateway support – for management, control-plane and user-plane. Some networks also require dual-stack support (IPv4/IPv6), to support communication across existing and newer network functions.
Another major concern is a scenario where an operator will have some vendor applications in VNF format, and the others are containerized. In such circumstances, the operator would need to build a separate cluster or cloud platform to run the VNF, such as OpenStack or VMware cluster. Needless to say, managing multiple clusters from different vendors – on containers or VNFs – is not easy, and would involve considerable manual effort. The isolation of resources, configuration, and deploying them to achieve bare-metal performance are also some of the key challenges facing operators today.
So, let’s take a look at how we solve these challenges using Symworld Cloud Native Platform (CNP) and its unique architecture.
Symworld™ Cloud currently solves problems associated with radio access networks (RAN), CNFs/VNFs in the telco environment, mobile edge cloud (MEC), and core applications used in EPC.
On the abstraction layer, Symworld™ Cloud has the IPAM (IP address manager) using which users and administrators can create different IP pools based on application requirements. So the IP pool can have an IP subnet range, mask, and gateway related to that specific network. The network in turn can be mapped to specific CNIs such as Calico, OVS, MACVLAN, and SRIOV – or AWS CNI or Azure CNI for public cloud deployments. For SRIOV, the user can specify the drivers like Kernel-based driver, IAVF driver, IGB UIO driver, VFI, or PCI driver for DPDK applications. Users can also specify additional settings on the IP pools, such as DNS routes NIC tags, and tenants.
Once the users create an IP pool, when they are ready to deploy the application, they can just specify the IP pool name for it.
Users can assign more than one IP pool to an application, whether it is a CNF or VNF. To have multiple IP addresses assigned for a CNF, multi-CNI support is built into the platform. Symworld™ Cloud also supports DPDK or VPP for enhanced packet processing. It supports those libraries and the integration with the Kubernetes platform is seamless.
To summarize, in a telco data center, Symworld™ Cloud can help set up an end-to-end stack connecting the top-of-rack switch all the way to the IP address management of an application. All of this is achieved through the carrier-grade networking stack that we built on top of open-source Kubernetes.
Interested to know more? Hear from our experts on designing future-ready, cloud-native networks that help operators boost performance.
Disclaimer: As of November 2022, Robin.io products have been rebranded to Symworld™ Cloud, under the Rakuten Symphony Unified Cloud BU.