© 2017 TM Forum | 1

Service Assurance in the

Era of Virtualization

Sébastien Grognuz, Swisscom

Dr Vikram Saksena, NetScout

© 2017 TM Forum | 2

23.06.162 We need a story to virtualize our network functions !

SGSN

S-GW

GGSN

P-GW

PCRFAAA

DNS

2G

3G

4G

(P)WLAN

BB W+

ePDG

MSC-SMGW

CGNAT

Proxy

Virtual Router

BBSC

SDN-C

EFS

BNG

HLR-FE HSS-FE

CUDB

RNC

BSC

SPT-Clus.

MPLS-PE

Evolved Packet Core

AAA-FE

DPI

Wireline

Comms/UDM

Comms/CS

CGNAT

Access

Load Balancer

Business CPE

6RD

LDAPDHCP

Firewall

C-RAN

RAS

VPN

PWLAN Core

ISGMCAR

Small cells

DSC

Comms/Solution Factory (Core & Service)

Service Broker

SBG

Device Mgmt

HET ASSIP CoreSIP Trunk

WebRTC

EIR

ENUM-FE

SESM

MS

MMI

VPC

Signal./Roaming

STP

VHE Farew.SMS

Co

mm

s/E

PC

3

4

4

4

5

4

6

6

6

RCARWLC

LI

SIS

MME

NP DB

LI

IP Loc.

LBSGMPC

SMPC

Comms/Regulatory6

MPS

MTAS

BGF

BCON

SMSC

MMSC

NAF

SCCAS

RCS AS

S-CSCF

I-CSCF

P-CSCF

ATCF

IBCF

MRFP

BSF

BGCF

Comms/Volume Factory-Core Comms/Volume

Factory-Service

eSPIN/Srv. B’ker

HET ASUC

IM& P

MMVAS

WebRTC

E-CSCF

DNS

Voice Mail

Televote MVR

AFG

MR

S

6 6

CSC

F

SBG

MRFC

© 2017 TM Forum | 3

23.06.163 Why do we need to virtualize ?

Economy of scale

• One infrastructure for

several organizations

• Consolidate hardware,

power, cooling systems

and cabling

Automation

• Shorter time-to-market

for new services

• Simplified scale-up/down

procedures

• Improved service

resilience

New Business

• Business Network Services

vCPENew Revenue

Lower OPEX

Lower CAPEX

Higher return on investment

More flexibility

Test services with lower risk

More openess

Enable rapid inovation

© 2017 TM Forum | 4

How, can we to virtualize the network functions ?

ETSI NFV Reference Architecture

Ericsson

HDS-8000

Ericsson

Cloud Execution Environment

(ECEE)

Ericsson

SDN-C

Ericsson

Cloud Manager

(ECM)

E///

vEPC

E///

vIMS3PP

VNF

© 2017 TM Forum | 5

Step 1 of the journey : VoLTE Network Slice

• Swisscom aims to migrate its entire mobile

packet core into a carrier-grade cloud provided

by Ericsson. The first stage consists to deploy a

vP-GW, vPCRF and vEPDG to produce the

VoLTE and Wifi-Calling services.

• Swisscom is facing monitoring blind spots

because inter-VM traffic never reaches the top

of the rack. Monitoring of the east-west traffic

prevents security and performance issue.

• NETSCOUT is today a major partner of

Swisscom for the monitoring of the physical

network function. Together with Ericsson we

want to demonstrate that 100% visibility of inter-

VM traffic is possible.

Telco CloudEricsson NFVI (OpenStack based)

GbIuS1

SGi

S2b

Rx

SGSNMME

GiP-GW

HLR-FE AAA PCRF

EricssonvEPDG

Gr S6a Rad Gx

EricssonvP-GW

S5

EricssonvPCRF

Gx

S-GWGn

HSS-FE

SWu

IMS

RadioAccess

Untrusted

Wi-Fi

WWW

© 2017 TM Forum | 6

Service Assurance Challenges in the New Era

Hybrid Networks

Prevail

What’s needed?

