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VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 2.0 | 04 AUG 2022

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

Release Overview

VMware Telco Cloud Platform - RAN™ Release 2.0 accelerates the telco-grade capabilities of Telco Cloud Platform RAN by adding service assurance through VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance™ for RAN. With various key features and enhancements across VMware vSphere, VMware Tanzu Basic for RAN, and VMware Telco Cloud Automation, this release also improves performance, operability, and scale, invariably accelerates adoption and time-to-launch, and improves customer experience.

  • Improves the optimization of scheduling latency by bridging the gap between ESXi and BareMetal.
  • Brings full stack assurance and observability for the physical and virtual infrastructure and 5G CNF services including the underlay network.
  • Reduces the memory overhead consumption on ESXi.
  • Improves time-to-launch by reducing the DU instantiation time for cell sites.

What's New

Workload Compute Performance

VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3f includes various features and enhancements. Some of the key features and enhancements are as follows:

  • Virtual Hyperthreading exposure to vRAN workloads: Hyperthreading allows a single physical processor core to function as two logical processors. The processor can run two independent applications at the same time. Virtual hyperthreading allows NFV applications to have exclusive assignments of hyperthreads and specify sibling/pairs.

    With this feature, ESXi provides information about virtual hyper-threads to the guest. The performance of applications that benefit from hyperthreading awareness can be improved by turning on virtual hyperthreading under the latency sensitivity settings.

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware ESXi 7.0 Update 3f Release Notes.

Performance Optimization

  • Latency-sensitive Workload Optimizations: Guest timer padding optimization in Real Time Photon OS linux-rt-4.19.245-2 or later improves the scheduling latency and ensures that there is no delta between the cyclic tests on BareMetal and ESXi. The cyclic test results on ESXi are now the same as BareMetal.

For more information, see Guest Timer Padding Optimization.

Carrier-Grade VNF and CNF Automation and Orchestration

VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.1 introduces various new features and enhancements. Some of the key features and enhancements are as follows:

  • IPv6 Support for a new Telco Cloud Automation deployment in an Airgapped environment. You can use either IPv6 or IPv4, but you cannot use a combination of IPv6 and IPv4.
  • Granular upgrade support to upgrade Telco Cloud Automation Control Plane (TCA-CP) and worker node pools separately.
  • Improved CaaS cluster upgrade to separate the control plane upgrade from the worker nodes. This feature allows Service Providers to upgrade individual worker nodes as separate operations.
  • Stretch Cluster Support on VMware Cloud allows Service Providers to manage multiple vCenter Kubernetes clusters on VMware Cloud.
  • Increased number of supported CNFs: The number of supported CNFs per Telco Cloud Automation is scaled from 15,000 to 25,000.

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.1 Release Notes.

Carrier-Grade Kubernetes Infrastructure

VMware Tanzu Basic for RAN introduces various features and enhancements as part of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.5.4. One of the key features is as follows:

  • Support for Kubernetes versions:
    • 1.20.15
    • 1.21.11
    • 1.22.9

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.5.4 Release Notes.

Operations Management

VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance for RAN introduces the following features as part of VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance 2.0.1.

  • Adoption of Telco Cloud Service Assurance for RAN in Telco Cloud Platform RAN: VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance for RAN is introduced as an optional component in VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 2.0.

    Telco Cloud Service Assurance for RAN introduces a single pane of glass monitoring for VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN operations with various views for Topology, Alerts, Dashboards, and Reports.

    • Performs root cause and service impact analysis for fast problem resolution by automatically correlating symptoms from different layers of the infrastructure stack (physical, virtual, Kubernetes, CNFs, VNFs, and services) and pinpointing the root cause of a problem.
    • Enables CSPs quickly view the problems that require priority remediation.
    • Correlates all the active, inactive, and unknown alarms together with the network topology to rapidly identify the root cause of a problem.
    • Supports built-in integration with Telco Cloud Automation to be orchestrator-aware and monitor the infrastructure immediately post the deployment of Telco Cloud Automation.

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance 2.0.1 Release Notes.

Components

Mandatory Add-On Component

Note: Additional license is required.

Optional Add-On Component

Note: Additional license is required.

Resolved Issues

  • Some Pods Stay in Crash, Unknown, or Pending State After a Node Pool VM Restart in Telco Cloud Automation 2.0

    This issue is fixed in Telco Cloud Automation 2.1.

  • Worker Node Cluster Creation Fails with an Error in Telco Cloud Automation

    This issue is fixed in Telco Cloud Automation 2.0.1.

  • New Host Profile Configuration Not Applied to the Host When Adding the New Host Profile in Telco Cloud Automation

    This issue is fixed in Telco Cloud Automation 2.1.

  • L1 Initialization in a Multi-DU Environment Stuns the DU Worker Node VM

    In a multi-DU environment, where two virtual Distributed Unit (vDU) pods having Accelerator ACC100 with the vfio-pci driver attached on the same worker node VM, L1 initialization on one vDU causes the other vDU to crash. When L1 is initializing, the ACC100 Virtual Function reset at the vDU host causing the vDU worker node VM to stun for approximately one second. This stun causes the timing issues and crashes the other vDU.

    This issue is fixed in ESXi 7.0 U3f.

  • Unable to Instantiate a 52 GB Workload VM Due to Increased Memory Consumption in ESXi Servers

    On ESXi servers with 64 GB RAM, the memory available to instantiate a workload VM is reduced to 50 GB when compared to 52 GB in previous releases. The usage of Intel drivers for E810 NIC 1.6.5/NVM3.0 and ACC100 (v1.0.7) increases the memory consumption in the ESXi server. So, you cannot instantiate a 52 GB workload VM.

    This issue is fixed in Telco Cloud Platform RAN 2.0.

  • ESXi Host Goes to PSOD State During the Intel NIC Firmware Upgrade

    If you upgrade Intel NIC while using the irdman (inbox) and icen (async) drivers, the ESXi host goes to the PSOD state.

    This issue is fixed in ESXi 7.0 U3f.

  • Kubernetes Worker-Node IP Address Becomes None After Rebooting the ESXi Host Using iDRAC

    After rebooting the ESXi host using Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC), the value of the Kubernetes worker-node IP address becomes none.

    This issue is fixed in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.5.4.

  • Application Thread Running Inside the Container Does Not Wake Up After Using Nanosleep

    If you use the nanosleep function for an application thread that is running inside the container, the application thread does not wake up. A timer tree, which is corrupted due to a Linux kernel issue, caused the missing of task wakeup in the timerqueue_add function in lib/timerqueue.c.

    This issue is fixed in Photon linux-rt-4.19.198-11 or later version.

  • Kernel Panic Occurs in a DU During a Normal Operation

    When a Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) task that is boosted by a SCHED_DEADLINE task boosts another CFS task (nested priority inheritance), a kernel panic occurs:

    kernel/sched/deadline.c:1495! Invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI

    This issue is fixed in Photon linux-rt-4.19.198-12.ph3.

Support Resources

For additional support resources, see the VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN documentation page.

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