This reference architecture guide provides guidance for designing and creating a telco cloud by using VMware Telco Cloud Platform™ – 5G Edition.

Intended Audience

This guide is intended for telecommunications and solution architects, sales engineers, field consultants, advanced services specialists, and customers who are responsible for the Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs), Cloud Native Network Functions (CNFs), and the environment in which they run.

Acronyms and Definitions

The following table lists the acronyms used frequently in this guide.

Acronym

Definition

AMF

Access and Mobility Management Function

AUSF

Authentication Server Function

CBRS

Citizens Broadband Radio Service

CNTT

Common NFVI Telco Task Force

CSP

Communications Service Provider

C-VDS

Converged VDS, a vSphere managed Virtual Distributed Switch that is leveraged by NSX

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

DPDK

Data Plane Development Kit, an Intel-led packet processing acceleration technology

ETSI

European Telecommunications Standards Institute

LCM

Life Cycle Management

NFV

Network Functions Virtualization

NRF

NF Repository Function

N-VDS

NSX-managed Virtual Distributed Switch

N-VDS (E)

NSX-managed Virtual Distributed Switch in Enhanced Data Path mode

PCIe

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express

PCF

Policy Control Function

PCRF

Policy and Charging Rule Function

QCI

Quality of Service Class Identifier

SMF

Session Management Function

SBA

Service-Based Architecture

SBI

Service-Based Interface

SR-IOV

Single Root Input/Output Virtualization

STP

Spanning Tree Protocol

SVI

Switched Virtual Interface

ToR Switch

Top-of-Rack Switch

UDM

Unified Data Management

UDR

Unified Data Repository

VDS

vSphere Distributed Switch

VNF

Virtual Network Function

Cloud Native Acronyms

Acronym

Definition

CAPV

Cluster API Provider vSphere

CMK

CPU Manager for Kubernetes

CNI

Container Network Interface

CNCF

Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a Linux Foundation project designed to help advance the container technology

CNF

Cloud Native Network Function executing within a Kubernetes environment

CSAR

Cloud Service Archive

CSI

Container Storage Interface. vSphere CSI exposes vSphere storage to containerized workloads on container orchestrators, such as Kubernetes. It enables vSAN and other types of vSphere storage.

CNS

Cloud Native Storage, a storage solution that provides comprehensive data management for Kubernetes stateful applications.

K8s

Kubernetes

PSP

Pod Security Policy

PV

Persistent Volume

PVC

Persistent Volume Claim

TCA

Telco Cloud Automation

TCA-CP

Telco Cloud Automation-Control Plane