This reference architecture guide provides guidance for designing and creating a greenfield Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platform by using VMware Telco Cloud Infrastructure™ – Cloud Director Edition.

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 NFV environment in which the VNFs run.

Acronyms and Definitions

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.

MTTR

Mean Time to Repair

MTTU

Mean Time to Understand

Table 2. Telco Cloud Infrastructure Acronyms

Abbreviation

Description

CCP

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

CNF

Cloud Native Network Function, executing within a Kubernetes environment.

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 logical switch. This mode enables DPDK for workload acceleration.

N-VDS (S)

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

VIM

Virtualized Infrastructure Manager

VNF

Virtual Network Function, executing in a Virtual Machine (VM).

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 and Charging Rules 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.

VPP

Vector Packet Processing