A complete view across

your entire network with

end-to-end correlation

between physical &

virtual elements.

Adding virtual network

elements to the mix

raises the level of

complexity.

Visibility Gaps

What’s needed?

A solution that provides

a comprehensive view

of all traffic across VNF

service chains.

How do you get visibility

across intra-host and

inter-host traffic

Real-Time

Monitoring

What’s needed?

A tool that can monitor

and compute metadata

and KPIs in real-time to

enable auto-scaling.

Auto-scaling of VNFs

requires capture and

analysis of KPIs in a timely

manner.

Automation &

Orchestration

What’s needed?

VNFs require well-defined

APIs to enable seamless

integration with open

source and commercial

orchestration tools.

Critical to ensure the

success of NFV

deployments.

© 2017 TM Forum | 7

Virtual Instrumentation Options

Hypervisor

Guest OS

VNF…

vSwitch

Guest OS

VNF

Guest OS

• Smart vTap deployed on the

same Guest OS as VNF

• VNF, vSwitch agnostic

• Provides basic set of KPIs

• Enables visibility in public

cloud

• Virtual Probe runs in its own VM

• Deployed on shared or dedicated

host

• Packet capture through vSwitch

port mirroring (“tap-as-a-service”)

• Smart vTap deployed with vProbe

• Selective packet forwarding from

vTap for full analysis by vProbe

• No mirroring required on the

vSwitch

vProbe

Hypervisor

Guest OS

VN

F

Sm

art

vTap

…

vSwitch

Guest OS

VN

F

Sm

art

vTap

vProbe

Hypervisor

Guest OS

vSwitch

Guest OS Guest OS

…

VN

F

Sm

art

vTap

VN

F

Sm

art

vTap

© 2017 TM Forum | 8

Service Assurance Continuity

IP Backbone

PhysicalGateway& Probe

IMS Core

VirtualGateway& Probe

Service Assurance

End to End VoLTE Call

vProbe

vProbe

• Complete visibility across physical and virtual networks

• Common metadata from all probes facilitates seamless integration at the analytics layer

• Enables disruption-free evolution

© 2017 TM Forum | 9

Assurance of New On-demand Services

Metro EthernetBusiness uCPE

vPERFabricSwitch

Operator Edge Cloud

vProbe

vFW

vDNS vPER

Service Assurance

vProbe

End to End SLA

• Complete visibility from customer premises to the Operator Edge Cloud for SLA enforcement

• A small footprint vProbecan be remotely configured on the uCPE

• Dynamic configuration of instrumentation options as services are spun-up on demand

© 2017 TM Forum | 10

Seamless Migration from Private to Public Cloud

Internet

FabricSwitch

Operator Private Cloud

vProbe

App

App

Service Assurance • Migrate applications into the Public Cloud without losing visibility

• The vProbe in the Public Cloud is deployed as a microservice embedded within the application

• End to end monitoring and assurance across Private and Public Clouds

App

App

App

vProbe

App

App App

App

App

PublicCloud

© 2017 TM Forum | 11

Smart Analytics drives Closed-Loop Assurance

• Descriptive

o “what happened”

• Diagnostic

o “why it happened”

• Predictive

o “what may happen”

• Prescriptive

o “what actions to take”

High-Value Metadata

High-Value Metadata

Smart Instrumentation

Smart Analytics(Rules Engine, Machine Learning,

Artificial Intelligence)

OrchestrationPlatform

Network Auto-Configures without Human Intervention

© 2017 TM Forum | 12

Summary

❖ Virtualized networks is the next major evolution in networking

➢ Operators gain control of service creation and are able to innovate faster in response to customer and market needs

➢ Networks become more agile and elastic, better managed and orchestrated, lowering the total cost of ownership

❖ Service Assurance is a critical bridge to this new network

➢ End-to-end visibility across the physical and virtual network infrastructures as the network makes this transition

➢ Migration to Public Cloud and enablement of new on-demand services

➢ Smart analytics for service delivery automation and just-in-time resource management