CNTT Edge - RA01 ( OpenStack ) Architecture - Scenario

Great start!

Notes from Sept 8 discussion.  We need to capture the outline here, then move it into the Github docs repository.

CI Deployment environment for edge.  Difference between between controlled environments (Data centers with conditioning) and uncontrolled environment where they might or be outside or in otherwise extreme conditions.  Aspects to consider could be lack of physical security, extreme temperatures, electro-magnetic interference (hospitals, etc.)  The term for exposed is harsh environments.  Need to change the doc above.

 Cloud Infrastructure (CI) hardware design – Edge hardware is more important than in Core HW.  More dependent on HW.  Intel FlexRAN for Edge.  Other companies have "edge" equipment – Dell, Lenovo, SuperMicro.  What makes the Edge equipment special?  Is that needed to deploy and Edge infrastructure.  Much of it is ruggetized for harsh environments.

Server section - Add storage node for Edge.  More important than we originally thought.  Typically the OS deployment has a small footprint.  What is the minimum number of components you need to run OS at the edge?  Can we run it without network?  How about storage?  Need compute at the very least.  Looking at edge requirements within RA1- Chap 3-4.  2 or 3 servers at edge for HA.  3 is ideal.  Two for failover is the minimum.  Single server, with multiple compute nodes.  All the Edge OS implementations are containerized to safe resources on the edge HW. OpenShift, ADVA has a single server OS management tool.  StarlingX supports that approach as well. 

Cyberg can be extended to the Edge, Ussurn (OS release after Train) supports FPGA from the beginning.  Nova does not support FPGA natively.  Cisco supports it, but they add proprietary secret sauce to make it work.  Need to address the need for OS native support for FPGA.  China Mobile is also using it, but they wrote extensions to do it.

Do we need to mention Central Office, Edge and Far Edge?

How about the different types of clouds:

• (Onsite) Private
  • Self deployed and managed; open source or vendor developed
  • Vendor developed; Vendor or Company deployed and managed 
• Outsourced Private: hosting company outsourced; can be a public cloud vendor

• Onsite Public: Public cloud hosted at Company location (but for Public use)

• (Outsourced) Public:

Please define EnCloud in the doc.  Also need to define multi-Cloud.  Edge is still ill-defined in the marketplace and in the technology community, so it is important to state our assumptions and definitions for the purposes of the document.  Should we start from the general and then drill down to the Telecom Edge Cloud, or go directly the Telecom specific requirements.  Mehmet –  Use a more general term, Edge Cloud for example, rather than pinning it to the enterprise.   Edge Cloud always has the characteristics of having constraints, limited resources, limited bandwidth, intermittent connectivity, etc.   Net to incorporate the concept of multi-cloud into this document.  Multi-cloud is public/private, container vs. VM.  hybrid architecture.  The difference is who owns the customers, who owns and dictates the infrastructure.  (AWS/VMWare partnership for example)  Wavelength is hosted by the Telecom, but managed and owned by Amazon.  It can get quite complex because of all the components and relationships.  Multi-cloud is dependent on a federated relationship between operators, vendors, private clouds, and public cloud hyperscalers.  Then the technical angle is that the components need to be orchestrated and the tools to do that have to be available.   Most of the vendors are moving their business models to stand up and manage their clouds that sit on top of the hyperscalers' infrastructure.  Most of the non-hyperscaler vendors (VMWare,HP, Ericsson, etc) don't have their own independent platforms anymore.  Need to make sure that CNTT reference architectures can support these models.  VNF/CNF tuning is separate from the tuning of the infrastructure.  CNTT's mandate is to tune the infrastructure to support Telecom workloads.

We also talked about the nessesity to cover the use case where multiple different Clouds are co-located in the same physical Site.

Example of this could be

• Equinix with Packet as a "neutral" hosting position
• Operator hosted site offering Cloud Infrastructure on some level for other operators (similar but not identical to NVMO) or their Enterprice customers
  • Levels could be HW Infrastructure, IaaS, CaaS and even PaaS with other acompanying Services offerings

We also had a debate around if and how higher layers of Telco services would be integrated in the Multi-Cloud architecture e.g. NFaaS from any type of Vendor (Telco or HCP) offered cloud. This could be Network Function on any level all the way from UPF in the data plane all the way up to a complete Core or RAN.

We didn´t reach any conclusion if that needed to be included, but I think we should spend a few discussions on this topic to ensure the Multi-Cloud map becomes complete.

We did spend time on if these offered NFaaS needed to be CNTT compliant inside and at least I felt we had rather different views on this.
In my view it is completey up to the company and organization offering the Service how they like to implement and optimize their creation of the Service since non of that is visible outside of that organization. I would claim that CNTT has no play in prescribing how these offerings should be internally structured.
They are of course welcome to use the CNTT framefork if they like to avoid vendor lock-in in thier Service creation.

In regards to the table above, it might make more sense to focus on consumption model (reserved, on-demand, etc), operating model (managed vs self-managed), and SLA rather than public/private as the private/public split is becoming more blur and less relevant in my opinion.

vF2F October 15, 2020, Minutes: 2020-10-15 - CNTT Edge Work stream Working Session

From IEEE Edge 2020 (emphasis mine):

Human beings have been cooperating, competing, and entertaining ourselves by providing and consuming all kinds of services. We build, deploy, publish, and discover services, and with the current prevailing technology, we use clouds that are formed of computers and servers connected by the Internet, and developed using wire-based and wireless technology. Many enterprises and large organizations have begun to adopt small and mobile devices, sensors and actuators that provide data and services to users or other devices, and those devices will become more intelligent as technology progresses. We must deal with huge amount of data, big data that must be transferred from/to distant, sometimes very distant sources, stored and processed by data and computer clouds. As direct service links between clouds may not enable fast enough data access, reliability could be jeopardized, availability cannot be completely guaranteed, and the entire system is subject to security attacks, there is a need for significant future improvements. Due to the sizes of enterprises and large organizations, some smaller clouds, that could be stationary as well as mobile, are being proposed to improve these metrics. This is where the concept of Edge Computing, together with the necessary and possible intelligent management and control at the edge, comes to play.

“Edge Computing” is a process of building a distributed system in which some applications, as well as computation and storage services, are provided and managed by (i) central clouds and smart devices, the edge of networks in small proximity to mobile devices, sensors, and end users; and (ii) others are provided and managed by the center cloud and a set of small in-between local clouds supporting IoT at the edge. This dual architecture allows for Edge Computing. Edge Computing is practically a cloud-based middle layer between the center cloud and the edges, hardware and software that provide specialized services. The problem is how to execute such a process, how to manage the whole system, how to define and create Fogs and Edges, provide workflow, and how to provide Edge Computing (compute, storage, networking) services. Many open problems still exist, as they are not even properly specified, as the Edge Computing itself is not fully yet defined.