About the Telco Cloud Platform RAN Components

This section describes the platform components and the supporting infrastructure components that are required to deploy VMware Telco Cloud Platform RAN.

Platform Components

Telco Cloud Platform RAN consists of required and recommended components. The required components are mandatory for the solution to function as designed, while the recommended components provide useful additional capabilities. You have the flexibility to use alternative or third-party components where suitable.

Note:

For the latest updates to the supported versions of these components, see the Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.1 Release Notes.
To deploy ESXi 8.0 Update 1c in the Telco Cloud Platform RAN 3.1 environment, you must first install the ESXi 8.0 U1 ISO image and then apply the ESXi 8.0 Update 1c patch.


Telco Cloud Platform RAN Components	Version	Required/Recommended
VMware ESXi™	8.0 U1c	Required
VMware vCenter^® Server Appliance™	8.0 U1d	Required
VMware vSAN™ Standard Edition	8.0 U1c	Recommended
VMware Aria Operations™ Advanced Edition (formerly VMware vRealize^® Operations™)	8.12	Recommended
VMware Aria Operations™ for Logs (formerly VMware vRealize^® Log Insight™)	8.12	Recommended
VMware Aria Operations™ for Networks (formerly vRealize^® Network Insight™)	6.11	Recommended
VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator™ (formerly vRealize^® Orchestrator™)	8.13.1	Required Note: A vCenter Server license entitles the use of Aria Automation Orchestrator, with the basic functionalities required for Telco Cloud Platform RAN.
VMware Telco Cloud Automation™ (including Airgap BOM)	3.0	Required
VMware Tanzu^® Kubernetes Grid™	2.3.1	Required
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance™	2.2	Recommended
VMware Bare Metal Automation™ for VMware Telco Cloud Platform™	3.1	Recommended

The following Aria Management and Content packs are required only when deploying the operations management products in Telco Cloud Platform RAN.


Management Components
VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for vCenter Server (included with Aria Operations)
VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for vSAN (included with Aria Operations)
VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for Aria Operations for Logs (included with Aria Aria Operations)
VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for Aria Automation Orchestrator
VMware Aria Operations for Logs Content Pack for vCenter Server (included with Aria Operations for Logs)
VMware Aria Operations for Logs Content Pack for Aria Operations (included with Aria Operations for Logs)
VMware Aria Operations for Logs Content Pack for Aria Operations for Networks
VMware Aria Operations for Logs Content Pack for Aria Automation Orchestrator
VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for Kubernetes (included with Aria Operations)

You can download the Aria management packs and Aria Operations for Logs content packs from VMware Solution Exchange.

Supporting Infrastructure

The supporting infrastructure components are required for the successful operation of Telco Cloud Platform RAN. These components are typically deployed in the data center network with connectivity to the management network. Deploy these components as Virtual Machines (VM) to leverage the VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) feature.


Supporting Infrastructure Components	Description
Active Directory Server	Provides a centralized authentication source for management components
DNS Server	Provides forward and reverse lookup services to all platform components
NTP Server	Provides a time synchronization service to all components
SMTP Server	Sends email notifications from the platform in response to events and alarms
SNMP Server	Sends SNMP alerts to external monitoring systems