What is RAN BOM?

Until VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) 3.0, VMware was publishing KB articles consisting of VMware certified recommendations for successfully deploying the RAN DU. This checklist consisted of certified Servers, ESXi version, vCenter version, BIOS settings, NiC/Accelerator Driver and Firmware version, Kernel, custom packages, etc. for VMware to consider and complete Network Function (DU/CU) in supported state.

In TCA 3.0, this checklist is modelled as a RAN BOM artifact. User can use this artifact as:
  • A blueprint to bring up the cellsite by viewing them in TCA.
  • An input reference for RAN Checklist validation APIs to validate if the cellsite components adhere to VMware recommendations.

VMware team will publish the RAN BOM artifacts for different market configurations, such as Server type/ NVM, etc., for a Telco Cloud Platform (TCP) release bundled as a carvel image in VMware public JFrog repository (vmwaresaas.io).

Airgap environment

In an airgapped environment, TCA provides ansible scripts to sync RAN BOM images to customer-managed airgap harbor from JFrog.

The RAN BOM images can be synced in TCA 3.0 through incremental export and import as described in Data flow operations after OVA deploy.

Here is a sample RAN BOM artifact for a Dell XR11 server type with NVM version 4.2:

<codeblock>

Import RAN BOM artifacts in TCA

Once the RAN BOM image(s) are available in the artifact repository, such as JFrog/Airgap, user can import it as a list of BOM artifacts in TCA. For more details, see Add Repository Location for BOM Artifacts.

RAN BOM artifact for Cellsite Validation

Once the RAN BOM artifacts are imported in TCA, users can choose a specific RAN BOM artifact and refer that in Diagnosis Control Plane APIs to validate whether the Cellsite is deployed according to artifact recommendations.

Following are the steps to prepare the request payload to execute a Diagnosis API ( https://<TCA-M>/telco/api/diagnosis/v1/):
  • Fetch tcaCpId - Execute the following POST request: https://<TCA-M>/telco/api/caas/internal/clusters?filter=(in,clusterName,<mgmt-cluster-name>).

    From the response payload, take the edgeRef.

  • Provide the Workload Cluster name where the Cellsite is deployed.
  • Provide the Management cluster name for the relavant workload cluster.
  • Specify target type as nodePool.
  • Provide the case-selector name, pre_du_ran_checklist or post_du_ran_checklist, to validate Cellsite before or after instantiating the DU respectively.
  • Provide the artifactId of the BOM artifact shown in the TCA BOM artifacts page after import.
Here is an sample payload to POST the Diagnosis request for a cellsite to be validated against a specific BOM artifact: 
{
    "target": {
        "tcaCpId": "<>",
        "managementCluster": "management-cluster-1",
        "workloadCluster": "workload-cluster-1",
        "nodePool": "np1",
        "type": "nodePool"
    },
    "caseSelectors": [
        {
            "name": "pre_du_ran_checklist",
            "input": {
                "ranBomRef": "fceffb2b-b8fe-480a-92ea-bd0a18a08a14"
            }
        }
    ]
}
Sample response: 
{
  "status": {
    "overallStatus": "COMPLETED",
    "tasks": [
      {
        "name": "cpu_power_mgmt_settings",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "High Performance | Balanced | Low Power | Custom",
        "actual": "High Performance",
        "message": "successfully fetched the current CPU power policy"
      },
      {
        "name": "bios_version",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "1.6.5",
        "actual": "1.6.5",
        "message": "bios validation passed."
      },
      {
        "name": "esxi_version",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "8.0.1 22088125",
        "actual": "8.0.1 22088125",
        "message": "esx version validation passed"
      },
      {
        "name": "server_type",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "Dell Inc. PowerEdge R750",
        "actual": "Dell Inc. PowerEdge R750",
        "message": "server type validation passed."
      },
      {
        "name": "vcenter_version",
        "status": "fail",
        "expected": "8.0.1 22368047",
        "actual": "8.0.1 22088981",
        "message": "vc version validation failed, actual version: 8.0.1 22088981 is different than required version: 8.0.1 22368047",
        "errorCode": "ERR_VSPHERE_VERSION_VALIDATION"
      },
      {
        "name": "advance_esxi_settings_for_max_vm",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "VMkernel.Boot.maxVMs:6",
        "actual": "VMkernel.Boot.maxVMs:6",
        "message": "successfully fetched the maxVM properties for w2-hs6-h0806.eng.vmware.com"
      },
      {
        "name": "esxi_driver_E810_icen",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "1.12.9.0",
        "actual": "1.12.9.0",
        "message": "pass"
      },
      {
        "name": "esxi_driver_ibbd-pf",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "1.0.8-1OEM.700.1.0.15843807",
        "actual": "1.0.8-1OEM.700.1.0.15843807"
      },
      {
        "name": "esxi_driver_ibbdtools",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "1.0.8-1OEM.800.1.0.20613240",
        "actual": "1.0.8-1OEM.800.1.0.20613240"
      },
      {
        "name": "esxi_firmware_E810",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "4.30 0x8001af35 1.3429.0",
        "actual": "4.30 0x8001af35 1.3429.0",
        "message": "pass"
      },
     {
        "name": "du_ran_nodepool_status",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "Active",
        "actual": "Active"
      },
      {
        "name": "du_ran_nodepool_cpu_manager_policy",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "static",
        "actual": "static"
      },
      {
        "name": "device_driver-i40e",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "2.23.17",
        "actual": "2.23.17"
      },
      {
        "name": "device_driver-iavf",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "4.9.1",
        "actual": "4.9.1"
      },
      {
        "name": "device_driver-ice",
        "status": "pass",
        "expected": "1.12.7",
        "actual": "1.12.7"
      }
    ]
  }
}

API documentation: https://developer.broadcom.com/xapis/telco-cloud-automation-diagnosis-api/latest/tca-diagnosis/