This reference architecture guide provides guidance for designing and creating a telco cloud platform by using VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure™ – Cloud Director™ Edition.

This guide describes the high-level design principles and considerations when implementing an environment based on Telco Cloud Infrastructure. It also provides example scenarios to help you understand the platform capabilities.

Intended Audience

This guide is intended for telecommunications and solution architects, sales engineers, field consultants, advanced services specialists, and customers who are responsible for the virtualized network functions (VNFs) and the environment on which they run.

Acronyms and Definitions

This guide uses a specific set of acronyms that apply to Telco Cloud Infrastructure and the telco industry.

Table 1. General Acronyms

Abbreviation

Description

BFD

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection, for failure detection on the transport links.

DPDK

Data Plane Development Kit, an Intel-led packet processing acceleration technology.

EMS

Element Management System

MTTR

Mean Time to Repair

MTTU

Mean Time to Understand

NMS

Network Management System
Table 2. Telco Cloud Infrastructure Acronyms

Abbreviation

Description

CNF

Cloud-Native Network Function, executing within a Kubernetes environment.

CCP

Centralized Control Plane in the VMware NSX-T™ Data Center architecture.

EPA

Enhanced Platform Awareness

LCP

Local Control Plane in the NSX-T Data Center architecture.

MANO

Management and Orchestration components, a term originating from the ETSI NFV architecture framework.

NFV

Network Functions Virtualization

NFVI

Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure

NFVO

Network Functions Virtualization Orchestrator

N-VDS (E)

Enhanced mode when using the NSX-T Data Center N-VDS switch. This mode enables DPDK for workload acceleration.

N-VDS (S)

Standard mode when using the NSX-T Data Center N-VDS switch.

VIM

Virtualized Infrastructure Manager

VNF

Virtual Network Function, executing in a virtual machine.

VNFM

Virtual Network Function Manager
Table 3. Telco Acronyms

Abbreviation

Description

HSS

Home Subscriber Server in the mobile evolved packet core 4G architecture.

MVNO

Mobile Virtual Network Operator

PCRF

Policy, Charging and Rating Function, in the mobile evolved packet core 4G architecture.

PGW

Packet Gateway in the mobile evolved packet core 4G architecture.

SGW

Service Gateway in the mobile evolved packet core 4G architecture.

SBC

Session Border Controller used in voice telephone for control and data plane communications between clients.

UPF

User Plane Function