Every component of the Telco Cloud stack has its own IPv4-IPv6 support matrix.
IPv6 was defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to overcome IPv4 limitations such as the number of available address spaces. IPv6 also provides improved address autoconfiguration between nodes.
In the Telco Cloud, VNFs and CNFs can communicate in multiple ways using IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, leveraging the capabilities of the platform components:
VNFs deployed on top of VMware Cloud Director: Separate vNICs for each address family or a dual stack configuration with DHCP or static assignment
CNFs deployed on the CaaS infrastructure through VMware Telco Cloud Automation
NSX: single or dual stack for overlay or VLAN segment with Standard or EDP configuration
Avi Load Balancer: single or dual stack for Load Balancer
Several options are available at the VNF and CNF level to consume IPV4 and IPv6 communications. Some constraints apply to the management component interactions. The following table summarizes the address family capabilities of the management components. IPv4 is standard for all components.
Components |
Release |
IPv6 only |
Dual Stack |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ESXi |
8.0 U3 |
X |
X |
|
vCenter Server |
8.0 U3 |
X |
X |
|
NSX |
4.2 |
X |
Management Plane and Control Plane TEP supports only IPv4 or IPv6. |
|
Telco Cloud Automation |
3.2 |
X |
X |
|
Tanzu Kubernetes Grid |
2.5.2 |
X |
X |
Starting from k8s 1.28, Dual Stack is available for ClusterClass. |
Aria Operations |
8.18 |
X |
X |
All nodes in the cluster must follow the Address Family. |
Aria Operations for Logs |
8.18 |
X |
X |
|
Aria Automation Orchestrator |
8.18 |
|||
Aria Operations for Networks |
6.13 |
X |
X |
|
VMware Cloud Director |
10.6 |
X |
||
Bare Metal Automation |
4.0 |
|||
Avi Load Balancer |
30.2.1 |
X |
||
Avi Kubernetes Operator |
1.12.2 |
X |
X |
Management plane to Avi Load Balancer can be IPv4 or IPv6 only, Dataplane can be IPv6 or Dual Stack. |
Due to the interaction of the components in a deployment and the limitations of some components, only part of the stack can be deployed in an IPv6 or a Dual Stack scenario.
Cluster LCM supports three primary combination scenarios of management cluster and workload clusters:
Management Cluster (IPv6,IPv4), kube-vip (IPv6) + Workload Cluster (IPv6,IPv4), kube-vip (IPv6)
Management Cluster (IPv6,IPv4), kube-vip (IPv6) + Workload Cluster (IPv6), kube-vip (IPv6)
Management Cluster (IPv6,IPv4) , kube-vip (IPv6) + Workload Cluster (IPv4), kube-vip (IPv4)
Currently, dual stack is not supported in Brownfield deployment.
Telco Cloud IPv6 Ingress in CaaS
The following diagram illustrates a deployment where IPv4 and IPv6 coexist. Some components are configured with dual stack, and can communicate with components that have limitations in supported address families. Aria Automation Orchestrator is one such component that supports only IPv4. In the diagram, ESXi hosts are configured in IPv6 only since they are connected to vCenter, NSX, and TCA that are configured in Dual Stack.
TCA can provision Kubernetes clusters using IPv4, IPv6, and Dual stack clusters only for Greenfield Kubernetes Clusters.
Avi Load Balancer allows exporting IPv4, IPv6, and Dual Stack routes, enabling CNFs to export ingress VIPs in IPv4 and IPv6. The additional interfaces consumed by the CNFs with multus can be configured in IPv4, IPv6, or Dual Stack. Both ingress and egress CNF communications of any address family can be aggregated over NSX gateways.
Telco Cloud IPv6 VNF
The following diagram illustrates the deployment where most of the management components are configured with IPv4. This is due to limitations in some components such as VMware Cloud Director and Aria Automation Orchestrator.
Even if the management communications are managed with IPv4, the hosted VNFs can be configured with IPv4, IPv6, or dual stack. Several options are available to be consumed by VNFs:
Dual Stack Overlay segments
Dual stack Trunk VLANs configured with EDP
Dual stack load balancer configured on Avi Load Balancer
The VNF Manager can be configured with Dual Stack and it can communicate with the VNF over IPv6 and with VMware Cloud Director over IPv4.
Telco Cloud RAN IPv6
The following diagram illustrates an IPv6 environment where all the components are connected with IPv6 interfaces. Some components such as TCA Manager, TCA control plane, and vCenter might be configured in a dual stack configuration. Other components such as TKG Management and TKG Workload are both configured in IPv6 only since they are not supporting dual stack.
Aria Automation Orchestrator is not used in this example since it supports only IPv4. CNFs can use Javascript-based workflows directly from TCA.
