VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.0 | 18 APR 2023

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New

VMware Telco Cloud Platform - RAN™ Release 3.0 includes key features and enhancements across the carrier-grade RAN stack including VMware vSphere, VMware Tanzu Basic for RAN, VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance™ for RAN, and VMware Telco Cloud Automation to improve performance, operability and scale, and user experience.

VMware Telco Cloud Platform - RAN™ Release 3.0 is a key milestone release in the evolving roadmap of Telco Cloud Platform RAN. This release enhances the end-to-end zero-touch orchestration on the platform by adding VMware Bare Metal Automation, an optional component to the stack. Bare Metal Automation further extends the level of automation that Telco Cloud Automation provides.

With vSphere 8.0b, this release enhances the capacity of the platform by increasing the number of supported PCI passthrough devices per VM from 16 to 32. This release also provides extended support for VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. The Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extended Support (ES) release enables CSPs to schedule upgrades flexibly, allowing them to stay on a Tanzu Kubernetes Grid ES release or upgrade to another Tanzu Kubernetes Grid ES release.

Workload Compute

VMware ESXi 8.0b delivers the following key new features:

  • Enhances the capacity of the platform by increasing the number of supported PCI passthrough devices per VM from 16 to 32

    • This enhancement allows CSPs and NEP partners to attach significantly more virtual functions to the worker node, allowing more traffic per VM or worker node. Multiple DUs can run on a single VM, allowing the RAN deployments to scale up.

  • vSphere Lifecycle Manager support for standalone hosts through API

  • Life Cycle Manager (LCM) can remediate multiple hosts in parallel

  • Support for staging update/upgrade payloads to speed up remediation

  • Configuration management at scale

  • vSphere scalability enhancements

    • 96 hosts per vSphere Lifecycle Manager cluster

    • 10K VMs per cluster

For more information, see the VMware ESXi 8.0b Release Notes.

Carrier-Grade VNF and CNF Automation and Orchestration

VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.3 introduces various new features and enhancements. Some of the key features are as follows:

  • Support for vSphere 8.0b and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extended Support (ES) 2.1.1

  • Silicom NICs (STS-2 & STS-4) Support for LLS-C1 configuration:

    • Silicom NICs provide a time synchronization solution with high capacity and lower latency for the fronthaul of the RAN. The integration of Silicom NICs with vSphere 8.0b provides increased capacity, as the number of supported PCI passthrough devices per VM has increased from 16 to 32.

  • Support for Intel ACC100 in vSphere 8.0b

  • Two years extended support for Kubernetes version 1.24.10, as part of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid ES 2.1.1

  • Support for lifecycle management of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1 clusters

  • ETSI GS NFV-SOL 001 - gaps - ETSI R4 alignment

  • Platform security and CaaS security enhancements

  • Pod Security Admission (PSA) control for Kubernetes 1.24.x

  • Rate limiter for API requests to protect from capacity overload and failure

  • Improved interoperability with other VMware components such as vSphere, VMware Cloud Director, and VMware vRealize Suite (formerly Aria Suite) and its components

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.3 Release Notes.

Extended Automation

VMware Bare Metal Automation for VMware Telco Cloud Platform 3.0 is introduced as an optional component to the VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN stack. VMware Bare Metal Automation (VMware BMA) is a bare metal provisioning tool, readying servers for operating system installation. BMA bootstraps the server and installs the necessary software and firmware for Telco Cloud Automation to start its infrastructure and CaaS automation processes.

BMA also automates BIOS and firmware installations or upgrades, provisions disk arrays, builds ISO images, installs the operating system, configures network interfaces, gathers hardware information, assigns hostnames, and connects storage. For VMware Telco Cloud Platform customers, VMware BMA now completes the journey to realize end-to-end network automation—from initial zero-touch provisioning to supporting network services and network slices.

