This section describes the relationship and assumptions of Telco Cloud Platform RAN in comparison to Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition.

VMware Telco Cloud Platform is a common platform from Core to RAN. This common platform self-tunes automatically depending on the workload deployed through VMware Telco Cloud Automation™. To deploy all VNF/CNFs from 5G Core to RAN, the same automation platform, operational tools, and CaaS layer based on VMware Tanzu® Basic for RAN are used.

Figure 1. Relationship between Telco Cloud Platform 5G and Telco Cloud Platform RAN
Relationship between Telco Cloud Platform 5G and Telco Cloud Platform RAN

Telco Cloud Platform RAN is a new compute workload domain that spans from Central or Regional Data Centers to Cell sites. The management components of this compute workload domain reside in the management cluster inside the RDC management domain. Within this compute workload domain, VMware ESXi™ hosts are managed as single node hosts and distributed across thousands of cell sites. This distributed architecture also applies to Kubernetes. Kubernetes cluster management is centralized, and workload VMs are distributed to respective cell sites.

Category

Telco Cloud Platform 5G Edition

Telco Cloud Platform RAN

Kubernetes Cluster

Single sited

Stretched

Management Domain

Same

Same

Workload Domain composition

vSphere clusters

ESXi Hosts

Storage

vSAN/Shared storage

Local storage

Networking

Overlay/VLAN

VLAN