Introduction

After researching on NFs from different vendors, no matter NFs are PNF, VNF or CNF, they are designed as distributed applications, which usually contains functional modules including interface module, data storage module, operation and management module, NF logic processing modules.

Functional modules' description are as follows. Different NFs from different vendors  may have difference on design and implementation, but they almost follow this similar design paradigm. 

• Interface Module: module in charge of South-North communication between different NFs, which is usually implemented as load balancer. 
• NF logic processing modules: modules processing NF service logics. For example AMF contains functions of access management, security management, session management etc., and these functions can be implemented as different NF logic processing modules.
• Data storage module: module stores NF states, user data and service processing context. Cloud native NF requires network logic processing module is stateless and supports scaling in/out horizontally, which usually results in that the NF data are stored in independent DB.
• OAM(operation and management) module: module in charge of NF management, configuration, monitoring, etc. 
• Internal communication module: module support internal communication between differrent modules within a NF.

Among all these functional modules, OAM module is one of the most commonly used module within different NFs, which makes it possible to be shared among NFs as a PaaS service. Providing OAM module as a platform capability can relief the developers from spending too much effort on non-NF logic design and development. So in XGVela release 1, cloud native OAM for NF is planned to be delivered.

Documentation & Training

Release Planning & Release Notes