The major features of Bare Metal Automation are as follows:

Infrastructure:

  • BMA Cloud Native

  • BMA Core High Availability (Kubernetes cluster)

  • Identity management - SSO with Active Directory

Functionality:

Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Workflows are designed to support the following functionalities:

  • Installation of Operating System (ESXi)

    • Customer input specification

    • Create virtual disk and custom ESXi ISO image, as per customer input specification

    • Install ESXi Image

  • Pre/Post Installation Validation Capabilities

    • Pre-install validation of host connectivity, authentication credentials, storage device availability

    • Post-install validation of host connectivity, FQDN, ESXi Image version, server uptime

  • Server Information Collection

    • Collect information related to imaging Host

    • Server Type, Vendor, SKU, CPU, Storage

  • Imaging Status Notification

    • Email notification on the status of imaging

    • Granular start and stop time of imaging execution

    • Error handling

  • Secure, Cloud Native Deployment Model

    • Highly available deployment

    • Concurrent ESX imaging support

    • Backup and restore and support bundle generation

    • RBAC and TLS support

For more information, see the VMware Bare Metal Automation for VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.0 Release Notes.

Carrier-Grade Kubernetes Infrastructure

VMware Tanzu Basic for RAN introduces various key features as part of VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1. This release also inherits enhancements from Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1. Some of the key features are as follows:

  • Support for Kubernetes versions:

    • 1.24.10

    • 1.23.16

    • 1.22.17

  • Availability of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extended Support (ES) Release Once a Year:

    • Instead of the standard 1-year support, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1 is now supported for two years from the Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.0 GA date. Beginning with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1, the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extended Support (ES) release is available once a year. To know more about the benefits of extended support, contact VMware.

  • Supports Pod Security Admission (PSA) controllers to replace Pod Security Policies as described in cluster namespaces.

  • Support for auto-renewal of Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster certificates. For more information, see Renew Cluster Certificates and Telco Cloud Automation 2.3 Release Notes.

For more information about these features and enhancements, see the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.1.1 Release Notes.

Components

Mandatory Add-On Component

Note: Additional license is required.

Optional Add-On Components

Note: Additional license is required.

Note:

To download these components, see the VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.0 Product Downloads page.

Validated Patches

Support for Backward Compatibility of CaaS Layer with IaaS Layer

VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.0 supports backward compatibility of its CaaS layer components (Telco Cloud Automation and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid) with the IaaS Layer component (vSphere) in earlier versions of Telco Cloud Platform for RAN. With this feature, you can upgrade the CaaS layer components to their latest versions while using earlier versions of the IaaS layer component.

For more information, see Software Version Support and Interoperability in the Telco Cloud Automation Deployment Guide and Supported Features on Different VIM Types in the Telco Cloud Automation User Guide.

Resolved Issues

Note: For information about the entire list of fixes delivered in each Telco Cloud Platform RAN component, see the corresponding product release notes.

  • Driver Sub-Packages From Previous Photon Kernel Version Not Deleted Automatically When Instantiating a CSAR with New Photon Kernel Version

    When you instantiate a new CSAR with a Photon kernel version 4.19.198-18 or later, driver sub-packages installed from the previous kernel version are not deleted automatically. This leads to an error during the network function instantiation in Telco Cloud Automation.

    This issue is resolved.

Known Issues

Note: For information about the entire list of known issues in each Telco Cloud Platform RAN component, see the corresponding product release notes.

  • Scheduling Latency Spikes Might be Observed Over a Long Run on R750 Dual-Socket Servers

    A few spikes in scheduling latency of over 20us might be observed over a long run on the R750 Dual-Socket servers.

    Workaround: None

  • CSAR Instantiation Fails Due to an Empty PCI ID in ESX Info CR

    If you modify an existing host profile to enable SR-IOV on a vNIC and create a new PCI group for the vNIC, the PCI group entry in the esxinfo Custom Resource (CR) has an empty PCI ID causing the CSAR instantiation to fail.

    Workarounds:

    Use one of the following workarounds:

    • Instead of modifying an existing host profile, create a new host profile and apply it to the host or domain.

    • Delete the existing esxinfo CR by logging into the management cluster, and resync the host profile for the host or domain.

  • PTP Service Error Occurs When Instantiating a CSAR Without Specifying the iavf and ice Driver Details

    If you instantiate a CSAR without specifying iavf and ice drivers in the /Definitions/VNFD.yaml file, the PTP service error occurs instead of indicating the package error in Telco Cloud Automation.

    Workaround: Specify the iavf and ice driver details as described in KB90345.

Release Notes Change Log

Date

Change

Jan 9, 2024

VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.3.0.2 is added to the Validated Patches section.

Jan 5, 2024

VMware Telco Cloud Automation 2.3.0.1 is added to the Validated Patches section.

Oct 25, 2023

VMware vCenter Server 8.0 Update 1d is added to the Validated Patches section.

Support Resources

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

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