VMware Telco Cloud Automation (TCA) supports the onboarding of Tanzu Kubernetes worker nodes with Silicom TimeSync NICs (STS4 and STS2) for both the LLS-C1 and LLS-C3 configuration models of RAN. This section describes how to configure an STS NIC in the LLS-C1 model using TCA.
The STS timing pod is created and run on a workload cluster that is managed by VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. The STS card is onboarded through the Kubernetes operator framework in TCA. The system clock of a VM that runs a Distributed Unit (DU) is synchronized to the high-accuracy timing provided by the STS timing pod. The STS timing pod distributes time to the connected Radio Units (RUs) using a Virtual Function (VF) from each Physical Function (PF) on the DU. DU workloads that run within the VM derive timing from the VM.
